Kilmar Abrego Garcia delivers remarks during a rally before his check in at the ICE Baltimore Field Office in Baltimore Maryland, on August 25. On Monday, a federal judge allowed the Salvadoran native to remain free through Christmas, after he was released earlier this month, as he awaits trial on human smuggling charges in Tennessee. File Photo by Shawn Thew/EPA
Dec. 22 (UPI) — A federal judge on Monday allowed Kilmar Abrego Garcia to remain free through Christmas as she barred Immigration and Customs Enforcement from re-detaining the Salvadoran native.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in Maryland extended a temporary restraining order to keep federal officials from deporting Abrego Garcia, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled he was deported and imprisoned in March without legal authority to El Salvador.
“This is an extremely irregular and extraordinary situation,” Xinnis told attorneys Monday, as she pressed the government on whether it would detain Abrego Garcia if there were no restraining order.
“Show your work, that’s all,” Xinis said. “Give it to me and we don’t have to speculate.”
Abrego Garcia was released from ICE detention on Dec. 11, following efforts to deport him to an African nation where he has no connection.
“Because Abrego Garcia has been held in ICE detention to effectuate third-country removal absent a lawful removal order, his requested relief is proper,” according to Xinis.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security called Xinis’ rulings “naked judicial activism by an Obama-appointed judge.”
Abrego Garcia, who illegally entered the United States nearly 15 years ago, has accused the White House of vindictive prosecution. The administration has called him an MS-13 gang member, which he denies.
Abrego Garcia had been living in Maryland with his wife and children before being deported to El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison in March. He was returned to the United States in June and is awaiting trial on human smuggling charges in Tennessee. He has pleaded not guilty.
On Monday, Abrego Garcia’s attorneys said he is prepared to go to Costa Rica, which the judge said the government refuses to consider.
The “persistent refusal to acknowledge Costa Rica as a viable removal option, their threats to send Abrego 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, all reflect that whatever purpose was behind his detention, it was not for the ‘basic purpose’ of timely third-country removal,” Xinis wrote.
What do fallen empires leave behind? Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida’s new work of fiction attempts to answer that question. “Three Stories of Forgetting” probes the inner worlds of three men scarred by their participation in Portugal’s history of rapacious colonialist intervention that ended in 1999. For nearly 600 years, the European republic was involved in a bloody land grab that at its peak controlled over 5.5 million square miles across Africa, Asia and the Americas.
Pereira de Almeida’s protagonists — Celestino, a slave trader; Boa Morte, a former soldier who had been conscripted to fight his fellow Africans in the Guinea-Bissau War of Independence; and Bruma, an elderly plantation worker — live in a liminal state between past and present, searching for some measure of solace in a world that offers none. I chatted with Pereira de Almeida, who was born in Angola but was reared in Lisbon, about her haunting triptych of stories.
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Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida is author of “Three Stories of Forgetting,” a new novel exploring the legacies of slavery, colonialism, and the Portuguese Empire.
(Humberto Brito)
Three stories of forgetting … but nothing is forgotten among these men.
All three men are tormented by what they can’t forget, although they don’t feel exactly guilty, in the case of Celestino and Boa Morte. Bruma is a different story. The “forgetting” of the title relates to the omission of the figures who do not appear in the book, or who appear only occasionally, episodically. Those who are forgotten are the victims and their story. These three stories are also chapters of a more general story of violence, that of colonialism, whose victims are largely forgotten to this day.
Boa Morte, a valet in Lisbon, carries an enormous burden of guilt; in order to expiate it, he tries to save a young street vagrant. Of course, all attempts at redemption in the book are futile — why is that?
I don’t think redemption is as common as much of today’s fiction seems to suggest. The experience of guilt or of an existence haunted by ghosts seems more common to me. Boa Morte was forgotten by Portugal, the country for which he gave his life, and his hateful behavior left him utterly alone. What would redeem his life? Boa Morte is inspired by a man I knew who became my friend and lived on the streets of Lisbon, just like the character. One day, he was found dead in an alley. Not all lives know redemption.
