Yes, that's what's happening. They're finding a way to return that bitcoin safely to control of the 11/15 federation multisig (if they're honest). Which they could do immediately *if* the signatories didn't have infrastructure that automatically sends it out on any "valid" Liquid transaction that has a peg-out.
So yeah if Liquid is currently 100% shutdown then it'd be safe to send, even without a bugfix. Maybe that's your point.
I don't know if the blockchain is totally or partly shutdown right now.
