Meanwhile, a New Jersey resident just secured what his lawyers believe is one of the first successful legal reversals in a deportation case under the Trump administration.

According to lawyers, Egyptian native Karim Tadros was arrested at his home on May 7th without warning.

That's despite a court order protecting him from removal.

After several intense weeks in ICE custody, he unexpectedly secured his freedom.

Ted Goldberg has the story.

They called me at 5 o'clock in the morning.

The officer said, "You have court right now."

I said, "What the hell are you talking about?"

He said, "No, since you're here, it's today.

You have court in a half hour."

Now I'm not nervous.

I'm like, "Sh*t bricks."

After spending six weeks of ICE detention in Elizabeth, Karim Tadros was ordered to court a day earlier than expected, and then unexpectedly freed by a district court judge on Monday.

And then I see my family inside.

I see my brother and my mom in the courtroom with my lawyer.

And then I felt a strange sense of calmness.

Like, this is the day I'm going to get released.

Tadros was born in Egypt, but came over to New Jersey as a young child when his parents were granted asylum.

He received a drug conviction in 2006 and was nearly deported to Egypt before the Board of Immigration Appeals ruled that his life would be at risk.

My fear level was abnormal because I don't know the language in Egypt.

I don't know anything in Egypt.

And I have a Jesus tattoo on my right shoulder.

Egypt is primarily a Muslim country.

He ended up spending about a year in ICE custody.

But in 2009, he was released, and a judge allowed Tadros to stay in the country under supervisory conditions.

She had empathy for me.

I was literally tearing and disgusted of what I did at that time.

And when she granted my release, there's no words I can describe to explain that feeling.

For the next 16 years, Tadros worked legally for a medical laboratory and was self-employed in internet marketing.

He never heard from ICE until they arrested him in May.

I did nothing wrong for all these years.

And you guys have me in chains, my hands around my waist, my legs.

It's the worst feeling I've ever had.

ICE and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to our request for comment.

In court on Monday, they argued that Tadros had to be arrested again due to his prior conviction and needed him to be deported.

What the U.S. attorney stated was, look, Libya has turned him down.

We requested to send him to Libya.

Libya rejected it.

We requested to send him to Sudan.

Sudan rejected it.

Right now, we've asked the government of Uzbekistan.

Simon Sandoval-Motionberg is Tadros' lead attorney and says it's unusual for ICE to pursue someone who's here legally and had court-ordered protection.

That someone be released from custody because ICE concludes that they can't send him anywhere.

And then years later for ICE to come back and say, all right, we've changed our minds.

We're going to try again to send you to a third country.

That is something that did not happen until, you know, really three months ago, basically.

It just did not happen.

Sandoval-Motionberg says his client's story mirrors that of Kilmar Abrego-Garcia, a Salvadoran man in Maryland who made national headlines after he was arrested and sent to a Salvadoran prison.

At the time, we thought it was kind of a quirky one-off case, but we later learned it was actually really just the tip of the spear.

The two of them both won protection from deportation to their native countries many, many years ago and then the two of them were arrested by surprise.

On Monday, Judge Evelyn Padin ruled that those in the federal government have not identified any change in circumstances that caused them to place Tadros in custody in May 2025 while they pursue his removal to a third country.

Adding that Tadros has remained in perfect compliance with the conditions of release dictated in his order of supervision.

It's not just quote-unquote undocumented immigrants or illegal immigrants that they're going after, right?

This is someone who, again, won his case 16 years ago.

He's had a work permit ever since.

Entrepreneurship made me a fighter because I've been working with failed businesses for the past 11 years and I'm always the type of person that if there's a problem, there's an opportunity.

But Judge Padin also wrote that Tadros can still be deported to a third country and that ICE must give Tadros a viable plan within the next two months.

Until then, Tadros cannot leave the tri-state area without permission as his future hangs in the balance.

For NJ Spotlight News, I'm Ted Goldberg.

[MUSIC] (bell chimes)