El Salvador President Nayib Bukele on Monday said he will not return a Maryland dad the U.S. admitted it wrongly deported — and he and President Donald Trump attacked the press for even asking such a question.
During an Oval Office meeting with Trump on Monday, Bukele argued he had no power to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the U.S. — just after Attorney General Pam Bondi said the responsibility falls to El Salvador.
“I’m not going to do it,” Bukele said to the press. “I mean, 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.”
The U.S. admitted an “administrative error” led to it deporting Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, despite him having no criminal record. Abrego Garcia, who is married to an American citizen, came to the U.S. illegally after a Salvadoran gang threatened him and his family, per his lawyers. A U.S. immigration judge in 2019 blocked his deportation, finding that he was at risk of harm back in his home country. But the Trump administration detained him in its broad roundup of undocumented immigrants.
Both Bukele and Trump, however, called Abrego Garcia a “criminal” and attacked the press for even asking about his legally mandated return:
Bukele: “You want us to go back into releasing criminals so we can go back to being the murder capital of the world? That’s not going to happen.”
Trump: “They’d love to have a criminal released into our country. ... These are sick people.”
