A U.S. judge pressed a government lawyer on Wednesday on whether Republican President Donald Trump was telling the truth when he said he could secure the return of wrongly deported migrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia with a phone call to El Salvador’s president.

Washington D.C.-based U.S. District Judge James Boasberg asked the question of Justice Department lawyer Abhishek Kambli at a hearing in a different case, in which the government is arguing it cannot obtain custody of some 137 Venezuelan migrants being held in a Salvadoran mega-prison after being deported under an 18th-century wartime law.

“Didn’t the president say just last week that he could secure the return of Mr. Abrego Garcia simply by picking up the phone and asking the president of El Salvador to release him?" Boasberg said, referring to Trump’s comments in an April 30 ABC News interview. “So is the President not telling the truth?”