El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele claimed that he doesn’t have the power to return a Maryland man deported to his country back to the US despite a Supreme Court ruling directing the Trump administration to take “steps to facilitate” his return.
After top Trump administration brass ripped into the notion that El Salvador should return Kilmar Abrego García to the US, Bukele called the idea “preposterous” during his visit with the 47th president in the Oval Office.
“I hope you are not suggesting that I smuggle terrorists into the United States,” Bukele hit back. “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.”
Abrego García was deported by the Trump administration to the notoriously brutal and overcrowded Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) last month alongside about 260 people under the 18th-century Alien and Enemies Act, something that is being litigated in the lower courts.
The Trump administration claims that Abrego Garcia illegally entered the country in 2011, something that two courts have previously affirmed as well.
But a prior 2019 court 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 admitted 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, has since blamed DOJ lawyers for making such an admission in court.
“That’s a big fact that all of you, most of you, have gotten wrong,” Miller told reporters ahead of Bukele’s meeting Monday. “No one was mistakenly sent anywhere.”
“The only mistake that was made is a lawyer put an incorrect line in a legal filing [and has] since been relieved,” he said of the lawyer. “[Abrego Garcia] is an illegal alien. He was deported to El Salvador.”
Last week, the Supreme Court determined in a 9–0 ruling nixing a lower court order giving the Trump administration a deadline of last Monday to return Abrego Garcia back to the US.
In that order, 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.”
The Supreme Court also ruled that the lower courts must show “deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.”
On Sunday, in court filings, the Trump 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.”
Trump previously said, “If the Supreme Court said bring somebody back, I would do that,” and that he respects the high court. On Sunday, he clarified 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.
Trump and Bukele displayed a chummy relationship during the meeting, and the president’s team defended the El Salvadorian leader from District Judge Paula Xinis’ push for Abrego García’s return.
“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 reiterated 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.
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