GREENBELT, Md. — A federal judge said Thursday she is considering an order to temporarily block the government from quickly deporting Kilmar Abrego Garcia again, as his attorneys seek his return to Maryland.

“I’m not willing to allow an unfettered release of Mr. Garcia into ICE custody,” U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis said at the end of Abrego Garcia’s wrongful deportation case. It’s unclear whether she will issue a temporary restraining order, but the hearing is set to continue on Friday.

Abrego Garcia was transported from El Salvador to Tennessee in June to face human smuggling-related charges, and his attorneys are worried the government may deport him again if he is released while awaiting trial.

On Thursday, an immigration official testified there are no clear plans yet for what to do with Abrego Garcia.

Trump administration officials have said they plan to send the sheet metal worker to a not-yet-identified “third country” — but not his native El Salvador, where he was initially sent — if he is freed from federal custody next week while his trial in Tennessee.

Thomas Giles, assistant director for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations, told the court Thursday that the process has not begun to determine whether Abrego Garcia will be sent to a third country and, if so, which country that will be.

“We don’t work these cases until they’re in ICE custody,” said Giles, who sat in the witness box and answered questions from attorneys in the case.

In the meantime, Xinis said she was considering an order that says the government must not remove Garcia “beyond the local confines of Tennessee and will not remove him from the United States” for 48 hours.

In his responses, Giles did not appear to meet Xinis’ demands on Monday for more specific plans from the government about Abrego Garcia. Sascha Rand, an attorney for Abrego Garcia, expressed skepticism that the government has no specific plans, given that Abrego Garcia’s case is so “high profile.”

His family wants him returned to Prince George’s County, where he lived until being apprehended in March. The administration has acknowledged that his subsequent deportation to El Salvador and imprisonment there was an administrative error.

Abrego Garcia’s attorneys fear that he could be deported to one country and then sent back to El Salvador, where he fears persecution. Giles said he couldn’t guarantee that it wouldn’t happen. “I don’t know what assurances we have. We just deport to ‘Country X,’ ” he said.

Xinis ordered the administration this week to “designate one or more individuals” to testify “regarding the legal bases for their intended detention of Kilmar Abrego Garcia and anticipated efforts to remove him to a third country.” The administration selected Giles.

Giles testified that Abrego Garcia would have the right to challenge a decision that sent him to a country he considered unsafe, which would then send the case to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and, perhaps, to an immigration judge for a final decision.

His supporters have seized on Abrego Garcia’s case as an example of the Trump administration’s disregard for immigrants’ rights and willingness to buck federal court orders. His mistaken deportation became a political flashpoint.

The administration has called Abrego Garcia a gang member and human trafficker who should not be set free in the United States.

He is accused in a federal indictment in Tennessee of being an MS-13 gang member who conspired “to bring undocumented aliens to the United States from countries such as Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Ecuador, and elsewhere.”

Abrego Garcia, who has pleaded not guilty, faces a July 16 hearing in Tennessee next week that could decide the El Salvador native’s release from pre-trial custody.

If he is released from custody, Abrego Garcia would be detained — and it could be anywhere in the country — for as long as a few weeks before possibly being sent to a foreign country, Giles said. He said the government “would need to find bed space for the individual, and we don’t know where that is.”

Andrew Rossman, one of Abrego Garcia’s attorneys, told Xinis on Monday that “we could be faced with the same set of circumstances that got us here in the first place: an illegal removal. The threat of removing Mr. Abrego again without due process is real.”

The Justice Department has said it would not deny Abrego Garcia his rights. “The removal of Abrego Garcia as challenged in the (wrongful deportation) complaint was an isolated mistake,” the department said in a brief last week.

Abrego Garcia was left for months in two El Salvador prisons while the Trump administration said it had no authority to bring him back from the sovereign nation. He was flown to Tennessee in June to face the smuggling-related charges.

Although he had come to the U.S. illegally as a teen, a federal immigration judge granted Abrego Garcia a legal protective order in 2019 to prevent his removal to El Salvador, where he has said gangs threatened him.

That order is why government attorneys then considered sending him to a third country instead of El Salvador.

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