WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump's top advisers and Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, claimed Monday they have no basis for the small Central American nation to return a Maryland man who was wrongly deported there last month.
Bukele called the idea "preposterous," though the U.S. Supreme Court called on the administration to "facilitate" Kilmar Abrego Garcia's return.
Trump administration officials said Abrego Garcia, who was sent to a notorious gang prison in El Salvador, was a citizen of that country and claimed the U.S. has no say in his future. Bukele, who is a vital partner for the Trump administration in its deportation efforts, said "of course" he would not release him back to U.S. soil.
President Donald Trump greets El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele as he arrives Monday at the West Wing of the White House in Washington.
"The question is preposterous. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States?" Bukele, seated alongside Trump, said in the Oval Office Monday. "I don't have the power to return him to the United States."
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In a court filing Monday evening, Joseph Mazzara, the acting general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security, said it “does not have authority to forcibly extract†Abrego Garcia from El Salvador because he is “in the domestic custody of a foreign sovereign nation.â€
The refusal of both countries to allow the return of Abrego Garcia, who had an immigration court order preventing his deportation over fears of gang persecution, is intensifying the battle over the Maryland resident's future. It also played out in contentious court filings, with repeated refusals from the government to tell a judge what it plans to do, if anything, to repatriate him.
Since March, El Salvador accepted more than 200 Venezuelan immigrants — whom Trump administration officials accused of gang activity and violent crimes — and placed them inside the country's maximum-security gang prison just outside of the capital, San Salvador.
Protestors chant Monday during a demonstration against President Donald Trump's use of El Salvador's Terrorism Confinement Center prison outside the Embassy of El Salvador in Washington.
That prison is part of Bukele's broader effort to crack down on the country's powerful street gangs, which has put 84,000 people behind bars and made Bukele popular at home.
Bukele struck a deal under which the U.S. will pay about $6 million for El Salvador to imprison the Venezuelan immigrants for a year.
Democrats raised alarm about the treatment of Abrego Garcia and other migrants who may be wrongfully detained in El Salvador.
Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland pushed for a meeting with Bukele while he was in Washington to discuss Abrego Garcia's potential return, and New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, urged the administration to release Abrego Garcia and others “with no credible criminal record†who were deported to the maximum-security prison.
“Disregarding the rule of law, ignoring unanimous rulings by the Supreme Court and subjecting individuals to detention and deportation without due process makes us less safe as a country,†Shaheen said.
Protestors chant Monday during a demonstration against President Donald Trump's use of El Salvador's Terrorism Confinement Center prison outside the Embassy of El Salvador in Washington.
Though other judges ruled against the Trump administration, this month the Supreme Court cleared the way for Trump to use the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th century wartime law, to deport the immigrants. The justices did insist the immigrants get a court hearing before being removed from the U.S.
Over the weekend, 10 more people who the administration claims are members of the MS-13 and Tren de Aragua gangs arrived in El Salvador, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday.
Trump openly says he would also favor El Salvador taking custody of American citizens who committed violent crimes, a view he repeated Monday.
"We have bad ones too, and I'm all for it because we can do things with the president for less money and have great security," Trump said during the meeting. "And we have a huge prison population."
It is unclear how lawful U.S. citizens could be deported elsewhere in the world.
Before the press entered the Oval Office, Trump said in a video posted on social media by Bukele that he wanted to send "homegrowns" to be incarcerated in El Salvador, and added that "you've got to build five more places," suggesting Bukele doesn't have enough prison capacity for all of the U.S. citizens that Trump would like to send there.
President Donald Trump, right, shakes hands with El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele during a Monday meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court called for the Trump administration to "facilitate" the return of Abrego Garcia.
Trump claimed over the weekend he would return Abrego Garcia to the U.S. if the high court's justices said to bring him back, saying "I have great respect for the Supreme Court." But the tone from top administration officials was sharply different on Monday.
"He's a citizen of El Salvador," said Stephen Miller, a White House deputy chief of staff. "So it's very arrogant, even for American media, to suggest that we would even tell El Salvador how to handle their own citizens."
Attorney General Pam Bondi claimed two immigration court judges — who are under Justice Department purview — found that Abrego Garcia was a member of MS-13, though the man's attorneys say the government provided no evidence that he was affiliated with MS-13 or any other gang.
