The federal government told a Maryland judge on Friday that it plans to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Liberia, saying in a court filing it could do so as early as Oct. 31. It’s the latest volley involving the Salvadoran national and Beltsville resident whose case has become a flash point in the national fight over immigration enforcement.

Liberia’s government has provided assurances about the treatment of people sent there in so-called “third country removals” — when a person is deported somewhere besides their country of birth — Department of Justice attorneys wrote the court Friday. Abrego Garcia received protection from deportation to El Salvador in 2019 based on a fear of gang persecution.

“Liberia is a thriving democracy and one of the United States’s closest partners on the African continent,” wrote Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate. He also pointed to a February executive order from Liberian President Joseph Boakai regarding bolstering protections for refugees and “vulnerable populations.”

In 2024, the State Department released a report that identified a list of human rights violations in Liberia, including “arbitrary or unlawful killings; torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; arbitrary arrest or detention.”

The filing comes two weeks after U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis called out the federal government’s attorneys for not being able to answer questions about Abrego Garcia’s “imminent” deportation.

Homeland Security officials have said for months they would deport him to a third country. The three African countries they initially identified — Uganda, Eswatini and Ghana — all said they would not take him.

After a hearing on Oct. 10, Xinis said she would make a ruling on whether or not Abrego Garcia should be released from ICE detention if the government had no immediate plans to deport him. She has not yet released her ruling.

Lawyers for Abrego Garcia pushed back Friday on the plan to remove him to Liberia, saying “the government has chosen yet another path that feels designed to inflict maximum hardship.”

“Unless Liberia guarantees that it will not re-deport Mr. Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, then sending him to Liberia is no less unlawful than sending him directly to El Salvador a second time,” Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, one of Abrego Garcia’s lawyers, said in a statement.

In a court filing on Friday, his lawyers argued that Xinis should make a decision on Abrego Garcia’s release based on the evidence shown at the hearing two weeks ago.

“Even if the Court were to consider the Government’s notice — which it should not given that the record is closed — Liberia does not constitute a viable removal destination," the court document said.

Liberians living in the United States have previously been eligible for their own protection from deportation after two civil wars roiled the nation between 1989 and 2003. George H. W. Bush designated Liberians for Temporary Protected Status in 1991, a program that was extended several times before President Donald Trump rolled it back during his first term.

Liberian officials have yet to hold anyone responsible for war crimes during the two conflicts, according to Human Rights Watch, though Boakai has requested assistance from the United Nations to establish a war crimes court.

The move to send Abrego Garcia to the west African country is another turn in a long battle that has gained national attention since he was wrongfully deported to El Salvador in March. Abrego Garcia was imprisoned in the country’s Terrorism Confinement Center, known as CECOT, in March, but was brought back to the United States in June to face two counts of felony smuggling charges.

Abrego Garcia’s lawyers are fighting those charges, and a federal judge in Tennessee ruled it was possible his prosecution was vindictive. The government will have to defend itself against the allegations at a hearing in early November.

Ahead of the two-day evidentiary hearing, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers have subpoenaed Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, as well as three Department of Justice officials, to testify, according to court filings. The lawyers also subpoenaed Homeland Security officers and others in Blanche’s office.

The government’s lawyers said in a court document they will likely try to quash those subpoenas to keep the officials from testifying. They have also argued that much of the evidence requested is privileged and cannot be disclosed.

After a federal judge in Tennessee released him from pretrial detention in August, he returned to Maryland and visited with his family for the first time since March. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials then re-detained him days later at the ICE field office in Baltimore.

At his arrest in August, Abrego Garcia declined a plea deal that would have deported him to Costa Rica if he pleaded guilty to felony smuggling charges. Abrego Garcia has since made Costa Rica his preferred country for deportation after the Costa Rican government said they would offer him a protected status and promised it would not return him to El Salvador.

ICE sent him to a detention facility in Virginia on Aug. 25 but later transferred him to one in Moshannon Valley, Pennsylvania. It’s one of the most common sites for Maryland resident detainees since state lawmakers effectively outlawed long-term immigration detention in the state in 2021, according to local immigration attorneys.