The Trump administration is asking a judge to dissolve Abrego Garcia’s deportation order

The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Friday urged a judge to dissolve the order preventing the Trump administration from re-arresting Kilmar Abrego Garcia so that he can be deported to Liberia immediately.

“Dissolution is also authorized because the Court’s Memorandum Order failed to acknowledge that the Court’s prior order of removal constituted an impediment to petitioner’s immediate removal,” the DOJ wrote in a court filing obtained by Fox News Digital. “A court cannot both impose a barrier to delay removal and extend the period of detention and, at the same time, hold that the resulting detention is impermissibly prolonged.”

It added, “Any attempt by this Court to permanently enjoin the government from exercising its authority to deport the applicant is contrary to established legal practice, and is a clear error of law.”

Authorities deported Abrego Garcia, who they say is a member of MS-13, last year from prison in his native El Salvador, but he was returned to the US in June to face human trafficking charges in Tennessee related to a traffic stop in 2022 despite initially saying authorities had no power to extradite him.

His lawyers deny that he is a member of MS-13.

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He was released from custody in December on the grounds that the Trump administration had not received the final notice of removal required to deport him to a third country.

Abrego Garcia, 31, has become the focus of the national immigration debate since last March, when he was deported to El Salvador in violation of a 2019 court order in what Trump administration officials admitted was “an administrative error.”

The Supreme Court later ruled that the administration must work to bring him back to the US

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He has denied charges of human trafficking and wants the charges dropped on prosecution grounds.

A 2019 court order prevents Abrego Garcia from being deported to El Salvador after an immigration judge ruled he posed a gang risk that threatened his family. He immigrated to the US illegally as a child and was under the supervision of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

A protester holds a poster of Kilmar Abrego Garcia in front of the US District Court in Nashville, Tenn. (Getty Images)

Last month, US District Judge Paula Xinis agreed to change her previous emergency order preventing ICE from re-arresting Abrego Garcia to a longer-term measure to help his lawyers.

He said the Trump administration failed to provide the court with any “good reason to believe” that it plans to remove Abrego Garcia to a third country in the “foreseeable future.” Instead, he said, “they are just threatening to remove him from African countries where he has no real chance of success.”

Abrego Garcia said he was willing to be sent to Costa Rica, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement Acting Director Todd Lyons said he would instead be moved to Liberia.

Abrego Garcia’s lawyer said in December that Abrego was willing to go to Costa Rica immediately, and that the country had granted him asylum months ago.

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Kilmar Abrego Garcia enters the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office in Baltimore, Md. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

The government’s “continuing refusal to recognize Costa Rica as an effective means of removal, their threats to send Abrego Garcia to African countries that have never agreed to take him, and their misrepresentation to the Court that Liberia is now the only country available for Abrego Garcia, all show that whatever the purpose behind his arrest, it was not the ‘primary purpose’ of removal during Xisini’s December.”

The administration asked the judge to rule on its request to have the ban dissolved on April 17.

Fox News’ Michael Sinkewicz, Louis Casiano, Breanne Deppisch, and Jake Gibson contributed to this report.