Immigration and Customs Enforcement cannot redetain Kilmar Abrego Garcia because a 90-day detention period has expired and the government has no viable plan for deporting him, a federal judge in Maryland ruled Tuesday.

The Salvadoran national's case has become a focal point in the immigration debate after he was deported to his home country last year. Since his return, he has been fighting a second deportation to a series of African nations proposed by the Department of Homeland Security.

The government "made one empty threat after another to remove him to countries in Africa with no real chance of success," U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis wrote in her Tuesday order. "From this, the Court easily concludes that there is no 'good reason to believe' removal is likely in the reasonably foreseeable future."

Tricia McLaughlin, DHS assistant secretary for public affairs, criticized the ruling in an email.

"If this matter were actually about the law or due process, Kilmar Abrego Garcia would already be deported and would never set foot in this country again; Judge Xinis will not be satisfied until he is authorized to live in the United States forever," she wrote.

Abrego Garcia has an American wife and child and has lived in Maryland for years, but he came to the U.S. illegally as a teenager.

In 2019, an immigration judge ruled that he could not be deported to El Salvador because he faced danger there from a gang that had threatened his family. He was deported there anyway last year.

Facing public pressure and a court order, President Donald Trump's administration brought him back in June, but only after securing an indictment charging him with human smuggling in Tennessee. He has pleaded not guilty.

Meanwhile, White House officials have said he cannot stay in the U.S. In court filings, officials have said they intended to deport him to Eswatini, Ghana, Liberia, or Uganda.

In her Tuesday order, Xinis noted that the government has "purposely — and for no reason — ignored the one country that has consistently offered to accept Abrego Garcia as a refugee, and to which he agrees to go." That country is Costa Rica.

Abrego Garcia's attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, argued in court that immigration detention is not supposed to be a punishment. Immigrants may be detained only as a way to facilitate their deportation and cannot be held indefinitely with no viable deportation plan.

"Since Judge Xinis ordered Mr. Abrego Garcia released in mid-December, the government has tried one trick after another to try to get him re-detained," Sandoval-Moshenberg wrote in an email on Tuesday.

"In her decision today, she recognized that if the government were truly trying to remove Mr. Abrego Garcia from the United States, they would have sent him to Costa Rica long before today."

The government should engage in a good-faith effort to work out the details of Abrego Garcia's removal to Costa Rica, Sandoval-Moshenberg wrote.