Immigration attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick is accusing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) of lying to a federal judge about why the agency will not send Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Costa Rica, a country that has been ready to take him for a full year.

In a series of posts on X, Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, argued that the Trump administration is deliberately dragging out the case to punish Abrego Garcia, whose wrongful deportation to El Salvador's CECOT mega-prison in March 2025 became one of the most damaging legal episodes of the president's second term. Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national who had spent more than a decade in Maryland with his U.S.-citizen wife and their children, was deported despite a 2019 immigration court order barring his removal to El Salvador; the Supreme Court unanimously ordered the administration in April 2025 to "facilitate" his release from Salvadoran custody.

"Seriously; since August 2025, when Costa Rica said they would take him, Kilmar Abrego Garcia has said he'd go there," Reichlin-Melnick wrote. "But ICE refuses to do so, and even lied to Judge Xinis about why. The Trump admin would rather not deport him than let him go to Costa Rica where he'd be safe."

He added that the administration wants to send Abrego Garcia "to an African country far away from his American family" as retaliation for the political embarrassment his case has caused.

Abrego Garcia was returned to the United States in June 2025 to face federal smuggling charges in Tennessee, which prosecutors later dropped. His case has since become a running test of how far courts can go in enforcing their orders against the executive branch: Xinis advanced proceedings that could have ended in contempt findings for administration officials earlier in the dispute, and the fight over his removal has unfolded alongside the administration's broader use of third-country deportations, which drew judicial pushback in 2025.

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, an Obama appointee overseeing the Maryland habeas case, has made the same finding from the bench. In a 31-page December opinion ordering his release from ICE custody, Xinis wrote that government lawyers "affirmatively misled the tribunal" about Costa Rica's willingness to accept him.

Xinis also blasted the administration'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."

Over the past year, the government has floated deporting Abrego Garcia to Uganda, Ghana, Eswatini and Liberia. Officials in each country initially rejected or resisted the proposals, leaving Liberia as the administration's current target — despite Costa Rica's standing offer of refugee status.

Abrego Garcia's attorneys have argued in court filings that the refusal to use Costa Rica is punishment for his "constitutionally protected activity" in fighting his wrongful removal. The administration has continued to press its Liberia plan even as Costa Rica's offer stands, a standoff between the branches that Xinis's December opinion documented in detail.