The three protagonists are captives of their pasts, because the past is still present. Can you speak to that?
After reading [British philosopher] Peter Geach’s sentence that opens his book “The Virtues,” I became interested in inquiring into the lives of people who may be, so to speak, “dead in the eyes of God.” The problem with this possibility, however, is that we may die in the eyes of God early in life, without knowing it, and yet live to old age and remain here.
This sentence is important to me, regardless of its religious meaning. It is important in that it opens up the possibility that we may have exhausted our share of grace in life and, as humans, need to keep going.
All three of these characters are looking for some kind of solace — whether it’s reverting to some kind of quiet life among living things that don’t talk back, or building a lean-to as a kind of sanctuary.
Perhaps these places they seek are, in very different ways, the only possible remnants of rest: and also places where questions have ceased. Among living things that don’t talk there are no witnesses, there is no guilt.
You can’t write stories like these without some degree of empathy — do you feel sorry for these men? What do you feel for them as a writer?
I agree with that. I don’t feel sorry for them, but I tried to get closer to them and understand them, without imposing my ideas and opinions on them, something I don’t like to do when I write novels. Instead, I preferred, as I usually prefer, to fly around them like an insect, to study them, to let them talk to me: It is a non-imposing approach, which lets the characters speak. In general, I tend to be interested in characters I don’t like and who wouldn’t treat me with the kindness I show them. It’s my way of seeking justice, in its contradictions, and of exploring ambiguity in human behavior: I want to create hospitality, and that means being able to extend my hospitality to characters whose deeds I condemn.
(This Q&A was edited for length and clarity.)
📰 The Week(s) in Books
Carolyn Kellogg, Bethanne Patrick and Mark Athitakis select the best books of the year for The Times.
(Photo illustration by Josep Prat Sorolla / For The Times; book jackets from Scribner, Riverhead and Penguin Press)
Jim Ruland talked to Thurston Moore about his new book that chronicles the Sonic Youth guitarist’s love of free jazz. “I go out with my band and I play typical band gigs,” says Moore, “but I prefer being in a basement with a free jazz drummer any day of the week.”
Mark Athitakis finds favor with W. David Marx’s “Blank Space,” a sharp critique that maps the decline of our present culture, as well as Adam Morgan’s biography of 20th century literary firebrand Margaret C. Anderson, a trailblazer who bucked the prevailing culture to champion challenging art, including Joyce’s “Ulysses.” “If we want more works like ‘Ulysses’ in our world (and far less cringe) … it will demand a stubbornness from creators and dedication from consumers that the current moment is designed to strip from us,” Athatakis writes.
Apollo, one of two bookstore cats, sleeping in a box at the Iliad bookstore in North Hollywood.
(Gerard Burkhart / For The Times)
The San Fernando Valley has lost many of its beloved bookshops over the last two decades, but North Hollywood’s Iliad bookshop remains. The store, which first opened its doors 28 years ago and remains the greatest purveyor of used books in all of Los Angeles, is the kind of tangled labyrinth teeming with titles that one can get lost in for hours. I spoke with Dan Weinstein about what is moving out of the doors this holiday season.
What is selling in the Christmas rush this year?
We tend to sell the same kinds of titles all year round, so it’s standard literature, science fiction and the handful of authors we can’t keep on the shelves: Octavia Butler, Charles Bukowski, Sarah J. Maas and Brandon Sanderson. Also, a lot of gift cards! Actually, January is our strongest month for sales — winter kicks in and people like to stay at home and read.
Full disclosure: I’ve been a loyal Iliad customer since the ’90s. Do you tend to see the same faces across the years?
Oh, we have very serious hardcore customers that come over and over again. Some of them even come on a daily basis. Fortunately, we are always putting good new inventory out.
What about Hollywood business? You have a tremendous inventory of art and photography books. Do set designers come in to find inspiration?
We do sell a lot to the entertainment industry. That really keeps us alive. If we were doing business in a city other than Los Angeles, I don’t think we would do nearly as well.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia walked out of a US courthouse without being arrested by immigration authorities, relieving fears ICE may attempt to take him back into custody the day after he was released.
