Greenbelt, Maryland: The US government’s decision to arrest a Maryland man and send him to a notorious prison in El Salvador appeared to be “wholly lawless”, a federal judge wrote in a legal opinion explaining why she had ordered the Trump administration to bring him back to the United States.

There was little to no evidence to support a “vague, uncorroborated” allegation that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was once in the MS-13 street gang, US District Judge Paula Xinis wrote on Sunday (Monday AEST). And in any case, she said, an immigration judge had expressly barred the US 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 US custody.

“They do indeed cling to the stunning proposition that they can forcibly remove any person – migrant and US 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 US 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 Department of Homeland Security to legally work in the US and was a sheet metal apprentice pursuing a journeyman licence, his attorney said. His wife is a US citizen.