WASHINGTON (Reuters) -El Salvador President Nayib Bukele said at the White House on Monday he had no plans to return a man mistakenly deported from the United States, suggesting that doing so would be like smuggling a terrorist into the country.
His remarks came during an Oval Office meeting where multiple officials in President Donald Trump’s administration said they were not required to bring back Salvadoran Kilmar Abrego Garcia, despite a U.S. Supreme Court order saying they must facilitate the Maryland resident’s return.
Abrego Garcia’s case has drawn attention as the Trump administration has deported hundreds of people to El Salvador with help from Bukele, whose country is receiving $6 million to house the migrants in a high-security mega-prison.
The U.S. government has described his deportation as an administrative error. But in court filings and at the White House on Monday, the administration indicated it does not plan to ask for Abrego Garcia back, raising questions about whether it is defying the courts.
In a Monday court filing, a U.S. Department of Homeland Security official said the agency “does not have authority to forcibly extract an alien from the domestic custody of a foreign sovereign nation.”
Bukele told reporters he did not have the power to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S.
“The question is preposterous. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States?” Bukele said, echoing the Trump administration’s claim that Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang.
Bukele’s comments came shortly after U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said at the same meeting that the U.S. needed only to “provide a plane” if Bukele wanted to return Abrego Garcia.
Abrego Garcia’s lawyers have denied the allegation he is a gang member, saying the U.S. has presented no credible evidence.
The U.S. sent Abrego Garcia to El Salvador on March 15. Trump called reporters asking whether the administration would follow the order for his return “sick people.”
“The foreign policy of the United States is conducted by the president of the United States, not by a court,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said during the Oval Office meeting.
MEGA-PRISON
Trump said he would send as many people living in the U.S. illegally to El Salvador as possible and help Bukele build new prisons.
The U.S. on Saturday deported 10 more people to El Salvador it alleges are gang members.
The migrants El Salvador accepts from the U.S. are housed in a facility known as the Terrorism Confinement Center. Critics say the prison engages in human rights abuses and that Bukele’s crackdown on gangs has swept up many innocent people without due process.
Bukele told Trump he is accused of imprisoning thousands of people. “I like to say that we actually liberated millions,” he said.
The U.S. president reacted gleefully to Bukele’s comment. “Do you think I can use that?” Trump asked.
The State Department last week lifted its advisory for American travelers to El Salvador to the safest level, crediting Bukele for reducing gang activity and violent crime.
Lawyers and relatives of the migrants held in El Salvador say they are not gang members and had no opportunity to contest the U.S. government assertion that they were.
The Trump administration says it vetted migrants to ensure they belonged to gangs including Tren de Aragua and MS-13, which it labels terrorist organizations.
Last month, after a judge said flights carrying migrants processed under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act should return to the U.S., Bukele wrote “Oopsie… Too late” on social media alongside footage showing men being hustled off a plane at night.
TUESDAY HEARING
An immigration judge had previously granted Abrego Garcia protection from being deported to El Salvador, finding that he could face gang violence there. He held a permit to work in the U.S., where he had lived since 2011.
The U.S. Supreme Court last week upheld a lower court ruling directing the administration to “facilitate and effectuate” his return. But it said the term “effectuate” was unclear and might exceed the authority of the district court judge.
A hearing is scheduled for Tuesday. Legal experts said Judge Paula Xinis may press the Trump administration to determine if it signaled to Bukele that he should refuse to release Abrego Garcia, which could amount to defiance of the court order’s language to “facilitate” his return.
While the Supreme Court in its decision ordered Xinis to clarify her order “with due regard for the deference owed to the executive branch in the conduct of foreign affairs,” some legal experts said Trump is likely defying the court by undermining Abrego Garcia’s release.
“All that is total claptrap as applied to a case like this, where the only reason why the foreign country is holding the person is because the U.S. pushed them to do it and made an agreement under which they would do it,” George Mason University constitutional law professor Ilya Somin said.
“It’s very obvious that they could get him released if they wanted to.”
Trump told reporters on Friday that his administration would bring the man back if the Supreme Court directed it to do so.
(Reporting by Gram Slattery, Simon Lewis and Jeff Mason; additional reporting by Jack Queen, Andrew Chung, Mike Scarcella, Sarah Morland, Tom Hals, Julio-Cesar Chavez, Doina Chiacu and Katharine JacksonEditing by Colleen Jenkins, Kate Mayberry, Deepa Babington, Nia Williams and Rod Nickel)
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