The Department of Homeland Security has pledged to appeal the latest ruling, slamming it as ‘naked judicial activism’.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose case has become a flashpoint in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in the United States, has been freed from detention on a judge’s order and returned to his home, according to reports.
Abrego Garcia was due to check in with US immigration officials on Friday, The Associated Press news agency reported, a day after returning to his home following his release from an immigration processing centre in the latest twist in a convoluted case of deportation and detention targeting the Maryland man.
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In a ruling on Thursday, US District Judge Paula Xinis in Maryland ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement to let Abrego Garcia go immediately, writing that federal authorities had detained him again after his return to the US without any legal basis.
The face of Trump’s hardline immigration policies
Abrego Garcia has an American wife and children and has lived in Maryland for years, under protected legal status since 2019, when a judge ruled he should not be deported because he could be harmed in his home country by a gang that targeted his family. He originally moved to the US without documentation as a teenager.
He then became the highest-profile case among more than 200 people sent to the notorious El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison as part of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on refugees, migrants and asylum seekers in the US.
He was wrongfully deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador in March. A court later ordered his return to the US, where he was detained again, as immigration officials sought to deport him to a series of African countries instead of El Salvador.
‘Judicial activism’
The Department of Homeland Security slammed Thursday’s ruling and said it would appeal, labelling the decision as “naked judicial activism” by a judge appointed during President Barack Obama’s administration.
“This order lacks any valid legal basis, and we will continue to fight this tooth and nail in the courts,” said Tricia McLaughlin, the department’s assistant secretary.
Abrego Garcia’s lawyer, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said he expected his client’s ordeal was far from over, and he was preparing to defend him against further deportation efforts.
“The government still has plenty of tools in their toolbox,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said.
“We’re going to be there to fight to make sure there is a fair trial.”
The lawyer said the judge’s ruling had made it clear that the government could not detain a person indefinitely without legal authority, adding that Abrego Garcia had already “endured more than anyone should ever have to”.
Legal battles ongoing
Abrego Garcia has filed a federal lawsuit claiming the Trump administration is illegally using the deportation process to punish him due to the attention his case received.
Since his return, federal authorities have also filed charges against Abrego Garcia for alleged human smuggling related to a 2022 traffic stop.
He has pleaded not guilty and filed a motion to dismiss the charges, claiming the prosecution is vindictive.
In her ruling on Thursday, Judge Xinis said Trump lawyers “affirmatively misled” the court, including falsely claiming that Costa Rica had rescinded an offer to accept Abrego Garcia.
Abrego Garcia has said he was willing to resettle there in the event he was deported from the US.
In a separate proceeding, Abrego Garcia has also petitioned to reopen his immigration case to seek asylum in the US.
1 of 2 | Kilmar Abrego Garcia pictured in August before his check in at the ICE Field Office in Baltimore Md., Immigration Customs Enforcement officials sought to deport Abrego Garcia to Africa where he has no connection, despite his ongoing protection from removal to El Salvador. He was released Thursday from an ICE detention center after a federal judge’s ruling. File Photo by Shawn Thew/UPI
Dec. 11 (UPI) — Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a wrongfully deported Salvadoran immigrant, was released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention Thursday following a federal judge’s order.
Garcia is facing U.S. charges by the Trump administration. His attorneys confirmed that he had been released by Thursday afternoon.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis said that the Trump administration lacked the legal authority to continue holding Abrego Garcia in an ICE detention facility.
“Because Abrego Garcia has been held in ICE detention to effectuate third-country removal absent a lawful removal order, his requested relief is proper,” according to U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis.
The judge mandated his “immediate” release.
“Separately, respondents’ conduct over the past months belie that his detention has been for the basic purpose of effectuating removal, lending further support that Abrego Garcia should be held no longer,” Xinis added.
The order cleared ICE to release Abrego Garcia, but he still must comply with pretrial conditions in an ongoing human smuggling case.
“This is naked judicial activism by an Obama-appointed judge,” a U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson wrote on social media.
