A federal judge in Washington, D.C., made a groundbreaking decision on Wednesday, determining that the Trump administration “plainly deprived” over 100 migrants of their constitutional rights by deporting them to a notorious terrorist prison in El Salvador without due process, invoking an 18th-century wartime authority.

“As is now apparent, CECOT Class members were entitled to notice and a chance to contest their removability according to the Proclamation,” U.S. District Judge James stated in a 69-page order. “That process — which was improperly denied — must now be granted to them.”

Boasberg gave the administration one week to tell the court how it planned to “facilitate” the migrants’ ability to contest their summary removals under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 (AEA), making him the first federal judge to rule on the fate of the men since they were deported on March 15 in defiance of a court order.

The judge wrote that while his prescribed remedy may “implicate sensitive diplomatic or national-security concerns,” such issues fail to surmount the executive branch’s constitutional duty to “make good the wrong done” by depriving the migrants of their rights, borrowing a phrase from the 1946 Supreme Court opinion Bell v. Hood. Regarding those issues, the judge directed the administration to submit proposals detailing how it plans to provide the migrants with the means to challenge their incarceration.

“Mindful of national-security and foreign-policy concerns, the Court will not — at least yet — order the Government to take any specific steps. It will instead allow Defendants to submit proposals regarding the appropriate actions that would ‘allow [Plaintiffs] to actually seek habeas relief,”” Boasberg wrote. “In short, the Government must facilitate the Class’s ability to seek habeas relief to contest their removal under the Act. Exactly what such facilitation must entail will be determined in future proceedings.”

Habeas relief, or habeas corpus, refers to the procedure allowing an individual to challenge their detention. Here, the detainees will likely challenge the government categorizing them as members of the Tren de Agura (TdA), the group that was the subject of Trump’s AEA proclamation. Without that process, there would be “no way to know for sure” whether any of the removed individuals — most of whom had no criminal record at all — were actually gang members.

Boasberg, who has repeatedly been a target of President Donald Trump and others in the administration who believe he has stymied the president’s deportation agenda, opened the opinion by comparing the migrants’ plight to that of the protagonist in Franz Kafka’s “The Trial,” particularly how the fictitious character is whisked from his room by a pair of unknown government agents and imprisoned without explanation.

The judge did not mince words in discussing the gravity of the case and the importance of correcting the constitutional violation, saying that the migrants’ due process rights “must be restored.”

“In light of the well-established law of remedies and the example that has already been set by all three levels of the federal judiciary, then, Defendants must facilitate Plaintiffs’ ability to proceed through habeas and ensure that their cases are handled as they would have been if the Government had not provided constitutionally inadequate process,” the judge wrote. “The Court determines that such a remedy balances Defendants’ distinct role in conducting foreign affairs with the grave need to right their legal wrongs; absent this relief, the Government could snatch anyone off the street, turn him over to a foreign country, and then effectively foreclose any corrective course of action.”

The Trump administration pushed back on Boasberg’s order, once again attacking the judge personally while also challenging his jurisdiction over the matter and suggesting his ruling is likely to be overturned.

“Judge Boasberg has no authority to intervene with immigration or national security — authority that rests squarely with President Trump and the Executive Branch,” White House Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson said in a statement. “His current and previous attempts to prevent President Trump from deporting criminal illegal aliens poses a direct threat to the safety of the American people. Fortunately for the American people, Judge Boasberg does not have the last word.”

The federal government for weeks has equivocated on its ability to “facilitate” the return of migrants from El Salvador, with the Justice Department steadfastly declaring that those detainees “are in the custody of a foreign nation pursuant to its laws.” However, during a hearing last month, Boasberg noted that Trump last recently told ABC News that he “could” just pick up the phone and have El Salvador return at least one man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was “wrongfully deported.”

Boasberg in April found probable cause to hold the Trump administration in criminal contempt for ignoring his order to have the planes carrying the migrants being removed under the AEA returned to the U.S. before they landed. The administration has denied flouting the Boasberg’s order, arguing the planes were outside of U.S. airspace at the time the directive was given. The contempt inquiry remains ongoing, as Boasberg noted in Wednesday’s order.