The U.S. Court of Appeals on Thursday said it was both “extraordinary and premature” for the Trump administration to think it could get the 4th Circuit to “micromanage the efforts of a fine district judge” after filing a request on Wednesday night to block an order demanding the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia — a protected Maryland resident who was mistakenly shipped to a prison in El Salvador.

In a unanimous ruling, the three-judge panel from Virginia called on the Justice Department to prove its allegations that Abrego Garcia was an alleged criminal and member of the notorious MS-13 gang in a court of law, rather than spouting them to the press and in filings without evidence.

“It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter,” wrote Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, a Ronald Reagan appointee, in the 4th Circuit’s order.

“But in this case, it is not hard at all,” Wilkinson said. “The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done. This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.”