A wrongly deported Salvadoran man sent back to the United States during a fierce row over President Donald Trump's hardline immigration policies was released Friday from prison, where he had been detained on human smuggling charges.

The US Supreme Court had ordered the Trump administration to "facilitate" the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia after he was mistakenly sent to a notorious maximum security prison in El Salvador in March.

He was returned in June, and then promptly arrested and charged with trafficking undocumented migrants. On Friday, he was released from prison in Tennessee at the order of a US judge.

"Today, Kilmar Abrego Garcia is free," his attorney Sean Hecker said in a statement to AFP.

The case has become emblematic of Trump's crackdown on illegal migration.

Right-wing supporters praise the Republican president's toughness, but legal scholars and human rights advocates have blasted what they say is a haphazard rush to deport people in violation of basic US laws.

Hecker said Abrego Garcia was now "en route to his family in Maryland after being unlawfully arrested and........

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