Legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said he doesn’t think Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador earlier this year, will ever be coming back to the U.S.
The Supreme Court last week ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” the release of Abrego Garcia from custody, but both President Trump and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele maintain they don’t have the authority to do so.
In an interview on CNN, Toobin said he doesn’t think the nation’s highest court wants to cause a global standoff and therefore might not push back if El Salvador refuses to hand over Abrego Garcia.
“I think they do not want an international confrontation that they caused,” Toobin told CNN’s John Berman, when asked what he thinks the Supreme Court “thinks about all of this.”
“And they will be very deferential if El Salvador says, ‘We are simply not turning him over,’” he continued. “I bet this Supreme Court will say, ‘Well, there’s nothing that can be done in that case.’”
“You don’t think this man is coming back?” Berman asked.
“I don’t think he’s coming back, basically ever,” Toobin said.
Abrego Garcia was deported after he was accused by a confidential informant of being a member of the MS-13 gang in New York. His family has maintained that he fled El Salvador due to gang violence and that he has never lived in the Empire State.
Trump and Bukele during a meeting at the White House on Monday signaled they would not facilitate his return. The comments came after the administration acknowledged earlier this month that they had mistakenly deported the man to a high-security prison in the Central American country.
“How could I return him to the United States? I smuggle him to the United States? Of course I’m not going to do it,” Bukele said, labeling Abrego Garcia a terrorist. “The question is preposterous.”
“I don’t have the power to return him to the United States. I’m not releasing — I mean, we’re not very fond of releasing terrorists into our country,” he added.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said that the decision of Abrego Garcia’s fate is up to El Salvador and that the U.S. can do nothing more than send potential transportation.
“The Supreme Court ruled … that if El Salvador wants to return him … we would facilitate it, meaning provide a plane,” she said.
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