Salvadoran leader: MD man won't go free
Trump meets with Bukele at Oval Office
By: Cybele Mayes_Osterman
and Fancesca Chambers
USA Today
WASHINGTON - Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele indicated that he does not plan to send a wrongfully deported man back to the United States after the Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return.
.....
Bukele said during an Oval Office meeting with President Donald Trump on April 14 [2025] that he does not have the power to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland father and sheet metal worker, who he alleged is a terrorist.
..... "How can I return him to the United States? I smuggle him into the United States? Of course I'm not going to do it. The question is preposterous," Bukele said. "I don't have the power to return him to the United States. We're not very fond of releasing terrorist into our country."
..... "To liberate 250 million people you have to imprison some. that's the way it works, Bukele told Trump.
..... Abrego Garcia is at the heart of a Trump administration legal battle after a court ruled that he was wrongfully deported to a super-max prison in El Salvador, where alleged members of MS-13 and the Tren de Aragua gang are being held.
..... The Supreme Court last week [04/09/2025] ruled that the Trump administration must facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia, who has lived in the United States for a decade.
..... On April 11, [2025] a federal judge ordered Trump officials to provide updates on what they are doing to return him, calling it "extremely troubling" that they could not say where he was. But on April 12 [2025] the Trump administration said in a federal court brief that while Abrego Garcia is "alive and secure" in the facility, he is detained "pursuant to the sovereign, domestic authority of El Salvador."
..... On April 14, [2025] Trump called reporters asking whether the administration where follow the order to return Abrego Garcia "sick people."
..... He also said April 14 [2025] he wants to deport some violent criminals who are U.S. citizens to Salvadoran prisons, "but you'll have to be looking at the laws on that" proposal.
..... University of Notre dame professor Erin Corcoran, an immigration law expert, said that plan would violate U.S. law.
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"There is no provisions under U.S. law that would allow the government to kick citizens out of the country," he said.
..... Earlier April 14, [2025]
the White House's deputy chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller, who also serves as the president's homeland security adviser, declined to day whether Trump would ask Bukele to send Abrego Garcia back to the United States.
..... "He has no lawful right to be here. He was issued a final order of removal from this country, and so it's up to El Salvador and to the government and the people of El Salvador what the fate of there now citizen is," Miller told reporters. "We can't extradite citizens of foreign entire to our country over objection of those countries."
..... Though Abrego Garcia is not a U.S. citizen, a federal judge granted him a protective order allowing him to remain in the country. Abrego Garcia fled el Salvador in 2006 to escape persecution by gangs, according to court documents.
..... The Trump administration says Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang - a claim that a U.S. district judge said earlier this month [04/2025] they had not provided evidence to support, according to court documents.
.... Abrego Garcia's lawyers say the MS-13 chapter he was accused of being a part of is based in New York, a state in which he has never lived.
..... Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the deportations are a "clear consequence for the worst of the worst" criminals in remarks during the meeting.
..... After a plane carrying Abrego Garcia and other detainees secretly left the United States in mid-March. [2025] a federal judge in a separate case temporary blocked the deportation, ruling that the plane must turn around.
..... "Oopsie... Too late," Bukele wrote with a crying laughing emoji on X the next day alongside a screenshot of a news report on the judge's decision.
..... The Supreme court later lifted the judge's block, saying Trump could resume deportations of some detainees.
..... Contributing: Reuters