On Monday, a federal appeals court ruled against the Trump administration in a case involving a 20-year-old migrant who was “unlawfully” deported from the U.S. without proper legal procedures and sent to a well-known terrorist detention center in El Salvador. This occurred under the president’s unusual and potentially illegal use of the Alien Enemies Act (AEA).

The circumstances in this case mirror those of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old Maryland resident with protected status who was forcibly sent to the CECOT facility alongside Daniel Lozano-Camargo, despite legal orders that should have prevented his removal from the U.S. as well.

In both cases, a federal court ordered the administration to “facilitate” the return of the deportee. In Lozano-Camargo’s case, U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher also instructed the government to “make a good faith request” to the Salvadoran government to have him released into U.S. custody for return to the United States.

In a 2-1 decision, a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit rejected a request from the administration to halt a lower court’s order directing the administration to “facilitate” the return of Lozano-Camargo to the U.S., reasoning that his removal violated the government’s prior contractual agreement not to deport Lozano-Camargo until his asylum application was adjudicated on the merits.

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The ruling comes after the panel last week issued an administrative stay on the lower court’s order. Though the panel did not provide its reasoning, an administrative stay is typically used to buy an appellate court time to deliberate issues that cannot be quickly evaluated and does not ordinarily reflect the court’s consideration of the case on the merits.

Writing for the majority, Judge DeAndrea Gist Benjamin, an appointee of Joe Biden, said the plain language of a settlement agreement between the federal government and Lozano-Camargo, who came to the U.S. as an unaccompanied minor, required the government to “refrain from executing” a “final removal order” in his case until U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) issued a “final determination” on his asylum application.

In removing him to El Salvador in March, the administration has argued that there was “no breach of the settlement” because said agreement only dealt with the processing of asylum applications “in the context of ordinary removals under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA),” not removals under the AEA.

“None of that has anything to do with [AEA removals], which do not involve any ‘final removal orders’ at all, and as to which asylum is not a cognizable defense in any event,” the motion states. “Read in context (as it must be), the settlement agreement made no promises about the exercise of the Government’s powers under the AEA, and therefore the (otherwise unchallenged) exercise of that AEA power as to [Lozano-Camargo] did not violate the agreement. That alone requires a full stay of the order.”

Despite the Supreme Court last month affirming a lower court’s order to “facilitate” the return of Abrego Garcia, the government in the instant case asserted it would suffer “irreparable harm” if required to do the same with Lozano-Camargo’s, claiming that doing so would “undermine” President Donald Trump’s authority under the AEA.

The majority was not receptive to the administration’s position.

“The Government’s argument entirely ignores the Supreme Court’s decision in Noem v. Abrego Garcia,” Benjamin wrote. “Here, [Lozano-Camargo] was removed from the United States in breach of the Settlement Agreement. The argument that the Government would be ‘irreparably harmed’ by facilitating Cristian’s return rings hollow. The Government is not irreparably harmed by facilitating and effectuating the return of a person within its control who was wrongfully removed from the United States.”

Gallagher has already indicated that she will begin requiring the government to provide updates about the process of returning Lozano-Camargo. This tracks with the Abrego Garcia case, where U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis similarly ordered the government to provide daily updates about its progress in getting Abrego Garcia back to the country. Those efforts have increasingly been found wanting by the court.