GREENBELT, Md. — A hearing for a Maryland man mistakenly deported to an El Salvador prison turned into a noisy protest late Monday afternoon as his supporters chanted and sang outside the courthouse, and his wife accused the Trump administration of “playing political games.”

“God hasn’t forgotten about you,” Jennifer Vasquez Sura said of her husband, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, as she spoke outside the U.S. District Court to a few hundred sign-waving demonstrators.

“As we continue through Holy Week, my heart aches for my husband. You should have been here leading our Easter prayers,” she said. “Instead, I find myself pleading with the Trump administration and the Bukele administration to stop playing political games.”

The 29-year-old Prince George’s County sheet metal apprentice was deported last month due to what the government has described as an “administrative error.” He lived in Beltsville with his wife, a U.S. citizen, their 5-year-old son and two stepchildren.

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele said Monday he will not release or return Abrego Garcia to the U.S. The Trump administration maintains that U.S. courts can’t compel Abrego Garcia’s return because they don’t have jurisdiction in El Salvador.

Demonstrators on Tuesday walked a circular picket line and sang civil rights songs on a brisk, windy afternoon in an outside courthouse plaza. Inside, a judge said at a hearing that she would order U.S. officials to be deposed on what the Trump administration has done, if anything, to try to bring Abrego Garcia home.

The crowd fell silent as Abrego Garcia’s attorney, Rina Gandhi, stepped outside the courthouse after the hearing and told reporters the judge’s order to compel more information from the Trump administration represented “progress.”

She said, “We need to keep applying pressure” to counter the narrative that Abrego Garcia posed a threat to the United States.

Gandhi said the focus must be on the administration’s unlawful removal of Abrego Garcia and “taking no meaningful steps to fix that.”

Republicans have alleged that Abrego Garcia was a member of a gang. Maryland’s Democratic senators deny that, saying gang members had been trying to recruit Abrego Garcia and his brother, forcing his family to move multiple times.

Some demonstrators’ signs referenced a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding a federal judge’s order that said Abrego Garcia should be returned to America.

“Defend the Rule of Law!” read one sign. “Due the right thing,” said another, referring to due process that demonstrators say Abrego Garcia was denied.

“No hate, no fear. Immigrants are welcome here,” protesters chanted.

Lucy Steinitz, 73, of Silver Spring, said she attended the protest because the case “crossed the line of a constitutional crisis” after the administration defied court orders. Steinitz said she recently lost her job with Catholic Relief Services of Baltimore due to funding cuts.

The Trump administration has interpreted the Supreme Court order differently than Abrego Garcia’s supporters, saying it did not mandate that Abrego Garcia be immediately freed.

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