The Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to lift a judge’s order requiring officials to bring an illegally deported Maryland man back from a high-security prison in El Salvador.

In an emergency appeal filed Monday morning, Solicitor General John Sauer asked the justices to suspend a midnight deadline a federal judge in Maryland set for the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was deported last month to his home country of El Salvador despite an immigration judge’s 2019 order that he not be sent there because he could face persecution.

Sauer called U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis’ order “unprecedented and indefensible.” He argued that forcing the administration to demand Abrego Garcia’s return from another government exceeded the judicial branch’s power.

The Trump administration has described Abrego Garcia’s deportation both as an “administrative error” and a “clerical error.” But officials also claim that he is a member of the violent MS-13 gang, which the U.S. government has declared to be a terrorist group.

Xinis, however, wrote that the government has “offered no evidence linking Abrego Garcia to MS-13 or to any terrorist activity.”

The government says Abrego Garcia entered the United States illegally around 2011. He has no criminal record, according to his lawyers. Before his deportation last month, he was living in Maryland with his wife, a U.S. citizen. The couple has three U.S. citizen children.

With the clock ticking toward Xinis’ deadline of 11:59 p.m. on Monday, emergency intervention by the Supreme Court is the last hope for the Trump administration. Also on Monday morning, a federal appeals court denied the administration’s request to put Xinis’ order on hold.

In a unanimous ruling, a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals resoundingly rejected the claim that the administration has no power to seek Abrego Garcia’s return — and that Xinis’ order violates the separation of powers.