GREENBELT, Md. (CN) - A federal judge on Monday extended a court order barring the Trump administration from again arresting Kilmar Abrego Garcia, expressing doubts that the government had a legal basis to take the Maryland man back into custody for a third time. 

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis also set a Friday deadline for the government to explain whether it would try to detain Abrego Garcia under U.S. Code 1226 (a), which would permit Attorney General Pam Bondi to issue a warrant for his arrest, while also granting him opportunity for a bond hearing.

Abrego Garcia was present in court for the first time in the long-running case after Xinis ordered his release from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody on Dec. 11. 

In the nine months since he was wrongfully deported to an infamous mega-prison in El Salvador in March, Abrego Garcia has been held in detention by ICE and the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee. 

Immediately following his release, the Department of Homeland Security ordered Immigration Judge Phillip Taylor to issue a new removal order in Abrego Garcia's immigration case that was effectively backdated to Oct. 10, 2019. 

The Justice Department had relied on a previous 2019 order that Xinis determined on Dec. 11 did not exist, and thus could not support the government's efforts to deport Abrego Garcia.

Xinis, a Barack Obama appointee, granted an emergency temporary restraining order on Dec. 12 to block ICE from arresting Abrego Garcia at a hastily scheduled check-in at its Baltimore field office later that morning. ICE had arrested him at a similar check-in a few months prior.

Xinis scheduled Monday's hearing to determine whether to extend the restraining order and turn it into a more permanent preliminary injunction, or grant the Justice Department's request to dissolve it entirely.

She grilled Justice Department attorney Ernesto Molina to explain why she should dissolve her temporary restraining order if the government could not provide the legal basis it would seek to re-arrest him under.

"Why should I lift it, so he can be arrested in the middle of the night?" Xinis asked. 

Molina suggested that the government has yet to decide whether it would detain Abrego Garcia again, a point Xinis found hard to believe considering what has already happened in the case.

Molina responded that a temporary restraining order should only prevent imminent harm, and because Abrego Garcia has been released and is not facing a looming arrest there is no such harm. 

Jonathan Cooper, of Quinn Emanuel and representing Abrego Garcia, urged Xinis to maintain the temporary restraining order since the Justice Department could not explain what its plans were for his client. 

Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, also representing Abrego Garcia from the firm Murray Osorio, said his client was "literally in a double bind," with ankle bracelets from both the Middle District of Tennessee and ICE. 

The trackers and his terms of supervised release prevent him from self-deporting to Costa Rica, Sandoval-Moshenberg said, and reiterated that Abrego Garcia would willingly go there at the first available opportunity. 

Xinis slammed the Justice Department for writing in a Dec. 14 opposition brief that her decision to grant the temporary restraining order was ex parte - meaning it was one-sided - and asked Molina to explain who wrote that, as it was clearly wrong. 

She noted that Molina had conceded, in open court, that her decision was not one-sided, as the time crunch between her Dec. 11 order and subsequent temporary restraining order on Dec. 12 was "an emergency of your own making," since the government ordered the 8 a.m. Baltimore check-in.

"I'm growing beyond impatient with this happening," Xinis said, saying she thought the misrepresentations had been made in bad faith.

Monday's hearing drew a significant crowd of supporters, many of them members of immigrant rights group CASA, who cheered Abrego Garcia when he walked up to Xinis' courtroom. 

Outside the ICE Baltimore field office on Dec. 12, Abrego Garcia made his first public comments since his arrest in August, stating in Spanish he was a free man and had his "head held high." 

"I will continue to fight and stand firm against all of the injustices this government has done upon me," Abrego Garcia said through a CASA interpreter. "Regardless of this administration, I believe this is a country of laws, and I believe that this injustice will come to its end. Keep fighting. Do not give up."

Source: Courthouse News Service