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.

The strongly worded order by U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis served two purposes: It offered a more detailed explanation of a brief ruling she issued Friday, demanding that the White House bring the migrant, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, back to the United States by the end of Monday. And it rejected a request by the Justice Department to pause the order as a federal appeals court considered its validity.

There is little to no evidence to support a “vague, uncorroborated” allegation that Abrego Garcia was once in the MS-13 street gang, 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.”

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.

U.S. airstrikes continue to kill in Yemen

Suspected U.S. airstrikes over the weekend targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels killed at least six people, the group said Sunday, while a bombing video posted by U.S. President Donald Trump suggested casualties in the overall campaign may be higher than the rebels acknowledge.

A strike Sunday night in Sanaa, the rebel-held capital of Yemen, hit a house, killing at least four people and wounding 16 others, the Houthis said. Their al-Masirah satellite news channel showed images of the damaged home and people receiving care in a hospital.

The strike on the house in Sanaa’s Shu’ub district allegedly targeted a Houthi leader, part of a wider decapitation campaign launched by the Trump administration to kill rebel leaders. The intense campaign of U.S. airstrikes targeting the rebels over their attacks on shipping in Mideast waters — related to the Israel-Hamas war — has killed at least 73 people, according to casualty figures released by the Houthis.

Earlier Sunday, the Iranian-backed Houthis said other suspected U.S. airstrikes killed at least two people in the rebel stronghold of Saada and wounded nine others.

Early on Saturday, Trump posted what appeared to be black-and-white video from a drone showing over 70 people gathered in a circle. An explosion detonates during the 25-second video. A massive crater is left in its wake.

The U.S. military’s Central Command, which oversees Mideast military operations, has not published the video nor offered specific details about the strikes it has conducted since March 15.

Flooding in Congo capital kills 22

Major flooding in the Congolese capital of Kinshasa has killed at least 22 people and cut off access to over half of the city and the country’s main airport, authorities said Sunday.

Most of the fatalities in Friday’s deluge were caused by collapsing walls, said a provincial health minister, Patricien Ngongo.

The main road to the airport was damaged by flooding but has now reopened to light traffic and will be open to all traffic within 72 hours, said Kinshasa Gov. Daniel Bumba.

The road also links Kinshasa to the rest of Congo and officials worry about the impact on trade.

Bolsonaro leads rally amid his trial for coup

Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro led a rally Sunday in support of an amnesty law that could free him from criminal charges and eliminate the prison sentences of dozens of supporters who stormed the nation’s congress two years ago to protest the election of his successor, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva.

Bolsonaro has been charged by Brazilian prosecutors of trying to organize a coup following his defeat to Lula in the October 2022 election, with investigators saying he plotted with 33 others to poison Lula and kill a supreme court judge.

In March, a panel of supreme court judges accepted the charges and launched a trial against Bolsonaro, where the former president will face five counts that include attempting to stage a coup, involvement in an armed criminal organization, and threatening the state’s assets and heritage sites.

On Sunday, Bolsonaro dismissed the charges, which he claims are part of a political persecution against him.

Inspectors estimate chemicals left in Syria

More than 100 chemical weapons sites are suspected to remain in Syria, left behind after the fall of the longtime president, Bashar Assad, according to the leading international organization that tracks these weapons.

That number, the first estimate from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, is far higher than any that Assad has ever acknowledged.

The sites are suspected to have been involved in the research, manufacturing and storage of chemical weapons. Assad used weapons such as sarin and chlorine gas against rebel fighters and Syrian civilians during more than a decade of civil war.

The number of sites has been a mystery since rebels toppled Assad last year.

Sarin, a nerve agent, can kill within minutes. Chlorine and mustard gas, weapons made infamous in World War I, burn the eyes and skin and fill the lungs with fluid, seemingly drowning people on land.

Russian attack kills one in Kyiv

One person was killed Sunday as Russian air strikes hit the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, while the death toll from Friday’s deadly attack on the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih continued to rise.

The Kyiv victim was found close to the strike’s epicenter of the attack in the city’s Darnytskyi district, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. A further three people were injured in the strike.

Asian markets plunge after Wall St. meltdown

Asian shares nosedived on Monday after the meltdown Friday on Wall Street over U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff hikes and the backlash from Beijing.

U.S. futures also signaled further weakness. The future for the S&P 500 lost 4.2% while that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 3.5%. The future for the Nasdaq lost 5.3%.

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index lost nearly 8% shortly after the market opened and Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 tumbled more than 6%.

Oil prices sank further, with U.S. benchmark crude down 4%, or $2.50, at $59.49 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, gave up $2.25 to $63.33 a barrel.

Pope makes surprise appearance

Pope Francis made a surprise entrance to St. Peter’s Square during a special Jubilee Mass for the sick and health workers on Sunday, his first public appearance at the Vatican since leaving the hospital two weeks ago after a life-threatening bout with pneumonia.

The pontiff waved at the crowd of faithful as he was pushed in a wheelchair unannounced to the front of the altar in the square.

— From news services