By Devan Cole, Alison Main, Priscilla Alvarez

(CNN) — Minutes after Kilmar Abrego Garcia was taken into custody by immigration officials in Baltimore on Monday, his attorneys filed a new lawsuit urging a federal judge to order his release and slow down his removal process so he can have a chance to challenge his potential deportation to Uganda.

Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was unlawfully deported to El Salvador earlier this year, was taken into custody by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement after turning himself in to a facility in Baltimore.

“Regardless of what happens today in my ICE check-in, promise me this,” Abrego Garcia said at a rally with members of his family, immigration activists and community leaders before reporting to the ICE facility on Monday. “Promise me that you will continue to pray, continue to fight, resist and love, not just for me, but for everybody.”

His comments came as the Trump administration warned it could send Abrego Garcia to Uganda as soon as this week. Abrego Garcia returned home at the end of last week from Tennessee, where he was being held pending trial in a federal human smuggling case.

US District Judge Paula Xinis, who has been overseeing a separate lawsuit brought earlier this year by Abrego Garcia, scheduled initial court proceedings for 2 p.m. ET on Monday.

The new legal filing, which called a petition for writ of habeas corpus, says that immigration officials are detaining Abrego Garcia at an ICE field office in Baltimore as punishment for his decision to challenge his unlawful removal to El Salvador in March, as well as his decision to go to trial in a human smuggling case brought against him in Tennessee.

Abrego Garcia’s attorneys are asking Xinis, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, to order officials to release him from custody and block them from deporting him to Uganda without first giving him a chance to challenge the move by raising a claim that he has a reasonable fear of facing torture or persecution in the east African nation.

His attorneys provided Xinis with a copy of notices Abrego Garcia sent over the weekend to immigration officials that said he has a fear of being sent to Uganda and that he preferred to be sent to Costa Rica, a country that has said it would be willing to give him some form of legal status should he be sent there.

“I fear persecution in Uganda on account of my race, nationality, political opinion, and membership in a particular social group. I also fear torture by or at the acquiescence of a public official in that country,” Abrego Garcia wrote in the notice sent Saturday.

“Finally, I fear that country will refoul me (re-deport me) to El Salvador, where I also fear persecution on account of the above-mentioned protected grounds and torture by or at the acquiescence of a public official, and where I have been tortured in the past,” he wrote.

Lydia Walther-Rodriguez, the chief of organizing and leadership at CASA, the group behind the rally outside the ICE facility on Monday, argued that Abrego Garcia is being made a “martyr for having the courage to stand up to this administration’s illegal deportation practices.”

“They’re throwing the entire federal apparatus at one father of three to prove that no one should dare challenge their authority,” she continued in a statement.

The Trump administration brought Abrego Garcia back to the US in June to face the federal charges after sending him in mid-March to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador, in violation of a 2019 court order that prohibited his removal to the Central American country.

Activists joining Abrego Garcia on Monday morning accuse the Trump administration of “retaliating” against him for fighting against his deportation and trying to exercise his constitutional rights.

“The only reason that they’ve chosen to take him into detention is to punish him,” his lawyer, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said.

Abrego Garcia’s lawyers also argued in court papers Saturday that offers by the administration to eventually deport him to Costa Rica in exchange for his guilty plea were evidence of the government’s effort to punish him for challenging his wrongful deportation. They told the judge in his criminal case that their client had until Monday morning “to accept a plea in exchange for deportation to Costa Rica, or else that offer will be off the table forever.”

But Abrego Garcia did not take the deal offered to him by the Trump administration that would have seen him eventually deported to Costa Rica, a person familiar with the case told CNN.

Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen said he spoke to Abrego Garcia on Sunday for the first time since they met in El Salvador in April. The Democratic senator said he told the father of three and his wife that “we will stay in this fight for justice and due process.”

“If his rights are denied, the rights of everyone else are at risk,” Van Hollen wrote in a statement posted on X.

Before reporting to the ICE facility, Abrego Garcia said memories of his family sustained him during his detention.

“When I was detained, I remembered memories with my family: going to the park with them, going to the trampoline with my children,” he said. “Those moments will continue to give me hope to continue in this fight.”

CNN’s Michael Williams and Casey Gannon contributed to this report.

The story and headline have been updated with additional information.

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