WASHINGTON — For the first time, a federal judge has said the Bush administration must release prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, ordering 17 Chinese Muslims to be brought to his court Friday.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina said he would hold a hearing to decide where in the U.S. the men could be released. Several religious and social groups, including 20 church leaders from Tallahassee, Fla., said they would help the men resettle in their community.

The judge’s order came more than six years after the men were sent to Guantanamo and more than four years after the Pentagon cleared most of them to be released.

It also comes four months after the Supreme Court ruled judges can order the release of prisoners wrongly held at Guantanamo. Shortly after that ruling, a U.S. appeals court said the government had no basis for holding one of the 17 Uighurs who had fled persecution in China and who then fled Afghanistan after U.S. bombing raids there. They were taken captive by locals in Pakistan who turned them over to U.S. authorities who were offering $5,000 bounties for suspected foreign terrorists.

Human-rights lawyers have described the Uighur Muslims as among the worst examples of men who were wrongly imprisoned at Guantanamo. And once there, they were unable to obtain their release, most because no other country was eager to take them in. The administration could not send them home to China because of the fear they would be persecuted and imprisoned there.

Administration lawyers have continued to insist that a judge lacked the authority to release any prisoners from Guantanamo. The Justice Department said it planned to seek a stay of Urbina’s order. His ruling “presents serious national-security and separation-of-powers concerns,” said Brian Roehrkasse, a Justice spokesman.