El Salvador’s president will not return an wrongly deported Maryland man to the U.S., he said during a Monday visit to the White House.
“Of course I’m not going to do it,” Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said in the Oval Office Monday. “The question is preposterous, ‘How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States?’ I don’t have the power to return him to the United States.”
Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia was arrested on March 12 and later deported to El Salvador. He is married to a U.S. citizen and originally came to the U.S. without authorization around 2011, the Associated Press reported.
Abrego Garcia has become the subject of back-and-forth federal rulings and appeals — including the U.S. Supreme Court order on April 10 that said the government must facilitate the Maryland resident’s return.
Abrego Garcia is being held in the Terrorism Confinement Center, a maximum security prison in El Salvador.
The federal government has admitted Abrego Garcia’s deportation was due to an “administrative error,” the justice department wrote in a court filing.
[Supreme Court says US must return wrongfully deported Maryland man]
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ruled on April 4 that the Trump administration must facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return. The U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, upheld Xinis’ decision on April 7 after the Department of Justice appealed to overturn her order.
The justice department then asked the Supreme Court on April 7 to stop Xinis’ ruling. The Supreme Court temporarily paused the ruling and later ordered the government on April 10 to work toward bringing Abrego Garcia back to the U.S.
[Supreme Court pauses federal ruling demanding US return wrongly deported Maryland man]
Local police turned Abrego Garcia into ICE in 2019 because of accusations that he was a member of the international gang MS-13, according to the Associated Press. The allegations stemmed from a confidential informant who claimed Abrego Garcia was part of the gang’s New York chapter, though he never lived in New York, the news agency reported.
Abrego Garcia, his family and his lawyers have repeatedly said he is not a member of MS-13, which the Trump administration has designated as a foreign terrorist organization.
Abrego Garcia applied for asylum but was denied by an immigration judge who instead ruled in 2019 to protect him from deportation to El Salvador, the Associated Press reported earlier this month.
Despite acknowledging the error, the Trump administration has repeatedly said it will not work to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S.
Stephen Miller, Trump’s homeland security advisor, argued on Monday that the U.S. does not have jurisdiction over what El Salvador does with Abrego Garcia.
“It’s very arrogant even for American media to suggest that we would even tell El Salvador how to handle their own citizens as a starting point,” Miller said in the Oval Office to reporters, Bukele and members of the Trump administration on Monday.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during an April press conference that Abrego Garcia will “not be returning” to the U.S. and reiterated the claim that the Maryland man is a member of MS-13.
