A federal judge gave the government three hours on Friday to return the property of a man released from immigration detention, which it allegedly retained in violation of her previous order.

“At its most benign, this failure is an unforced error of preventable dimension. At its worst, this is unjustifiable intransigence, where retention of Petitioner’s belongings is tantamount to imposition of an additional and illegal condition the immigration judge didn’t and hasn’t imposed,” wrote U.S. District Court Judge Charlotte N. Sweeney in a Feb. 6 order.

Sweeney has been unusually involved in the case of Javier Andres Garcia Cortes as a result of the government’s actions. Last year, she issued one of the first orders in Colorado finding the government was unlawfully detaining people like Garcia Cortes without considering his suitability for release.

“That’s wrong,” wrote Sweeney, a Joe Biden appointee, in a Sept. 16 order. “Respondents were wrong to detain him without an opportunity to seek release on bond.”

An immigration judge then released Garcia Cortes on a $15,000 bond. However, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement required Garcia Cortes to wear a monitoring device and submit to check-ins. After he allegedly did not, ICE again took him into custody in January.

Turning to Sweeney once more, Garcia Cortes argued ICE could not impose conditions on him that the immigration judge did not order. In response, Sweeney pointed to other judges, including U.S. District Court Judge Gordon P. Gallagher in Colorado, who have rejected ICE’s authority to effectively keep people in custody by disregarding the terms of release set by immigration judges.

In citing the government’s “undaunted efforts to improperly detain” people like Garcia Cortes, Sweeney warned that she would not reach a different conclusion until a higher court said otherwise.

“While Respondents get to repeat themselves, they don’t get to repeatedly violate Petitioner’s due process rights,” she wrote on Feb. 2, ordering the immediate removal of ICE’s monitoring restrictions.

Finally, on Feb. 6, Garcia Cortes returned to Sweeney again. The government had eliminated its restrictions, he said, but failed to return his driver’s license, employment authorization, and passport.

“Petitioner’s motion raises two obvious points. First, that documents such as these are of paramount importance to him — as, the Court notes, they would be to anyone,” wrote Sweeney. “And second, that consistent with the Court’s prior order, Respondents were and are obviously wrong to not return such items to Petitioner upon his release from custody.”

She added that the government’s conduct was a violation of her prior order because it released Garcia Cortes under conditions that were inconsistent with what an immigration judge had imposed.

Sweeney gave the government until 5 p.m. on Friday to return all of Garcia Cortes’ property to him and to notify Sweeney that it had done so.

The case is Garcia Cortes v. Guadian et al.