President Donald Trump ‘s top advisers and Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, said Monday that they’d no basis for the small Central American nation to return a Maryland man who was wrongly deported there last month.
Trump administration officials emphasized that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was sent to a notorious gang prison in El Salvador, was a citizen of that country and that the U.S. had no say in his future. And Bukele, who has been a significant partner for the Trump administration in its deportation efforts, said, “In fact I’m not going to” release him back to U.S. soil.
“The query is preposterous,” Bukele said. “I don’t have the ability to return him to america.”
Should El Salvador need to return Abrego Garcia, the U.S. would “facilitate it, meaning provide a plane,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said.
A member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus holds an image of Kilmar Abrego Garcia during a news conference to debate Abrego Garcia’s arrest and deportation d at Cannon House Office Constructing on April 9, 2025 in Washington, DC. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus held a news conference to debate the deportation of Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the utmost security prison Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in El Salvador, an incident the Trump administration claims as “an administrative error,” but refuses to bring Abrego Garcia back to america.
Alex Wong / Getty Images
But she added: “He was illegally in our country.”
The meeting got here as El Salvador has been a critical linchpin of the U.S. administration’s mass deportation operation.
Since March, El Salvador has accepted from the U.S. greater than 200 Venezuelan immigrants — whom Trump administration officials have accused of gang activity and violent crimes — and placed them contained in the country’s notorious maximum-security gang prison just outside of the capital, San Salvador. It is usually holding Abrego Garcia, who has not been returned to the U.S., despite court orders to achieve this.
That has made Bukele, who stays extremely popular in El Salvador due partially to the crackdown on the country’s powerful street gangs, a significant ally for the Trump administration, which has offered little evidence for its claims that the Venezuelan immigrants were in reality gang members, nor has it released names of those deported.
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Asked whether he has any concerns concerning the prison there where deportees are being held, Trump told reporters early Sunday that Bukele was doing a “implausible job.”
“He’s caring for plenty of problems that we now have that we actually wouldn’t have the ability to maintain from cost standpoint,” Trump said. “And he’s doing really, he’s been amazing. Now we have some very bad people in that prison. Folks that must have never been allowed into our country.”
Since Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s visit in February, Bukele — whose government has arrested greater than 84,000 people as a part of his three-year crackdown on gangs — has made it clear he’s able to help the Trump administration with its deportation ambitions.
Bukele struck a deal under which the U.S. pays about $6 million for El Salvador to imprison the Venezuelan immigrants for a yr. When a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to show around a flight carrying the immigrants already en path to El Salvador, Bukele wrote on social media: “Oopsie … too late.”
Though other judges had ruled against the Trump administration, this month the Supreme Court cleared the way in which for Trump to make use of the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th century wartime law, to deport the immigrants. The justices did insist that the immigrants get a court hearing before being faraway from the U.S. Over the weekend, 10 more individuals who the administration claims are members of the MS-13 and Tren de Aragua gangs arrived in El Salvador, Rubio said Sunday.
“We’ve also found cooperation in other countries which might be willing to take a few of these people, some very dangerous criminals,” Rubio said during a Cabinet meeting on Thursday. Bukele, Rubio added, “has really been a superb friend to america in that regard. These are a number of the worst people you’ll ever encounter.”
Trump has said openly that he would also favor El Salvador taking Americans who’ve committed violent crimes, although he added, “I’d only do in accordance with the law.” It’s unclear how lawful U.S. residents may very well be deported elsewhere. Leavitt said such residents could be “heinous, violent criminals who’ve broken our nation’s laws repeatedly.”
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has called for the administration to “facilitate” the return of Abrego Garcia, who had an immigration court order stopping his deportation to his native country over fears of gang persecution. Leavitt said the administration’s job is “to facilitate the return, to not effectuate the return,” but Trump indicated later Friday that he would return Abrego Garcia to the U.S. if the high court’s justices said to bring him back.
“I even have great respect for the Supreme Court,” Trump told reporters traveling on Air Force One. Government lawyers indicated in a legal filing Saturday that Abrego Garcia stays in El Salvador but didn’t detail what, if any, steps the administration is taking to return him to the U.S. In its required day by day status update on Sunday, the federal government essentially stated that it had nothing so as to add beyond Saturday’s filing.
While Bukele’s crackdown on gangs has popular support, the country has lived under a state of emergency that suspends some basic rights for 3 years. He built the huge prison, situated just outside San Salvador within the town of Tecoluca, to carry those accused of gang affiliation under his crackdown.
A part of his offer to receive the Venezuelans there was that the U.S. also send back some Salvadoran gang leaders. In February, his ambassador to the U.S., Milena Mayorga, said on a radio program that having gang leaders face justice in El Salvador was “a difficulty of honor.”
Bukele could also seek relief from the ten% tariff recently imposed by Trump, using the argument that it weakens the economy Bukele is attempting to bolster.
César Ríos, director of the El Salvador Immigrant Agenda Association, said “it’s crucial that (the visit) isn’t limited to diplomatic gestures, but reasonably translates to concrete actions that profit Salvadorans abroad and at home.”
Populists who’ve successfully crafted their images through media, Bukele and Trump hail from different generations but display similar tendencies in how they relate to the press, political opposition and justice systems of their respective countries.
Bukele got here to power in the course of Trump’s first term and had an easy relationship with the U.S. leader. Trump was most concerned with immigration and, under Bukele, the variety of Salvadorans heading for the U.S. border declined.
Bukele’s relationship with the U.S. grew more complicated at first of the Biden administration, which was openly critical of a few of his antidemocratic actions. Trump has also shown some irritation with Bukele previously, accusing El Salvador of lowering its crime rate by sending people to the U.S.
“He’s just, ‘we’re working with our people who are causing problems and crime,’” Trump said of Bukele at a campaign rally last yr. “He’s not working with them. He’s dumping them in america and their crime rate, their murder rate, is down 72%.”
Just before Bukele’s arrival in Washington, the State Department updated its travel advisory for El Salvador to Level 1, which is for countries which might be considered the safest to go to for U.S. residents. The advisory notes that gang activity, and the accompanying murders and other violent crimes, has declined previously three years.
