More than three weeks after the U.S. military began holding an American citizen captured in Syria in detention as an enemy combatant, the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a challenge to the government to charge him in federal court or release him. “Petitioner is being detained indefinitely without access to a lawyer, without access to any court, and without a meaningful opportunity to challenge his detention before a neutral decisionmaker,” the ACLU states in what’s known as a habeas corpus petition, filed on Thursday in the Washington, D.C. district court. The man, whose name remains unreleased by the Trump administration, allegedly surrendered to U.S. partner forces in Syria after fighting for the Islamic State. His habeas case is called Doe v. Mattis.

—Spencer Ackerman