A wrongly deported Salvadoran man returned to the US 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, his lawyer told AFP.

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

He was returned in June and promptly arrested and charged with trafficking undocumented migrants -- but released from prison in Tennessee at the order of a US magistrate 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.

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