El Salvador President Nayib Bukele claimed Monday that he has no ability to return a Maryland man deported to the Central American country back to the US despite a 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 sent 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.
The Trump administration claims that Abrego Garcia illegally entered the country in 2011, a statement two lower courts have affirmed.
“First and foremost, he was illegally in our country,” US Attorney General Pam Bondi told reporters about Abrego García Monday. “That’s up to El Salvador if they want to return him. That’s not up to us.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio similarly stated that “the foreign policy of the United States is conducted by the president of the United States, not by a court.”
“That’s where you deport people — back to their country of origin,” he argued.
But a 2019 order from an immigration judge restricted the government from deporting Abrego Garcia back to El Salvador due to concerns that he could face persecution from groups like the Barrio 18 gang.
Justice Department lawyers initially acknowledged in court documents that Abrego Garcia’s deportation was due to an “administrative error” and a “clerical error.”
White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller denied that claim Monday.
“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.”
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.”
In a Sunday court 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.”
On Sunday, Trump said that the 260 people deported “are now in the sole custody of El Salvador.”
Bukele is the first Latin American leader to score a White House visit with Trump during his second term.
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