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El Salvador President Nayib Bukele claimed Monday that he has no ability to send a Maryland man deported to the Central American country back to the US despite a US Supreme Court ruling directing the Trump administration to take “steps to facilitate” his return.
“I hope you are not suggesting that I smuggle terrorists into the United States,” Bukele told reporters while sitting alongside President Trump in the Oval Office. “Of course, I’m not going to do it.
“The question is preposterous,” Bukele added. “I don’t have the power to return him to the United States.”
Kilmar Abrego García was removed last month to the notoriously brutal and overcrowded Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) alongside about 260 suspected gang members under the 18th-century Alien Enemies Act.
In court documents, the Trump administration has alleged that Abrego Garcia is “confirmed to be a ranking member of the MS-13 gang by a proven and reliable source,” something his family denies.
The government also says that Abrego Garcia illegally entered the country in 2011, a statement two lower courts have affirmed.
“He was illegally in our country,” US Attorney General Pam Bondi told reporters about Abrego García on Monday. “That’s up to El Salvador if they want to return him. That’s not up to us.”
“The Supreme Court ruled that if El Salvador wanted to return him,” she added, “we would facilitate it, meaning provide a plane.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued that “the foreign policy of the United States is conducted by the president of the United States, not by a court.”
“I don’t understand what the confusion is,” he added. “This individual is a citizen of El Salvador. He was illegally in the United States and was returned to his country. That’s where you deport people — back to their country of origin.”
A Maryland federal judge had set an April 7 deadline for Abrego García’s return to US soil.
In an order handed down April 10, the high court directed the administration “to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador” — though the deadline was no longer in effect.
The Supreme Court also ruled that the lower courts must show “deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.”
White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller chided Monday that it was “very arrogant even for American media to suggest that [Trump] would even tell El Salvador how to handle their own citizens.”
Trump himself indicated he would be interested in expanding the deportation efforts with El Salvador, but did not publicly address the Abrego Garcia case.
“That’s where you deport people — back to their country of origin,” he argued.
A 2019 order from an immigration judge restricted the government from deporting Abrego Garcia to El Salvador due to concerns that he could face persecution from groups like the Barrio 18 gang.
In an initial March 31 filing, the Trump administration stated that Abrego Garcia’s removal was due to an “administrative error” and a “clerical error,” since the 2019 order was still in effect.
Miller denied that claim Monday, stating that the error rested with the Justice Department lawyer who submitted the filing and was later removed from the case by Bondi.
Miller denied that claim Monday and chalked it up to a mistake by a Justice Department lawyer that was initially on the case but later removed by Bondi.
“That’s a big fact that all of you, most of you, have gotten wrong,” Miller told reporters ahead of Bukele’s meeting with Trump. “No one was mistakenly sent anywhere.”
“The only mistake that was made is a [Justice Department] lawyer put an incorrect line in a legal filing [and has] since been relieved,” he said. “[Abrego Garcia] is an illegal alien. He was deported to El Salvador.”
In a Sunday filing, the administration argued that the Supreme Court’s ruling does not mean that the US is obligated to press El Salvador for Abrego Garcia’s release.
“Taking ‘all available steps to facilitate’ the return of Abrego Garcia is thus best read as taking all available steps to remove any domestic obstacles that would otherwise impede the alien’s ability to return here,” DOJ lawyers wrote in a court filing Sunday.
“Indeed, no other reading of ‘facilitate’ is tenable — or constitutional — here.”
Bukele became the first Latin American leader Monday to score a White House visit with Trump during his second term.
