District Judge Paula Xinis halted the deportation of Salvadoran Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Uganda and ordered the Trump administration to keep the immigrant in the United States while it considers a new legal challenge to the Republican administration's plans to deport him to Africa.

The temporary reprieve was granted during a hearing Monday afternoon came shortly after Abrego was detained Monday morning upon reporting to immigration authorities in Maryland, following his release from criminal custody in Tennessee on Friday.

Before his release, the government offered him a plea deal that would have resulted in his deportation to Costa Rica, which, like his birth country of El Salvador, is a Spanish-speaking country in Central America.

However, after his release, the government announced its intention to deport him to Uganda, an African nation. His lawyers then filed a new lawsuit in Maryland to challenge his latest detention and impending deportation.

Xinis, who in April ordered the US government to facilitate Abrego's return from El Salvador after he was mistakenly deported there, asked if the White House understood that it was prohibited from expelling Abrego Garcia from the US mainland, to which the Trump administration lawyer replied that it was, according to information cited by Politico.

However, on Monday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristy Noem said in a statement today that ICE “is processing” Abrego Garcia's deportation.

The judge's order marks a new twist in the saga of the Salvadoran national who was released last Friday from a Nashville, Tennessee, jail where he faces trial on charges of migrant smuggling.

The immigrant's advocates had requested an emergency motion to halt his deportation after the US government threatened to deportation to Uganda or accept a plea deal in the human trafficking case that would allow him to be deported to Costa Rica instead.

According to a previous court order from Xinis, Abrego Garcia should have at least 72 hours to respond to a potential deportation order.

"Deporting him to Costa Rica is not justice. It is an acceptably less bad option. But their insistence on carrying out a deportation to Uganda shows that the real motivation in this case is not simply to remove him from the country, but to punish him and keep him detained," explained attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, who is part of his legal team representing the Salvadoran in the deportation case.

Abrego has received assurances that he will be a free citizen in Costa Rica and would have refugee protection from being deported to El Salvador, where, according to his lawyers, he faces a risk of persecution and violence from the country's gangs, which is why a judge prohibited his deportation in 2019, the defense attorney elaborated.

In that sense, the judge stated that there are “several reasons” for which he could have jurisdiction to request exemption from deportation, including that Uganda has not agreed to offer Abrego protections such as freedom of movement, obtaining refugee status, and prohibiting him from being sent to El Salvador.