The Trump administration recently sent a diplomatic note to officials in El Salvador to inquire about releasing a Salvadoran immigrant whom government officials have been ordered by the Supreme Court to help free, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.

But the authoritarian government of Nayib Bukele, the leader of El Salvador, said no, two of the people said. The Bukele administration claimed the man should stay in El Salvador because he is a Salvadoran citizen, according to one of those people.

It remained unclear whether the diplomatic effort was a genuine bid by the White House to address the plight of the immigrant, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who administration officials have repeatedly acknowledged was improperly expelled to El Salvador last month in violation of a court order expressly prohibiting him from being sent there.

Some legal experts suggested that the sequence of events could have been an attempt at window dressing by officials seeking to give the appearance of being in compliance with the recent Supreme Court ruling ordering the White House to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s release.

The disclosure about the note adds to the confusion about the Trump administration’s efforts to free Abrego Garcia and whether it is seeking to comply with court orders. Even as the administration appeared to be moving privately to work toward Abrego Garcia’s release, it has publicly expressed unwillingness to bring him back to the United States.

The revelation came just hours after President Donald Trump, reversing course on his administration’s previous statements, said in an interview with ABC News that he had the ability to bring Abrego Garcia back. The president added that he did not believe Abrego Garcia was a good person and that his administration’s lawyers would decide.

The White House declined to comment on the diplomatic note. A spokesperson for the State Department did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for Bukele did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio declined on Wednesday to say whether the State Department had been in touch with El Salvador about the release and return of Abrego Garcia.

“I would never tell you that,” Rubio said during a Q&A portion of a Cabinet meeting with Trump. “And you know who else I would never tell? A judge. Because the conduct of our foreign policy belongs to the president of the United States and the executive branch. Not some judge.”

In a statement, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said, “In the Oval Office, President Bukele made it very clear he will not be smuggling Abrego Garcia, who is a designated foreign terrorist, MS-13 gang member and El Salvadoran national, back into the United States.”

Judge Paula Xinis, who is overseeing Abrego Garcia’s case in U.S. District Court in Maryland, has opened a searching inquiry in the case. She is looking into whether Trump officials acted in bad faith by ignoring both her instructions and the Supreme Court’s to work toward freeing Abrego Garcia and obtaining for him the sort of due process he would have been afforded if he had not been wrongfully sent to El Salvador on March 15.

Xinis, after putting that investigation on an extraordinary two-week fast track, abruptly placed it on hold last week after the Trump administration asked for a delay after revealing that the State Department had “engaged in appropriate diplomatic discussions with El Salvador regarding Abrego Garcia.”

On Tuesday, the Justice Department asked for an additional delay, but Xinis rejected the request after a sealed court proceeding Wednesday.

That left the administration still facing a deadline of Monday to give Abrego Garcia’s lawyers detailed information about who authorized his detention.