The day after a federal judge told Immigration and Customs Enforcement to stop making immigration arrests in New York City civil immigration courts, ICE did just that, arresting a man and then releasing him hours later.

Attorneys representing the man, Vinely Alexander Castillo-Norales, said the arrest showed ICE’s “utter contempt for the rule of law.” And though ICE’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, denied that it had violated a court order, it would be the latest in a long line of actions in defiance of federal courts during President Donald Trump’s second term.

Castillo-Norales, 21, came to the United States as a child pursuing asylum and lived for years in the United States. He has not had any criminal convictions and he has “dutifully” attended immigration court hearings, according to a court filing from the New York Legal Assistance Group, or NYLAG.

On Tuesday, however, immigration agents arrested Castillo-Norales after a standard court check-in, even though no immigration judge has found him to be a flight risk or a danger to community safety, according to the filing.

On Monday, Judge P. Kevin Castel of the Southern District of New York issued an order pausing all ICE arrests in immigration courthouses, with rare exceptions, while a lawsuit plays out.

Castel’s decision reversed his own ruling from earlier this year — the result of attorneys for the federal government admitting that the legal memo they’d used to justify arresting hundreds of people in civil immigration court actually didn’t apply to immigration courts at all.

And though there are certain exceptions to Monday’s no-arrest ruling — for example, to prevent an imminent risk of violence, or if there is “no safe alternative” to make the arrest and a designated official has signed off on it — the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to HuffPost’s questions about what specific legal authority, if any, it used to arrest Castillo-Norales.

Instead, DHS defended the arrest broadly, accusing Castillo-Norales of being a gang member and previously facing criminal charges, though it did not list any convictions.

“ICE did NOT violate any court orders,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement. “Nothing prohibits arresting a lawbreaker where you find them, especially illegal alien gang members.”

“DHS is obviously grasping since ICE released him after only detaining him for a few hours,” Chloe Chik, a spokesperson for NYLAG told HuffPost. “Arresting anyone on unfounded claims subverts the rule of law and could have a lasting impact on everyone’s civil liberties.”

Before Castillo-Norales’ release Tuesday, NYLAG argued in a habeas corpus petition — a legal challenge of someone’s detention, which people in immigration detention have filed by the thousands in Trump’s second term — that Castillo-Norales’ arrest “was in direct violation” of Castel’s order.

It also argued the arrest was in violation of a ruling in the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers New York and other Northeastern states, against the Trump administration’s assertion that it has a right to jail potentially millions of people in immigration proceedings without bond, even if they haven’t been judged to be a danger to the community or a flight risk.

With multiple appeals courts split on that policy, it’s widely expected to end up before the Supreme Court.

ICE released Castillo-Norales after just a few hours in custody, before the federal judge handling his wrongful detention case, John G. Koeltl of the Southern District of New York, could do anything except schedule a hearing for Wednesday morning, court records showed.

However, in light of Castillo-Norales’ release, his legal team asked the judge to cancel the hearing and said that counsel for respondents — the federal government — had consented to the request. Koeltl agreed and canceled the hearing.

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