A US federal judge issued an order on Friday to halt the sweeping employee firings at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), delivering an early blow to President Donald Trump’s rapid push to dismantle the agency.

US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson issued the order barring the CFPB from axing more employees, beyond those let go for performance issues or misconduct. The order instructs CFPB officials not to “delete, destroy, remove or impair any data.” The order also prevents the agency from carrying out mass firings or issuing a “reduction in force” notice, the official government procedure for layoffs to any CFPB employee.

The plaintiffs in the case filed a request for a temporary restraining order on Thursday alleging that President Trump and his newly installed acting director of the CFPB, Russell Vought, have taken decisive steps to dismantle the agency. These developments come despite Congress’s establishment of the CFPB in 2010 to protect consumers and oversee financial institutions in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

According to the complaint, the Trump administration’s plan to “totally eliminate” the CFPB has already led to mass firings, the cancellation of critical consumer protection work, and the abrupt suspension of the CFPB’s core functions—all in direct defiance, the suit claims, of congressional intent and established law.

This comes after the administration abruptly dismissed dozens of staffers this week, including an entire team dedicated to scrutinizing Big Tech’s financial practices. “Remember those technologists I hired using an authority designed to bring private sector tech talent to gov?,” Erie Meyer, the agency’s former chief technologist, wrote on social media. “They were looking into big tech. Trump just fired them. All of them.”

Meyer, who stepped down from the bureau last week, revealed in a court filing on Friday that insiders had warned her digital agency records were on the verge of being erased. Meanwhile, a group of six individuals from Elon Musk’s newly formed Department of Government Efficiency, a quasi-official entity with no formal executive branch status, showed up at the consumer bureau’s headquarters last week and gained access to its computer systems.

Friday’s order temporarily halts the Trump administration’s aggressive efforts to reshape the consumer watchdog agency.