Updated April 14, 2025 at 15:58 PM ET
El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele said on Monday that he was not inclined to return Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to the United States.
Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran citizen who had lived in Maryland for about 15 years, was deported to El Salvador despite being granted protections by an U.S. immigration judge. He is in custody in Bukele's mega prison known as CECOT. The Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return.
During Bukele's Oval Office visit on Monday, Trump and his team said it was up to the Salvadoran government to decide whether to return him. Bukele said he would not do that.
"The question is preposterous: how can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States?" Bukele said.
Bukele has been a key ally to Trump as he ramps up deportations to the notorious Salvadoran prison. The Trump administration is paying the Salvadoran government $6 million to house migrants there.
The case involves the Alien Enemies Act
More than 200 migrants have been sent to the prison. Many have been sent there without due process using an obscure wartime law called the Alien Enemies Act to deport large groups of Venezuelans and Salvadorans who the administration says are gang members. Abrego Garcia's attorney says he is not a member of any gang.
While the Supreme Court ultimately ruled that the Trump administration could use the law — invoked during the War of 1812 and the two World Wars — to deport migrants, the high court also ordered the Trump administration to facilitate Abrego Garcia's return.
Attorney General Pam Bondi, who was part of the Oval Office meeting with Bukele, said the administration's obligation only extended to providing a plane, but said that Abrego Garcia was now in Salvadoran custody.
She said that Abrego Garcia had not been in the United States legally and downplayed the issue with his deportation as a "paperwork" issue. "That's up to El Salvador if they want to return him. That's not up to us," Bondi said.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said the matter was up to Bukele. "He's a citizen of El Salvador, so it's very arrogant even for American media to suggest that we would even tell El Salvador, how to handle their own citizens," Miller said.
Rubio emphasized that no court in the United States had the right to conduct foreign policy.
"What we saw today at the White House should shock every American who cares about our system of checks and balances and the rule of law," said Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of America's Voice, an immigration advocacy nonprofit, in a statement. She said the decision not to return Abrego Garcia violates the Supreme Court's ruling to bring him back.
"All of this is a reminder why immigration is the tip of the spear for Trump's larger assault on key pillars of our democracy and why what's at stake should alarm Americans of all political persuasions," she added.
—NPR's Joel Rose contributed to this report.
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