Students, community members and Maryland's top elected Democrats have spent the past several days demanding the release of Maria Flores Garcia, a 19-year-old University of Maryland freshman detained with her mother at a routine immigration check-in in Baltimore — a case her lawyers say turns on a judge's order that protects the two women from deportation to El Salvador, and on the government's plan to remove them to Mexico instead.
Flores Garcia and her mother, Mirna Garcia Cabrera, were detained on November 5 when they attended the mother's routine check-in at an immigration office in Baltimore, according to their legal team and university reporting. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has since transferred both women from Baltimore to a detention facility in Louisiana, more than 1,000 miles away and outside the federal appeals court circuit that covers Maryland.
Friday's rallies: campus, regents and the Hyattsville ICE office
On Friday, November 13, protests ran all day. In the morning, students raised Flores Garcia's case during the public comment section of a University System of Maryland Board of Regents meeting in Baltimore County, questioning the system's ability to protect its own community members. Later, more than 100 students rallied outside the university's Thomas V. Miller Jr. Administration Building, organised by student groups including the Anti-Imperalist Movement, Political Latinxs United for Movement and Action in Society, Young Democratic Socialists of America and Students for Justice in Palestine chapters. About 80 people then marched to Hornbake Plaza chanting “Maria, you're not alone. This campus is a freedom zone,” and about 20 continued to the ICE office in Hyattsville, where they joined a Greenbelt Resistance Network rally and marched to the nearby Hyattsville Immigration Court.
The protesters' demands were directed at the university as much as at ICE: notify students through the campus alert system when someone is detained, declare the university a sanctuary campus, and publicly condemn the detention. The university told The Diamondback on Friday that it is keeping the public informed while its leadership stays in contact with community members and elected officials, declining to add detail out of respect for the family and because of federal privacy laws. “The campus community's thoughts are with our student and their family and friends,” the university said. University system spokesman Michael Sandler said board members “intentionally do not respond” during public comment so they can fully take in what is shared.
The legal fight: one 2021 order, two readings
Both sides rest their case on the same February 23, 2021 decision by an immigration judge. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) says Flores Garcia was arrested in Texas in December 2016 — when she was 9 years old — placed into removal proceedings and released, and that an immigration judge issued a final order of removal in 2021. “She will remain in ICE custody pending her removal from the United States,” a DHS spokesperson said Thursday, adding: “This administration will not ignore the rule of law.”
Her lawyers at Murray Osorio PLLC say that reading leaves out the second half of the same decision: the 2021 order also granted mother and daughter protection under the United Nations Convention Against Torture, because an immigration judge found it more likely than not that they would be tortured if sent back to El Salvador. “The order DHS describes is the same decision that protects her,” the firm said. The protection is narrower than asylum and does not lead to permanent residence, the firm noted, but it made the women eligible to work legally and, until now, almost always meant being allowed to stay in the United States. Neither woman has a criminal record, according to the legal team.
Attorney Justice Haynes says ICE now intends to deport the women to Mexico, where neither holds legal status: “The judge's order says ICE can't send Maria and Mirna to El Salvador. So ICE wants to send them to a country that will.” The firm is asking ICE to release them and give them a fair chance to be heard, arguing the government should not be able to sidestep a judge's protection order by routing a removal through a third country.
Maryland's leaders respond
The state's Democratic leadership has lined up against the detention. Senator Angela Alsobrooks on Thursday called the administration “beyond depraved” for detaining the mother and daughter, saying: “He should be focused on lowering our costs and ending this illegal war, not deporting our best and brightest students,” and that her team is working to locate the women and bring them home. Senator Chris Van Hollen said Tuesday he is “seeking immediate answers” and working to get her released. Representative Steny Hoyer called the detention “an infuriating reminder” of a “draconian immigration agenda” and urged the president to direct ICE to release her immediately. Governor Wes Moore wrote on X on Wednesday that the arrest was “pure cruelty for cruelty's sake.” Representative Glenn Ivey called the transfer to Louisiana “all a strategy to make it harder for them to get due process,” and Representative Sarah Elfreth said Friday that claims enforcement targets only people with criminal backgrounds “hold no water.”
Background: check-in arrests in Maryland
The case lands in a wider pattern documented by Capital News Service's analysis of ICE arrest records obtained through Freedom of Information Act lawsuits: ICE made 9,071 arrests in Maryland between January 20, 2025 and August 6, 2026, and 889 of them were recorded at ICE's Baltimore field office and its check-in office — about three in four of those people having no criminal record. Flores Garcia came to the United States from El Salvador as a child, graduated as valedictorian of Parkdale High School in Prince George's County this spring, and started at the University of Maryland this fall on a full-tuition scholarship, studying public health with the aim of becoming an emergency room doctor, according to her legal team and local reporting.
What happens next
For now, DHS says Flores Garcia will remain in ICE custody in Louisiana pending removal, and ICE did not return The Diamondback's request for comment on the rallies. Her legal team is pressing for the women's release and a hearing before any removal, and Maryland's senators say they are pressing the administration for answers. No court date has been publicly announced. On campus, the student groups behind Friday's rallies say the pressure on university leadership — over sanctuary status, detention alerts and a public condemnation — will continue.
Sources: Capital News Service (CNS Maryland), November 14-15; The Diamondback, November 13; Murray Osorio PLLC statement on behalf of the Flores Garcia legal team, November 11; The Baltimore Banner, November 13; DHS statements reported by CNS and The Diamondback.