While the fate of Kilmar Abrego Garcia remains uncertain, a federal judge inched closer to making a decision on the release of the Maryland man from immigration detention after an hourslong hearing in Greenbelt on Friday.

Testimony from a federal immigration official revealed that the U.S. government is still unsure of where it could deport Abrego Garcia to, and it has made limited efforts to make contact with other countries to find a place for him.

After the hearing ended, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis said she would make a ruling over whether to release Abrego Garcia “as soon as possible.”

This comes days after the federal government’s lawyers failed to provide evidence that government officials were actively working on deporting Abrego Garcia while he remained in a Pennsylvania immigration detention center. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers petitioned for his release in August after he was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Baltimore, arguing that he was being held in retaliation or for political reasons rather than for his swift deportation.

John Schultz, deputy assistant director for removal at ICE, was called as the sole witness to discuss the United States’ efforts to deport Abrego Garcia to a third country that is not his native El Salvador, where he is not legally allowed to be deported to.

Homeland Security officials told Abrego Garcia that he would be removed to Eswatini, a country in Southern Africa, in early September, but Schultz said during his testimony on Friday that the government made its first contact with the country on Wednesday regarding Abrego Garcia’s deportation. Eswatini officials said they would not accept Abrego Garcia this week, but Schultz said that negotiations with the country were ongoing.

Schultz also testified that an official with the U.S. State Department told him on Friday morning that Uganda would also not accept Abrego Garcia. Uganda was the first country that federal officials designated as Abrego Garcia’s deportation destination when he was arrested in August.

On Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security notified Abrego Garcia that he would be deported to Ghana, according to Ama Frimpong, one of Abrego Garcia’s attorneys and the legal director for immigrant rights group CASA. The foreign minister of Ghana said on X that the country would not accept him.

When ICE officials re-detained Abrego Garcia in August, they offered him a plea deal that promised he would be deported to Costa Rica if he pleaded guilty to smuggling charges. Abrego Garcia denied that initial plea deal.

The Costa Rican government has since said they would offer Abrego Garcia a protected status and promised it would not return him to El Salvador. Since those assurances, he has made Costa Rica his preferred destination.

After the hearing on Friday, a reporter asked Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, one of Abrego Garcia’s lawyers, that if the federal government decided to remove Abrego Garcia to Costa Rica, “where does that leave you all?”

Sandoval-Moshenberg answered: “On a plane.”

He has said that his client is ready and willing to go to the Central American country.

Xinis expressed frustration with the federal government’s lawyers on Friday and said that they did not come prepared with evidence or a witness who could answer questions about what has been done to remove Abrego Garcia “imminently” to another country.

“This is just not that hard,” Xinis said on Friday to the U.S. government’s lawyers during oral arguments. “We’re getting to the three strikes you’re out.”

Abrego Garcia has been caught in the middle of a national battle since he was wrongfully deported to El Salvador in March. He was imprisoned in the country’s notoriously brutal Terrorism Confinement Center, known as CECOT, for months, but was brought back to the United States in June to face two counts of felony smuggling charges.

He returned to Maryland after a federal judge in Tennessee released him from pretrial detention in August. ICE officials then re-detained him days later.

ICE sent him to a detention facility in Virginia on Aug. 25 but later transferred him to one in Moshannon Valley, Pennsylvania, a private facility run by the GEO Group. 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.

Dozens of supporters rallied outside the federal courthouse Friday ahead of the hearing, which his advocates hoped would end with Abrego Garcia’s release. The crowd sang choir songs and held signs that read, “Bring Kilmar home.”

“They said that Kilmar would never again walk a free man in the United States,” said Frimpong. “It happened once and we can make it happen again.”

In Tennessee, Abrego Garcia’s defense attorneys have asked a judge overseeing his criminal case to dismiss the charges on the grounds of vindictive prosecution.

Abrego Garcia’s attorneys wrote to the court Thursday that they have requested that the government produce communications that may shed light on the decision to reopen the investigation against him. The human smuggling charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee that officials at the time declined to investigate further.

In response, acting U.S. Attorney Robert McGuire wrote that he received “no such communications from any source: the Department of Homeland Security, the White House, or anyone.”

Cori Alonso-Yoder, director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, said that it is rare for a person to be criminally charged while awaiting deportation. Most immigration cases usually wait until a criminal trial is over before proceeding, she said.

“Nothing in this case is happening as per usual,” she said.