El Salvadoran President Nayib Armando Bukele said Monday that he has no intention of returning alleged MS-13 gang member Abrego Garcia back to the United States.
Garcia, 29, was among the hundreds of illegal immigrants—a large percentage of them MS-13 and Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang members —expelled from the U.S. to El Salvador last month.
The Trump administration acknowledged in court records that it made an “administrative error” when it deported Garcia without an interview, but has insisted that he has no legal status in the United States.
Garcia crossed the border illegally in 2012 and after he was detained in 2019, claimed he had to flee El Salvador as a teenager to escape gang violence. Both the original immigration judge and the Board of Immigration Appeals found there was sufficient evidence that Garcia was a member of MS-13 and, as such, a danger to the public.
Bukele told President Trump at the White House Monday morning that his government is “very eager” to help the United States with its crime problem.
The El Salvadoran president pointed out that after just a few years under his leadership, his country has gone from being the “the murder capital of the world to the safest country in the Western Hemisphere.”
Bukele commended Trump for quickly shutting down Joe Biden’s open border operation, prompting the president to boast that as of this morning, illegal border crossings had dropped 99.1 percent.
The president then took a question from CNN’s “very low rated anchor” Kaitlan Collins, who asked Trump if he plans to ask Bukele to help return “the man who was mistakenly deported” back to the United States.
Trump handed the question over to Attorney General Pam Bondi, who reiterated that the alleged gang member had been in the country illegally.
“First and foremost, he was illegally in our country,” Bondi said. “And in 2019, two courts—an immigration court and an appellate immigration court ruled that he was a member of MS-13 and he was illegally in our country.”
Bondi added that the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that if El Salvador wanted to return Garcia to the United States, the US would need to facilitate it, “meaning provide a plane.”
On Fox News earlier Monday, White House Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller accused the corporate media of misreporting the ruling as a loss for the Trump administration.
During the White House meeting with Bukele, Trump asked Miller for his thoughts on the Garcia affair.
Miller chastised the media for arrogantly suggesting that the United States tell another country what to do with their own citizen. He went on to explain that when President Trump designated MS-13 a foreign terrorist group, that made him ineligible for immigration relief.
“So he had a deportation order that was valid which means under our laws, he’s not even allowed to be present in the United States and had to be returned because of the foreign terrorist designation,” he explained.
Miller contended that a district court judge [Paula Xinis of Maryland] inverted the case and “tried to tell the administration that they had to kidnap a citizen of El Salvador and fly him back here.”
“That issue was raised to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court said the district court order was unlawful and stated clearly that neither the Secretary of State nor the president could be compelled by anybody to forcibly retrieve a citizen of El Salvador from El Salvador,” Miller told the White House reporters, insisting that Garcia “is a member of MS-13, which I’m sure you know, rapes little girls, murders women, murders children, is engaged in the most barbaric activities in the world and I can promise you, if he was your neighbor, you would move right away.”
Miller told Fox News that a Democrat “saboteur” at the Department of Justice had exacerbated the controversy surrounding Garcia’s deportation by falsely claiming in court that the suspected gang member was “mistakenly” removed.
“A DOJ lawyer who has since been relieved of duty, a saboteur, a Democrat, put into a filing incorrectly that this was a mistaken removal. It was NOT! This was the right person sent to the right place,” Miller told Fox News’ Bill Hemmer Monday morning.
The CNN reporter then asked Bukele if he planned to return Garcia to the United States.
“How can I return him to the United States?” El Salvador president responded incredulously. “Like I smuggle him into the United States? Of course I’m not going to do that.”
He added: “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.”
Asked if he would release him into El Salvador,” Bukele answered, “we’re not very fond of releasing terrorists into our country.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio added that he didn’t understand where the confusion was coming from, pointing out that the president—not the courts— has the power to conduct the foreign policy of the United States.
“End of story,” Rubio said.
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