Winning a return did not end the fight
Kilmar Abrego Garcia had a 2019 immigration order protecting him from removal to El Salvador. The administration sent him there anyway. The government acknowledged an error, and litigation secured his return to the United States. After his return, officials pursued a prosecution and tried to deport him to other countries.
On May 22, 2026, a judge dismissed the human-smuggling prosecution after finding a legal presumption of vindictiveness that the government failed to rebut. That was not a finding of actual vindictiveness; DOJ appealed the dismissal. The successive removal efforts generated further disputes over detention, notice, opportunities to challenge deportation and compliance with court orders. Securing his return did not end the fight over his liberty and access to legal remedies.
Notice must arrive before removal
A hearing is useful only if someone can reach it before the government acts. On May 16, 2025, the Supreme Court found that detained Venezuelans had received insufficient notice to meaningfully challenge removal under the Alien Enemies Act. The decision did not settle every question about using that law. It identified a more immediate failure: people could not effectively contest their removal with the notice provided.
The destination made the stakes concrete. Human Rights Watch and Cristosal reported systematic torture and other abuses of Venezuelans transferred by the United States to El Salvador's CECOT prison. Their investigation describes what can happen after a transfer, when a challenge that should have preceded removal has become a struggle over treatment in another country's custody.
Detention can obstruct the challenge
Inside the United States, access to a lawyer could itself become a contested issue. Court declarations about Los Angeles detention described barriers to attorneys reaching people held in the federal building's B-18 basement, including alleged violations of a restraining order. A formal right to contest detention offers less protection when counsel cannot reliably reach the person detained.
Other cases concerned why people were detained at all. In litigation involving pro-Palestinian expression, courts found substantial or likely retaliation for protected speech. Those case-specific rulings came at different procedural stages. They nevertheless identified detention that appeared to stem from advocacy rather than ordinary immigration-enforcement grounds. The punishment was not limited to an eventual removal decision: detention itself imposed a cost on speaking.
Rights depend on usable remedies
These cases connect through the distance between possessing a right and being able to use it. Courts secured a return, demanded adequate notice and scrutinized detention. Those checks mattered. But repeated removal efforts, barriers to counsel and detention linked to speech required people to keep litigating while the government controlled their location and liberty. The pattern is not the disappearance of legal remedies. It is the use of executive power in ways that make those remedies harder to reach and harder to turn into lasting protection.