Maine’s Chief U.S. District Court judge told immigration officials on Friday they had to release an asylum seeker who was arrested last week without an administrative warrant.

Francoise Makuiza was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs agents the morning of Jan. 23, minutes after leaving her house for work.

Makuiza and her family have lived in the country for more than a dozen years, having arrived on visas in 2011 from Colombia. They were refugees there from the Democratic Republic of Congo. She is the mother of a 12-year-old U.S. citizen and works providing professional support to residents in an assisted living facility, according to court records.

Makuiza has no criminal history, according to her lawyer, and has been waiting since a hearing last summer for an answer on her asylum application.

“I know that she and her family are ecstatic,” attorney Kristine Hanly said Friday. “Even the week-long detention has been very trying for their family, and very scary for the family.”

Judge Lance Walker wrote in his order that Makuiza’s status as an asylum seeker had no bearing on his order — instead, he was more concerned with the lack of an administrative warrant.

“I have no difficulty appreciating that the Department of Homeland Security or Immigration and Customs Enforcement should be permitted to effectuate the orderly application of federal immigration law prescribed by Congress,” Walker, who was nominated by Trump in 2018, wrote in the order. “However, I question the notion that the activities that have brought Petitioner and others to court via habeas petitions have generally born the hallmark of orderliness or meticulous observation of statutory details.”

Dozens of other Maine immigrants arrested by ICE and Border Patrol in the last year have filed similar petitions, alleging they are being held unlawfully.

“This order, I think, very strongly signals frustration with the fact that ICE enforcement actions have not been following the rules and laws applied to them while they’ve been doing this enforcement operations,” Hanly said.

“Yes, this order is about immigration,” she said, “but it’s also about the rule of law, and holding everyone accountable to follow the rule of law.”

Neither ICE nor DHS could be immediately reached Friday evening. An assistant U.S. attorney representing them said in an email that their office has no comment.

Makuiza’s son said their family is relieved she’s coming home. On Friday, relatives were on their way to pick Makuiza up from where she was being held outside of Boston.

“I feel more peace, compared to how I did before,” her son, King Diabanza-Makuiza, said in an interview Friday evening.

He said it has been a long and difficult week for his family. Diabanza-Makuiza said her family and the Congolese community have felt his mother’s absence. Diabanza-Makuiza said he hopes Walker’s order and his mother’s return gives hope to others whose family members have been detained by ICE.

“She has no criminal history,” he said, adding that ICE agents “treated her down like she was some kind of criminal.”

“To have a judge saying that, it shows that the job they’re doing is ridiculous,” he said.