The order to release Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia from criminal custody as he awaits trial was a rebuke to the Trump administration. But he is likely to remain in immigration custody.

A federal judge, in a setback for the Trump administration, has said she plans to order the release of a wrongly deported Salvadoran migrant while he awaits trial on human smuggling charges. Abrego Garcia has pleaded not guilty to the charges and a federal magistrate judge said in a ruling on Sunday that prosecutors had not made a convincing argument that he should be detained pending trial.

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.

A U.S. judge on Sunday ordered Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the migrant returned to the U.S. in early June after being wrongfully deported to his native El Salvador, released on bail pending his criminal trial on migrant smuggling charges.

The government on Sunday appealed a federal judge's order to release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia pending trial on human smuggling charges, another chapter in the saga of the Maryland father who had who ha