A Maryland judge Monday reaffirmed her temporary order prohibiting the removal of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from the United States, confirming with Justice Department attorneys that they plan to honor it just days after they notified the court of their intention to deport him to Liberia as soon as the end of this week.

U.S. District Court Judge Paula Xinis, overseeing now the second case brought before her by Abrego Garcia and his family, issued a preliminary injunction in August that the Salvadoran national and Beltsville resident not be deported while he challenges the legality of his re-detention with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“Until we suss out the rest of the issues, if I don’t lift the injunction, then obviously you are abiding by it and he is not going to be removed. Am I getting that right?” Xinis asked.

“Of course, your honor,” responded Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign.

On Friday, government attorneys said Liberia agreed to take Abrego Garcia, and he could be deported there as soon as Oct. 31. Ensign clarified Monday that that was the earliest date the government could do so if there was nothing barring Abrego Garcia’s removal.

“And the status of the criminal case then?” Xinis asked.

In June, immigration officials brought Abrego Garcia back to the U.S. after his mistaken deportation to a maximum security prison in El Salvador to face criminal human smuggling charges in Tennessee.

The government alleges he spent years as part of an operation moving people without lawful immigration status around the country. An evidentiary hearing for that case is scheduled for next week.

Ensign said he did not know how Abrego Garcia’s removal would impact the criminal case, but that the criminal case would not be the basis for delaying his removal. Xinis seemed perplexed by the response, and said it “doesn’t pass the sniff test” that there is no coordination between Ensign’s team and criminal prosecutors in Tennessee.

Liberia is the latest in a series of countries that the government proposed for the removal of Abrego Garcia, whose mistaken deportation in March was the catalyst for one of the most contentious storylines in President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

The government’s plan to remove Abrego Garcia to Liberia came as Xinis was considering whether to release him from ICE detention. In August, ICE re-detained him just days after he was released from pretrial detention in Tennessee. Abrego Garcia is currently being held in a privately run ICE facility in Pennsylvania.

The list of proposed “third” countries — the term for when ICE removes someone to a country other than where they were born — where the government has floated deporting Abrego Garcia to includes other African nations, like Ghana, Eswatini and Uganda. Those three ultimately said they would not accept him.

The Trump administration received diplomatic assurances about the treatment of third-country deportees in Liberia, they wrote Xinis Friday, and called the nation a “thriving democracy,” despite recent reports of human rights abuses.

Abrego Garcia expressed fear of persecution if removed to any of nearly two dozen listed countries, including many in Central and South America. His attorneys have sought explicit assurance that any third country will not then send him to El Salvador — where the U.S. government cannot send him because of a 2019 court order.

In a filing late Friday, attorneys for Abrego Garcia wrote that the only lawful removal at this juncture would be to Costa Rica, where federal officials proposed sending him months ago if he agreed to plead guilty to the criminal charges against him. He declined to.

Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, who has represented Abrego Garcia and his family since March, said the legal team members are “not satisfied” with the conditions of his possible removal to Liberia and expressed concerns over guarantees not to send him to El Salvador.

“We’re certainly not at this time ready to lay down arms, as it were,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said.