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.

As part of its ruling, the Supreme Court told the administration that it should be prepared to “share what it can concerning the steps it has taken” to get Abrego Garcia back, as well as “the prospect of further steps” it intended to take.

During the hearing, Xinis asked Drew Ensign, a lawyer for the Justice Department, several questions about Abrego Garcia, including where he was at the moment. But Ensign largely responded by telling her that Trump officials had simply not provided him with the information she wanted.

The judge seemed frustrated when Ensign suggested that the government was prepared to respond to her request in a written filing Tuesday.

“We’re not going to slow-walk this,” Xinis said, noting that the demand for information about the government’s plans was an issue that the Supreme Court “has already put to bed.”

The tense exchanges came shortly after the Justice Department had sent Xinis an aggressive two-page filing, accusing her of not giving department lawyers enough time to figure out what they planned to do about Abrego Garcia.

“Defendants are unable to provide the information requested by the court on the impracticable deadline set by the court hours after the Supreme Court issued its order,” the lawyers wrote.

“In light of the insufficient amount of time afforded to review the Supreme Court order,” they went on, “defendants are not in a position where they ‘can’ share any information requested by the court. That is the reality.”

Late Thursday, Xinis, following the Supreme Court’s instructions, told the Justice Department to submit by 9:30 a.m. Friday a written declaration of its plans in its efforts to retrieve Abrego Garcia, before an afternoon hearing.

But shortly before 9:30 a.m., the Justice Department asked Xinis to postpone the deadline for its written filing until Tuesday and push off the hearing until Wednesday. Department lawyers said they needed more time to review the Supreme Court’s order.

In an order of her own, Xinis gave the government until 11:30 a.m. Friday to file a written version of its plans but refused to change the schedule for the hearing.

Clearly frustrated, she reminded the Justice Department that the administration’s “act of sending Abrego Garcia to El Salvador was wholly illegal from the moment it happened.”

Moreover, she said the department’s request for additional time to study a four-page Supreme Court order “blinks at reality.”

While the Supreme Court’s ruling appeared at first to be a victory for Abrego Garcia and his family, it contained a line that Trump officials could ultimately use to reiterate their position that they could not be forced to bring him back from El Salvador.

In their decision, the justices never defined what they meant by “facilitate and effectuate” his return, sending that question back to Xinis to flesh out.

Indeed, the justices cautioned Xinis that when she clarified the steps the White House should take, her decision needed to be made “with due regard for the deference owed to the executive branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.”

In their filing Friday, lawyers for the Justice Department said they wanted Xinis to issue her clarification before they laid out what the White House planned to do to free Abrego Garcia from El Salvador.