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Agencies

El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele on Monday said he would not return a man who the Trump administration admits was mistakenly deported to the Central American country as part of a controversial US migration crackdown.
“The question is preposterous. How can I return him to the United States? It’s like, I smuggle him into the United States? … I don’t have the power to return him to the United States,” Bukele said at a meeting in the Oval Office with US President Donald Trump.
The Trump administration has been ordered by a court to facilitate the man’s return after he was deported without due process
Trump administration officials emphasised that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was sent to a notorious gang prison in El Salvador, was a citizen of that country and that the US has no say in his future. Bukele has been a vital partner for the Trump administration in its deportation efforts.
Should El Salvador want to return Abrego Garcia, the US would “facilitate it, meaning provide a plane”, Attorney General Pam Bondi said.
But she added: “He was illegally in our country.”
Since March, El Salvador has accepted from the US more than 200 Venezuelan immigrants – whom Trump administration officials have accused of gang activity and violent crimes – and placed them inside the country’s notorious maximum-security gang prison just outside the capital, San Salvador. It is also holding Abrego Garcia.

Bukele, who remains extremely popular in El Salvador due in part to the crackdown on the country’s powerful street gangs, is a vital ally for the Trump administration, which has offered little evidence for its claims that the Venezuelan immigrants were in fact gang members, nor has it released names of those deported.
Asked whether he had any concerns about the prison where deportees were being held, Trump told reporters early on Sunday that Bukele was doing a “fantastic job”.
“He’s taking care of a lot of problems that we have that we really wouldn’t be able to take care of from cost standpoint,” Trump said.
“And he’s doing really … he’s been amazing. We have some very bad people in that prison. People that should have never been allowed into our country.”
Since Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s visit in February, Bukele – whose government has arrested more than 84,000 people as part of his three-year crackdown on gangs – has made it clear he is ready to help the Trump administration with its deportation ambitions.
Bukele struck a deal under which the US will pay about US$6 million for El Salvador to imprison the Venezuelan immigrants for a year.
When a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to turn around a flight carrying the immigrants already en route to El Salvador, Bukele wrote on social media: “Oopsie … too late.”
Though other judges had 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 that the immigrants get a court hearing before being removed from the US. 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, Rubio said on Sunday.
“We’ve also found cooperation in other countries that are willing to take some of these people, some very dangerous criminals,” Rubio said during a cabinet meeting on Thursday. Bukele, Rubio added, “has really been a good friend to the United States in that regard. These are some of the worst people you’ll ever encounter”.
Trump has said openly he would also favour El Salvador taking American citizens who have committed violent crimes, although he added, “I’d only do according to the law.”
It is unclear how lawful US citizens could be deported elsewhere. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said such citizens would be “heinous, violent criminals who have broken our nation’s laws repeatedly”.

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.
He built the massive prison, located just outside San Salvador in the town of Tecoluca, to hold those accused of gang affiliation under his crackdown.
Part of his offer to receive the Venezuelans was that the US also send back some Salvadoran gang leaders. In February, his ambassador to the US, Milena Mayorga, said on a radio programme that having gang leaders face justice in El Salvador was “an issue of honour”.
Bukele could also seek relief from the 10 per cent tariff recently imposed by Trump, using the argument that it weakens the economy Bukele is trying to bolster.
Bukele came to power in the middle of Trump’s first term and had a straightforward relationship with the US leader. Trump was most concerned with immigration and, under Bukele, the number of Salvadoreans heading for the US border declined.
Bukele’s relationship with the US grew more complicated at the start of the Biden administration, which was openly critical of some of his antidemocratic actions. Trump has also shown some irritation with Bukele in the past, accusing El Salvador of lowering its crime rate by sending people to the US.
At a campaign rally last year Trump said of Bukele: “He’s not working with them [Salvadoran criminals]. He’s dumping them in the United States and their crime rate, their murder rate, is down 72 per cent.”
Just before Bukele’s arrival in Washington, the State Department updated its travel advisory for El Salvador to Level 1, which is for countries that are considered the safest to visit for US citizens. The advisory notes that gang activity, and the accompanying murders and other violent crimes, has declined in the past three years.
Reporting by Agence France-Presse, Associated Press


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Donald Trump

El Salvador’s Bukele says he will not return wrongly deported migrant to US

US President Donald Trump shakes hands with El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele in the White House on Monday. Photo: AFP

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran migrant who lived in the US legally with a work permit and was mistakenly deported to El Salvador. Photo: Abrego Garcia Family / Handout via Reuters

Trump and El Salvador’s Bukele in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington on Monday. Photo: Reuters

US deports another 10 gang members to El Salvador, Marco Rubio says

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio (right) and El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele in El Congo municipality, El Salvador in February. Photo: AFP/Getty Images/TNS

Relatives of Venezuelan migrants deported from the United States to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador hold signs during a demonstration in front of the United Nations building in Caracas, Venezuela last month. Photo: AFP

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran migrant who lived in the US legally with a work permit and was erroneously deported to El Salvador. Photo: Abrego Garcia Family/Reuters

US Supreme Court says Trump admin must help bring back man sent to El Salvador by mistake

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran migrant who lived in the US legally and was erroneously deported to El Salvador, is seen in a handout image obtained on Tuesday. Photo: Abrego Garcia Family via Reuters

Jennifer Vasquez Sura (centre), wife of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, listens during a news conference to discuss his arrest and deportation in Washington on Wednesday. Photo: AFP

US ordered to return man sent to El Salvador prison in ‘error’ during Trump deportation

Prisoners look out of their cell at the Terrorist Confinement Centre in Tecoluca, El Salvador. Photo: TNS

Kilmar Abrego Garcia was apprehended in Maryland in March. Photo: AP

A man, identified by Jennifer Vasquez Sura as her husband, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, is escorted by guards in an El Salvador prison. Photo: AP

The White House says Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang. Photo: AP

A man identified by Jennifer Vasquez Sura as her husband, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, is forced to sit with other prisoners by guards in the Terrorism Confinement Centre in Tecoluca, El Salvador. Photo: AP

Man wrongly deported to El Salvador must stay for now after Trump appeal: US Supreme Court

A man identified by Jennifer Vasquez Sura as her husband, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, is led by force through the Terrorism Confinement Centre in Tecoluca, El Salvador, on Wednesday. Photo: US District Court for the District of Maryland via AP

A man identified as Kilmar Abrego Garcia is held at the Terrorism Confinement Centre in El Salvador on Wednesday. Photo: US District Court for the District of Maryland via AP

Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Photo: CASA via AP

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Trump administration has been ordered by a court to facilitate return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia after he was deported without due process


Trump administration has been ordered by a court to facilitate return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia after he was deported without due process.