As prisoners stand looking out from a cell, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks March 26 during a tour of the Terrorist Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador.
While Bukele's crackdown on gangs has popular support, the country has lived under a state of emergency that suspends some basic rights for three years.
Populists who successfully crafted their images through media, Bukele and Trump are of different generations but display similar tendencies in how they relate to the press, quell political opposition and use justice systems in their respective countries.
Bukele came to power in the middle of Trump's first term and had a straightforward relationship with the U.S. leader. Trump was most concerned with immigration and, under Bukele, the number of Salvadorans heading for the U.S. border declined.
Bukele's relationship with the U.S. grew more complicated at the start of the Biden administration, which was openly critical of some of his antidemocratic actions.
Protecting rural immigrant populations from expanding reach of ICE
Protecting rural immigrant populations from expanding reach of ICE
Helping people understand their rights might seem like dry legal work, but working for Jefferson County Immigrant Rights Association (JCIRA) allowed Courtney Morales-Thral, the Multicultural Center administrator, to make a real difference in the lives of immigrants on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State.
"We heard recently that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) was parked in front of the hospital in Port Angeles, and that stopped someone from going to see a baby in the hospital because they didn't feel safe," Morales-Thrall told . "That's going to make people turn around and go home or go to a different hospital, which may be out here, rurally, an hour or two away"
Despite the Keep Washington Working Act passed in 2019, which prohibits law enforcement from detaining anyone to determine their immigration status and working with CBP or Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, amongst other rights, immigrants have good reasons to feel nervous.Â
The immigrant community here still bears the trauma of a campaign waged against them in 2008.Â
After a suspected terrorist was apprehended at the Port Angeles border, the number of agents increased from four agents to 25. Suddenly, checkpoints appeared on highways, with CBP and ICE agents demanding to see IDs and other documents from drivers and bus passengers. They also monitored public places, like hospitals and schools.Â
In the 2011 documentary it was reported that between February and November 2008, the border patrol stopped 24,524 vehicles at 53 roadblocks in Washington State. These stops led to 81 undocumented immigrants being taken into custody, though they were unable to find any additional evidence of terrorist activity. "The community was decimated by the amount of deportations, stops, and the trauma of that time in this area," Morales-Thrall said.
In that same documentary, Pastor John Topal from St. Mary of the Sea Catholic Church in Port Townsend summed up the cultural shift by saying, "The border patrol says it will not apprehend people in churches or schools, but their presence at these institutions nevertheless has had a chilling effect."
Trump's recent executive order allowing ICE into formerly protected spaces like hospitals and schools has reignited that trauma for many in the immigrant community, regardless of the State's new protections.Â
Linda Rosenbury, the superintendent of Port Townsend Schools, is working closely with JCIRA to help parents and high school students understand their rights and give them the support and reassurance they need to continue attending school.
The school is also working with staff to understand what types of warrants allow immigration agents into part of the school beyond the main office and what kind of legal support they can get if they have an emergency need.
Alongside having clear messaging for immigrant families and teaching staff, the school also helps families make plans in case anything does happen.
"When I've studied ICE raids in the past, it's a major impact on a community. If there is an ICE raid at a local employer and then there are multiple children left without caretakers," Rosenbury said. "If we had to place students in homes, we would follow family plans and ensure that there's a safe place for every student."
While the schools are focusing on the physical well-being of immigrant families, JCIRA has found a way to help support both their understanding of their rights and their mental well-being through a trauma-informed therapy program specifically for immigrants.Â
"We started a mental health partnership with an organization, a nonprofit based in Mexico because therapy is hugely cost-prohibitive for a lot of people and also has a lack of cultural understanding and language proficiency," Morales-Thrall said.
JCIRA connects local immigrants with a therapist in Mexico who specializes in migration and trauma through a new low-bar support program.Â
"The majority of the immigrants we work with are Mexican, Latino, Guatemalan, and so that's the focus, but it's not just for those people," Morales-Thrall said. This program brought a resource to rural Jefferson County, whose local hospital has struggled to find the resources to provide even basic language support.Â
"There's one doctor that speaks pretty good Spanish, and so that's really great, but therapists, absolutely not," Morales-Thrall said. "And even if they had a nice white lady that speaks Spanish, it wouldn't be the same. Because people need that cultural understanding when you're talking about immigration."
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