The Trump administration on Friday continued to pursue its stubborn fight against securing the freedom of a Maryland man it inadvertently deported to a Salvadoran prison last month despite a court order that expressly said he could remain in the United States.

Taking an increasingly combative stance, the administration defied a federal judge’s order to provide a written road map of its plans to free the man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia. Trump officials then repeatedly stonewalled her efforts to get the most basic information about him at a court hearing.

During the hearing, in U.S. District Court in Maryland, the judge, Paula Xinis, called the administration’s evasions “extremely troubling” and demanded that the Justice Department provide her with daily updates on the White House’s progress in getting Abrego Garcia back on U.S. soil.

“The court finds that the defendants have failed to comply with this court’s order,” Xinis wrote in a ruling Friday afternoon.

The conflict between the judge and the White House arose just one day after the Supreme Court unanimously ordered the administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s release from Salvadoran custody and only a few days before President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador was set to arrive in Washington for an official visit.

The recalcitrance on the part of Trump officials raised questions about why they have been so reluctant to follow the Supreme Court’s demands or leverage the president’s relationship with Bukele to simply ask for Abrego Garcia to be freed.

Xinis, by ordering the government to detail its progress in getting Abrego Garcia out of El Salvador, managed to avoid an immediate showdown with the White House. But the fiery clashes left open the possibility of a future standoff.

The administration has already had friction with judges in other cases — particularly those involving President Donald Trump’s deportation policies — but the conflict with Xinis was one of the most contentious yet. Last week, a federal judge in Washington said there was a “fair likelihood” that the administration had violated one of his rulings ordering the White House to stop using a powerful wartime statute to deport scores of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador.

The dispute involving Xinis emerged after the Supreme Court late Thursday told Trump officials to take steps to free Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old Salvadoran migrant, from the CECOT prison in El Salvador where he was sent with scores of other migrants March 15.

The officials have already acknowledged that they made an “administrative error” when they put Abrego Garcia on the plane.