Salvadoran president says he won’t return man deported by mistake

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WASHINGTON — El Salvador President Nayib Bukele said he would not return to the United States a man who was wrongly deported by the Trump administration, despite a Supreme Court ruling that said the U.S. should take steps to facilitate his return.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, 29, had lived in the U.S. for 14 years before the Trump administration deported him — an act White House officials called an “administrative error.” Although U.S. government officials acknowledge he was wrongly deported, they now contend that forcing his return would interfere with El Salvador’s sovereignty.

“This is up to El Salvador to return him,” U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi said Monday at the White House, where President Trump and Bukele were meeting with other officials.

Asked if he would return Abrego Garcia to the U.S., Bukele responded, “Of course I’m not going to do it.”

Without presenting any evidence, White House officials repeated claims that Abrego Garcia was a member of the MS-13 gang, and that he presented a threat if returned to the United States. Abrego Garcia has no criminal record.

He did have a withholding order, which prevented him from being deported to El Salvador, because of concerns he would be harmed by local gangs there. In its court order, the Supreme Court called his deportation “illegal.”

“The order properly requires the Government 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 court said in its order.

However, the Supreme Court questioned a lower court’s language that the U.S. government “facilitate and effectuate” Abrego Garcia’s return, and the ambiguity of the term “effectuate.”

“The District Court should clarify its directive, with due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs,” the court ruling said. “For its part, the Government should be prepared to share what it can concerning the steps it has taken and the prospect of further steps.”

Trump administration officials seized on the court’s ruling. “If [El Salvador] wanted to return him, we would facilitate it — meaning, provide a plane,” Bondi said.

But Bukele was unequivocal. “How can I return him to the United States? I smuggle him into the United States? What do I do? Of course, I’m not going to do it,” he said.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) asked Bukele for a meeting during his trip to Washington. Van Hollen said he had been in touch with Abrego Garcia’s wife, mother and brother, who are concerned about his well-being in the Salvadoran prison.

“If Kilmar is not home by midweek — I plan to travel to El Salvador this week to check on his condition and discuss his release,” Van Hollen said in a statement.

Abrego Garcia, who lived in Maryland, was deported March 15 to the Terrorism Confinement Center, Salvador’s huge maximum-security prison.

The Oval Office meeting united two closely allied leaders who share a populist rhetoric and a disdain for democratic norms.

Bukele, a 43-year-old former marketing executive who has described himself as an “instrument of God” and the “world’s coolest dictator,” came to power in 2019 and quickly made global headlines by making El Salvador the first country to adopt bitcoin as legal tender.

Faced with some of the highest homicide rates in the world, his government first tried to contain the violence by secretly negotiating a truce with gangsters.

When that failed, Bukele declared a state of emergency that suspended civil liberties as authorities jailed some 85,000 people — including about 5% of the nation’s men between the ages of 18 and 35. Many of the people locked up were not criminals, human rights advocates say, and some were children as young as 12. Dozens of inmates have died in his prisons.

Pro-democracy activists and journalists cried foul, but as homicides plunged, Bukele’s approval ratings skyrocketed.

That support was crucial last year when Bukele engineered a constitutional change that allowed him to seek a prohibited second term. He won with 83% of the vote.

His popularity has made him a hero of the American right, with Bukele speaking at last year’s Conservative Political Action Conference and taking meetings with Elon Musk. Like Trump, who during Monday’s meeting repeatedly berated a CNN reporter who was present, Bukele abhors traditional media, preferring to disseminate his messages via TikTok over granting interviews with journalists.

Many of El Salvador’s investigative journalists have been forced to flee the country amid a campaign that targeted them with spyware.

Bukele’s government has also gone to war with human rights advocates, detaining at least 21 of them, according to a U.S.-based think tank, the Washington Office on Latin America. The group on Monday warned against Trump’s alliance with Bukele. “Behind the handshake and praise lie grave human rights violations and threats to democracy,” it said.

Pinho and Savage reported from Washington and Linthicum from Mexico City.