The Justice Department has suspended an attorney who admitted the Trump administration mistakenly deported a Maryland man to a Salvadoran prison, with Attorney General Pam Bondi saying he did not act zealously in fighting the suit.

Erez Reuveni was suspended Saturday after a judge ordered the Trump administration to secure the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national living in Maryland who had been protected from removal in 2019.

Bondi, appearing on Fox News on Monday, referenced Reuveni’s suspension.

 “He was put on administrative leave by Todd Blanche on Saturday. And I firmly said on day one, I issued a memo that you are to vigorously advocate on behalf of the United States. Our client in this matter was Homeland Security — is Homeland Security. He did not argue. He shouldn’t have taken the case. He shouldn’t have argued it, if that’s what he was going to do. He’s on administrative leave now,” she said.

“You have to vigorously argue on behalf of your client.”

Reuveni, a career Justice Department prosecutor, has been with the department for almost 15 years and was recently promoted by the Trump administration as acting deputy director of the Office of Immigration Litigation.

In court filings, Reuveni and other department officials on the case had acknowledged Abrego Garcia was sent to the prison due to an “administrative error” but had argued against his return, saying it would be difficult to remove him from the Salvadoran prison.

After a Friday ruling ordering his return, the Justice Department within an hour said it would be appealing the decision.

In a Sunday order rejecting a bid by the government to halt her earlier directive to return Abrega Garcias, U.S. District Court Judge Paula Xinis cited weak arguments from the government, quoting Reuveni “conced[ing] he should not have been removed to El Salvador.”

She also noted Reuveni did not know why Abrego Garcia was held at El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center.

“I don’t know. That information has not been given to me. I don’t know,” he said during a hearing.

“That silence is telling,” Xinis wrote in a scathing decision determining Abrego Garcia’s removal was “wholly unlawful.”

“As Defendants acknowledge, they had no legal authority to arrest him, no justification to detain him, and no grounds to send him to El Salvador —let alone deliver him into one of the most dangerous prisons in the Western Hemisphere,” she wrote, describing the Justice Department as “having confessed grievous error.”

“To avoid clear irreparable harm, and because equity and justice compels it, the Court grants the narrowest, daresay only, relief warranted: to order that Defendants return Abrego Garcia to the United States.”

Xinis has ordered Abrego Garcia returned by midnight Monday.

In one of her first memos signed after taking office, Bondi wrote to staff that “attorneys have signed up for a job that requires zealously advocating for the United States.”

“The responsibilities of Department of Justice attorneys include not only aggressively enforcing criminal and civil laws enacted by Congress, but also vigorously defending presidential policies and actions against legal challenges on behalf of the United States. The discretion afforded Department attorneys entrusted with those responsibilities does not include latitude to substitute personal political views or judgments for those that prevailed in the election,” she wrote in the February memo.

“It is therefore the policy of the Department of Justice that any attorney who because of their personal political views or judgments declines to sign a brief or appear in court, refuses to advance good-faith arguments on behalf of the Administration, or otherwise delays or impedes the Department’s mission will be subject to discipline and potentially termination, consistent with applicable law.”