JENNIFER VASQUEZ SURA, the wife of Kilmar Abrego Garcia of Maryland, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, speaks during a news conference Friday at CASA's Multicultural Center in Hyattsville, Md. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, file)

GREENBELT, Md. (AP) — The U.S. government’s decision to arrest a Maryland man and send him to a notorious prison in El Salvador appears to be “wholly lawless,” a federal judge wrote Sunday in a legal opinion explaining why she had ordered the Trump administration to bring him back to the United States.

There is little to no evidence to support a “vague, uncorroborated” allegation that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was once in the MS-13 street gang, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis wrote. And in any case, she said, an immigration judge had expressly barred the U.S. in 2019 from deporting Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, where he faced likely persecution by local gangs.

“As defendants acknowledge, they had no legal authority to arrest him, no justification to detain him, and no grounds to send him to El Salvador — let alone deliver him into one of the most dangerous prisons in the Western Hemisphere,” Xinis wrote.

She said it was “eye-popping” that the government had argued that it could not be forced to bring Abrego Garcia back because he is no longer in U.S. custody.

“They do indeed cling to the stunning proposition that they can forcibly remove any person — migrant and U.S. citizen alike –to prisons outside the United States, and then baldly assert they have no way to effectuate return because they are no longer the ‘custodian,’ and the Court thus lacks jurisdiction,” Xinis wrote. “As a practical matter, the facts say otherwise.”

The Justice Department has asked the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to pause Xinis’ ruling.

Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old Salvadoran national who has never been charged or convicted of any crime, was detained by immigration agents and deported last month.

Abrego Garcia had a permit from DHS to legally work in the U.S. and was a sheet metal apprentice pursuing a journeyman license, his attorney said. His wife is a U.S. citizen.

The White House has described Abrego Garcia’s deportation as an “administrative error” but has also cast him an MS-13 gang member. Attorneys for Abrego Garcia said there is no evidence he was in MS-13.

In her order Sunday, Xinis referenced earlier comments from now-suspended Justice Department attorney Erez Reuveni in which Reuveni said: “We concede he should not have been removed to El Salvador” and that he responded “I don’t know” when asked why Abrego Garcia was being held.

The Justice Department placed Reuveni on leave after he made the comments.

Attorney General Pam Bondi, in an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” likened Reuveni’s comments to “a defense attorney walking in, conceding something in a criminal matter.”

“That would never happen in this country,” she said. “So he’s on administrative leave now and we’ll see what happens.”

Stacey Young, a former Justice Department lawyer and founder of Justice Connection, a network of department alumni that works to support employees, released a statement that defended Reuveni and said he has “zealously represented the United States in some of the most high-stakes and controversial immigration cases under the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations.”

“Justice Department attorneys are being put in an impossible position: Obey the president, or uphold their ethical duty to the court and the Constitution,” Young said. “We should all be grateful to DOJ lawyers who choose principle over politics and the rule of law over partisan loyalty.”