DHS claimed the order “lacks any valid legal basis and we will continue to fight this tooth and nail in the courts.”
Abrego Garcia is a Salvadoran national who illegally entered the U.S. almost 15 years ago and drew nationwide attention after his wrongful March deportation to El Salvador’s notorious megaprison despite a protective order.
The administration labeled him an MS-13 gang member, which he has denied.
“The history of Abrego Garcia’s case is as well known as it is extraordinary,” said Xinis.
With a standing order that prevents deportation to El Salvador, Trump administration officials pivoted to proposing an African destination.
“This evidently remained an inconvenient truth for respondents,” Xinis wrote.
“But more to the point, respondents’ 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, all reflect that whatever purpose was behind his detention, it was not for the ‘basic purpose’ of timely third-country removal,” the judge wrote.
President Donald Trump makes remarks during a roundtable meeting with high-tech business executives in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Wednesday. The president announced that the United States has seized an oil tanker near Venezuela and a revealed a new special corporate immigration gold card focused on keeping students in the United States. Photo by Aaron Schwartz/UPI | License Photo
Prepare for lots of tears this weekend at the CIF state championship football games in Orange County.
“No doubt,” Ventura High quarterback Derek Garcia said.
Seniors are playing in their final high school football games. Others will never play again unless it’s intramural football. And others are heading off to college in a matter of days as scholarship athletes, so win or lose, change is coming, which will challenge emotions when reality sets in.
“It’s been a great feeling all week knowing this will be my final high school game because most of the time you go in it’s up in the air,” Garcia said. “Win and you keep going or lose and you go home. It’s a great feeling we made it this far and we’re in the last possible game to play. We’re ready to go.”
Garcia has been playing for his father, Tim, Ventura’s head coach, for years. Now it will end on Friday in a Division 3-AA final against San Francisco St. Ignatius at 8 p.m. at Fullerton High before heading off to Nevada Las Vegas.
“It’s hard sometimes, but it’s been able to bring us so many memories and so many great times together,” Garcia said. “It’s been an awesome journey and wouldn’t want it any other way.”
Some of the teams in state championship games are playing in their 16th game in a long, memorable season.
“It’s been cool to still be playing,” Garcia said.
On Jan. 18, he moves into his UNLV dorm, driving his truck and relying on his parents to help him move. But will his mom let him leave the family nest?
“We’ll see when the day comes,” he said.
Yes, it’s that time for tears from football players and their parents.
There’s a tripleheader on Saturday at Saddleback College that should produce memorable games.
Open Division
De La Salle (12-0) vs. Santa Margarita (10-3), 8 p.m.
A Northern California team has not won in the state’s highest division since 2015. De La Salle’s speed could produce some big plays against the state’s best defense, particularly if 100-meter record holder Jaden Jefferson gets room to run. But Santa Margarita has its own big-play weapon in Trent Mosley, who had 10 catches for 292 yards two weeks ago against Corona Centennial. The pick: Santa Margarita.
Division 1-A
Oxnard Pacifica (15-0) vs. Fresno Central East (13-1), 3:30 p.m.
This is a battle of junior quarterbacks. Pacifica’s Taylor Lee has has passed for 3,742 yards and 51 touchdowns. East has passed for 4,298 yards and 56 touchdowns. If you like offense, this could be the most entertaining game. The pick: Pacifica.
Division 2-A
Rio Hondo Prep (15-0) vs. Sonora (14-0), 11:30 a.m.
This is the game where small schools finally get the spotlight. Both love to run the ball, so the game might get completed in less than two hours. Sonora rushed for 340 yards in its regional final. Rio Hondo Prep had 263 yards rushing and attempted one pass. The pick: Sonora.
Division: 3-AA
Ventura (13-2) vs. San Francisco St. Ignatius (8-6), 8 p.m., Friday, at Fullerton High
Garcia has passed for 3,360 yards and 36 touchdowns and has rushed for 750 yards and 12 touchdowns. The Cougars also have Oregon-bound linebacker Tristan Phillips. St. Ignatius is on a six-game winning streak after getting more consistent play at quarterback. The pick: Ventura.
