Kilmar Ábrego García was freed from immigration detention on Thursday, hours after a federal judge ordered his release, his attorney said.

Ábrego García’s legal team picked him up from the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Pennsylvania around 4:45 p.m. on Thursday, his attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg said.

Ábrego García will now head back to Maryland, where Sandoval-Moshenberg will meet with him to discuss his next steps, including a potential filing for asylum, the attorney said.

It’s the latest twist in a legal battle between President Donald Trump’s administration and Ábrego García. The Salvadoran national and Beltsville resident has been battling for his freedom since he was erroneously deported to El Salvador in March.

Sandoval-Moshenberg, who has represented Ábrego García’s family in their legal fight since March, called the ruling “a powerful affirmation that the rule of law still matters” and an “extraordinary victory for our client and due process” in an emailed statement

“We remain hopeful that this marks a turning point for Mr. Ábrego García, who has endured more than anyone should ever have to,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said. “At the same time, we are mindful of the government’s past conduct in this case and will stay vigilant to ensure that nothing undermines the Court’s decision.”

CASA, a Maryland immigrant advocacy organization that has worked on behalf of Ábrego García for months, will hold a rally outside of the ICE field office in Baltimore at 7 a.m. Friday ahead of Ábrego García’s first check in at the facility. Ábrego García was detained at the ICE office in Baltimore in August, which began the most recent legal saga in his bid for freedom.

Months after his deportation, Ábrego García was brought back to the United States to face felony charges in Tennessee. A judge released him from detention there, but immigration officers took him into custody shortly after he returned to Baltimore. He was held at the Farmville Detention Center in Virginia before being moved to the Moshannon Valley facility in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania.

A monthslong court battle

Ábrego García’s lawyers fought for his release as the federal government threatened to deport him to numerous African countries, including Eswatini, Uganda, Ghana and Liberia. U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis last heard arguments over whether or not to allow his release on Nov. 20.

In a 31-page memorandum opinion filed on Thursday, Xinis said Ábrego García was detained without legal authority because the government didn’t issue an official order of removal. An order of removal is a legal document that triggers the deportation process.

In the November hearing, Xinis repeatedly pushed the government’s lawyers to produce and file a removal order, which no one could provide at the time. Since the hearing, Xinis said in the opinion, the government still had not provided a removal order to her, which meant Ábrego García was being held unlawfully.

Xinis ordered that immigration officials had until 5 p.m. on Thursday to give an update on Ábrego García’s release.

In an emailed statement, Assistant DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin called the ruling “naked judicial activism by an Obama appointed judge.”

“This order lacks any valid legal basis and we will continue to fight this tooth and nail in the courts,” she wrote.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt echoed McLaughlin’s statement on Thursday afternoon, telling the press that the order is judicial activism, “which we’ve unfortunately seen in many cases across the country.”

“For months the Trump Administration has sought to deny Kilmar Ábrego García his rights to due process and fair treatment by our justice system,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland said in an emailed statement.

He called Xinis’ ruling a “forceful stand for our Constitution and the rights of all those in our nation.”

Lydia Walther-Rodriguez, chief of organizing and leadership at Casa called the order a “moment of joy and relief.“

“Kilmar finally gets to return home to his family, where he belongs,” she said. “No one should be separated from their loved ones while fighting for justice.”

A missing order of removal

In 2019, an immigration judge allowed Ábrego García to lawfully remain in the U.S. through a humanitarian protection known as “withholding of removal,” which can be granted to immigrants who may not qualify for asylum on procedural grounds, such as waiting too long to apply. It requires respondents demonstrate a clear likelihood of persecution in the country to which the government wants to deport them.

Typically, a withholding order is entered into an immigrant’s record in conjunction with a separate removal order: A judge first orders the person deported, then withholds the removal order.

But, as Xinis pointed out in her opinion, the judge simply never entered a removal order. The Trump administration argued its existence was implied, but Xinis rejected the argument.

The lack of an underlying removal order in a withholding case is “procedurally irregular,” said Maureen Sweeney, director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law.

It’s unclear if ICE will move to reopen Ábrego García’s old immigration case or call him before a judge to seek an official removal order.

Government ‘affirmatively misled’ the court

In August, the federal government offered Costa Rica as a third-country removal option to Ábrego García if he agreed to delay his pretrial release in Tennessee, plead guilty to criminal smuggling charges and serve any sentence imposed by the court. He declined this plea deal but later identified Costa Rica as his preferred country for deportation.

As part of the deal, Costa Rican officials offered Ábrego García refugee status and promised not to return him to El Salvador, where he was held in the notoriously brutal CECOT prison after his March deportation.

But after Ábrego García declined the plea deal, the government began initiating plans to deport him to a series of African countries. Officials from Uganda, Eswatini and Ghana all publicly said they never agreed to accept him after Trump administration officials claimed those countries gave them a green light. Liberia, a country with a record of human rights abuses, later agreed to take him on a temporary basis.

Ábrego García’s attorneys repeatedly expressed an openness to his removal to Costa Rica at two different evidentiary hearings. U.S. government officials testified that the small, mostly peaceful Central American nation had rescinded its August offer and would no longer accept him.

In November, Costa Rica’s minister of public security, Mario Zamora Cordero, disputed the assertion that the offer had been rescinded, according to media reports, and said the nation’s offer of legal residency was still on the table.

Xinis said in her opinion that the government’s “persistent refusal to acknowledge Costa Rica as a viable removal option, their threats to send Abrego Garcia to African countries that never agreed to take him, and their misrepresentation to the Court that Liberia is now the only country available to Abrego Garcia ... reflect that whatever purpose was behind his detention, it was not for the ‘basic purpose’ of timely third-country removal.”

“They affirmatively misled the tribunal,” Xinis wrote.

Ábrego García faces felony smuggling charges in a criminal court case in Tennessee. U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw said in October that there was a “realistic likelihood” that this criminal prosecution had vindictive motives. If that’s proven at a hearing in January, the case could be dismissed.

This story has been updated.