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.

Abrego Garcia is being held in Tennessee as he faces a federal indictment of smuggling undocumented immigrants across state lines in 2022. The US returned him from El Salvador this month after the indictment was unsealed, ending a political standoff over his due process rights.

His court proceedings have become a vessel for the Trump Justice Department’s hardball approach to immigration enforcement in which it has sought to portray Abrego Garcia as part of a gang operation in Maryland.