El Salvador President Nayib Bukele told reporters during a meeting with President Donald Trump on Monday that he wouldn’t return a man the Justice Department said it had mistakenly deported to his country.
“How can I return him to the United States? Like if I smuggle him into the United States?” Bukele said, sitting beside Trump in the Oval Office, when he was asked whether he’d return Kilmar Abrego Garcia. “Of course I’m not going to do it. The question is preposterous.”
Asked whether he’d be released in his own country, he said, “We’re not very fond of releasing terrorists.”
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Trump then turned to Bukele and said of the assembled reporters: “They’d love to have a criminal released into our country. These are sick people.”
Trump also said he wants Bukele to take in as many criminals “as possible.”
El Salvador President Nayib Bukele meets with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Monday.Win McNamee / Getty Images file
Abrego Garcia has never been charged criminally in the United States or El Salvador, according to court filings.
Justice Department officials have acknowledged that Abrego Garcia shouldn’t have been sent to El Salvador because of an immigration judge’s 2019 order barring him from being sent there, and the Supreme Court has called his removal illegal and directed the administration to “facilitate” his return while being respectful of the president’s authority.
In a court filing later Monday, the administration, which has maintained it doesn’t believe the United States has the authority to get Abrego Garcia back, cited Bukele’s comments at the White House.
“DHS does not have authority to forcibly extract an alien from the domestic custody of a foreign sovereign nation,” Joseph Mazzara, acting general counsel at the Department of Homeland Security, wrote in a sworn declaration.
In the Oval Office meeting, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he didn’t understand “the confusion” over the Supreme Court’s order. He argued that “the foreign policy of the United States is conducted by the president of the United States, not by a court, and no court in the United States has a right to conduct a foreign policy of the United States.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi said, “If they want to return him, we would facilitate it, meaning provide a plane. That’s up for El Salvador if they want to return him. That’s not up to us.”
Top White House adviser Stephen Miller told Fox News on Monday morning that Abrego Garcia was “sent to the right place.”
“He was not mistakenly sent to El Salvador,” Miller said, pushing back on the Justice Department’s repeated assertions in numerous court filings that Abrego Garcia was sent to a notorious Salvadoran prison last month because of “an administrative error.”
“This was the right person sent to the right place,” Miller said, despite the Supreme Court’s criticism of the removal in a ruling last week.
“The United States acknowledges that Abrego Garcia was subject to a withholding order forbidding his removal to El Salvador, and that the removal to El Salvador was therefore illegal,” the high court found, noting that the Justice Department acknowledged the removal was the result of an “administrative error.”
Miller said that if Bukele were to return Abrego Garcia, “he would be deported the second time to El Salvador.”
Kilmar Abrego Garcia. CASA via AP
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., told reporters afterward that “the Trump administration’s position, in my view, is absolutely unsustainable, as is the position of the president of El Salvador.”
“They are clearly just snubbing their nose at the courts, including the Supreme Court. And the courts, in my view, need to exercise their ability to sanction people who ignore court orders,” Van Hollen said, adding that he’s trying to meet with Bukele about Abrego Garcia, who had been a Maryland resident.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., meanwhile, called Bukele’s comments “pure nonsense.”
“The law is clear, due process was grossly violated,” Schumer said in a statement. “He should be returned to the U.S. immediately.”
The Trump administration struck a $6 million deal with El Salvador to imprison deportees it says are members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and members of the street gang MS-13. The administration has labeled both gangs as foreign terrorist organizations.
An immigration judge in 2019 found Abrego Garcia to be affiliated with MS-13, an allegation he denies.
The federal judge presiding over the case seeking Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States, Paula Xinis, noted that he has no criminal record in the United States or in El Salvador, and said the gang membership charge came from “a singular unsubstantiated allegation.”
“The ‘evidence’ against Abrego Garcia consisted of nothing more than his Chicago Bulls hat and hoodie, and a vague, uncorroborated allegation from a confidential informant claiming he belonged to MS-13’s ‘Western’ clique in New York — a place he has never lived,” she found.
In his interview with Fox News, Miller said Abrego Garcia’s membership in MS-13 meant that the order barring him from being returned to El Salvador was null and void, a position the U.S. government hasn’t taken in court.
Speaking in the Oval Office meeting with Bukele and Trump, Miller misrepresented Xinis’ order by saying she “had tried to tell the administration that they had to kidnap a citizen of El Salvador and fly him back here.”
Xinis, in a ruling backed by the Supreme Court, directed the administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return, which Miller said he takes to mean that the United States would allow him to return if El Salvador decided to send him back.
No Trump administration officials asked Bukele to return Abrego Garcia during the part of the meeting that reporters were allowed to observe. Bondi, Rubio and Miller all said such a decision could be made only by El Salvador.
Lawyers from the firm Murray Osorio PLLC, which is representing Abrego Garcia, said in statement that his continued detention in El Salvador in spite of the Supreme Court’s ruling “raises serious concerns about compliance and accountability.”
“Let us be clear: the responsibility to return Mr. Abrego Garcia lies squarely with the United States government. His deportation was not just an administrative error—it was a constitutional failure,” the firm said.
“We urge the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of State to act now—and with the urgency this moment demands. Delays in executing the Supreme Court’s directive are unacceptable. We call for immediate transparency and action to bring Mr. Abrego Garcia home,” it added.
Lawyers for Abrego Garcia have said the United States has more control over the prisoners in the jail than it claims, noting the Trump administration is paying $6 million to keep them there.
Guards lead a man Jennifer Vasquez Sura identified as her husband, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, through the Terrorism Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador.U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland via AP
Miller also pushed back Monday on the Justice Department’s earlier characterization that Abrego Garcia’s removal was a mistake. He told Fox News that the acknowledgment of the error came from “a DOJ lawyer who has since been relieved of duty, a saboteur, a Democrat.”
The attorney, however, wasn’t the only one to make that characterization: Solicitor General D. John Sauer referred to the removal as an “administrative error” in a filing to the Supreme Court last week.
Following the Supreme Court’s ruling, Xinis issued an order that the U.S. government “take all available steps to facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia to the United States as soon as possible” and to comply with the high court’s order to “share what it can concerning the steps it has taken and the prospect of further steps.”
The administration initially didn’t provide her with any of that information, but in a filing Saturday it said Abrego Garcia “is currently being held in the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador. He is alive and secure in that facility.”
A hearing is scheduled for Tuesday.
Gary Grumbach , Frank Thorp V, Katie Taylor, Sophie Comeau and Zoë Richards contributed.
