The judge acknowledged in her ruling that determining whether Abrego Garcia should be released is "little more than an academic exercise" because ICE will likely detain him.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran migrant at the heart of Donald Trump's border security policy, faces federal charges of human smuggling.

A judge in Tennessee said the Justice Department hasn’t made a convincing case that Kilmar Abrego Garcia should be kept in pretrial detention, though the mistakenly deported man who was returned to the US is likely to remain in federal immigration custody regardless.