Update (1235ET): El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele will not return an El Salvadorian citizen mistakenly deported from the United States, suggesting that to return the man would be to smuggle a terrorist into the United States.
"Well, I'm supposed to have suggested that I smuggle a terrorist into the United States, right?" Bukele said when pressed on returning the man to the US. "Return him to the United States. I smuggle him into the United States. I'm not going to do it."
#BREAKING: President Bukele says he will REFUSE to send MS-13 gang members back to the United States from El Salvador
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor)
BUKELE: “How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? Of course I'm not going to do it. The question is preposterous!”
“Why do you want terrorists… pic.twitter.com/Ng954tOBJG
h/t Nick Sortor
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an El Salvadoran national, was mistakenly deported by the Trump administration, after which the US Supreme Court ruled that the administration must facilitate his return.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller also chimed in, saying: "So it's very arrogant, even for American media to suggest that we would even tell El Salvador how to handle their own citizens. As a starting point, as two immigration courts found that he was a member of MS-13," adding "When President Trump declared MS-13 to be a foreign terrorist organization, that meant that he was no longer eligible under federal law... for any form of immigration relief in the United States."
"So he had a deportation order that was valid, which meant that, under our law, he's not even allowed to be present in the United States and had to be returned because of the foreign terrorist designation," Miller added. "This issue was then by a district court judge completely inverted, and a district court judge tried to tell the administration that they had to kidnap a citizen of El Salvador and flying back here. That issue was raised to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court said the district court order was unlawful and its main components were reversed."
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Authored by Travis Gillmore via The Epoch Times,
President Donald Trump is opening the doors of the White House to Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, on April 14 to talk about the use of Bukele’s Terrorism Confinement Center to house illegal immigrants deported from the United States.
“Our nations are working closely together to eradicate terrorist organizations, and build a future of prosperity,” Trump wrote April 12 on his Truth Social platform.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters during a press briefing April 11 that the Central American nation’s leader is visiting “to talk about the cooperation that is at an all-time high, and we very much appreciate President Bukele and El Salvador’s cooperation and the repatriation of El Salvadorian gang members who the previous administration allowed to infiltrate our country.”
Officials point to an agreement between the two nations to incarcerate Tren de Aragua and MS-13 gang members in El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center as a positive move based on mutually beneficial collaboration.
The high-profile meeting comes on the heels of a unanimous April 10 Supreme Court decision regarding a Maryland court filing that orders the federal government to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old Salvadoran illegal immigrant and alleged gang member, who was deported to El Salvador despite a previous court ruling preventing his deportation to that country after determining it would impact his safety.
Attorneys for the federal government blamed an “administrative error” for Abrego Garcia’s deportation, according to the court ruling.
Leavitt told reporters that interpreting the language of the decision is important to understand the role the government is expected to play in assisting Abrego Garcia.
“The Supreme Court made their ruling last night very clear that it’s the administration’s responsibility to facilitate the return, not to effectuate the return,” Leavitt said.
She deferred inquiry to the Department of Justice’s newly filed brief challenging the matter in a lower court.
The deportee’s future remains unclear, with Trump suggesting El Salvador will decide his fate.
“President Bukele has graciously accepted into his nation’s custody some of the most violent alien enemies of the world and, in particular, the United States,” Trump wrote.
“These barbarians are now in the sole custody of El Salvador, a proud and sovereign nation, and their future is up to President [Bukele] and his government. They will never threaten or menace our citizens again!”
Abrego Garcia’s attorney said the government’s tactic of quickly deporting suspected illegal immigrants puts the judicial system’s reputation for fairness in question.
“The government can deport whomever they want, wherever they want, and call it a mistake later,” Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, the man’s attorney, told reporters after the Supreme Court found in his client’s favor.
Abrego Garcia was arrested on March 12 by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Baltimore.
His wife, U.S. citizen Jennifer Vasquez Sura, later identified him in a photo of shackled deportees seen entering the terrorism center and subsequently challenged the deportation in federal court.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis on April 4 ordered the federal government to return Abrego Garcia, calling the deportation “wholly lawless” in her ruling.
Abrego Garcia remains in Salvadoran custody, where he has resided for just over a month.
Prior court filings say Abrego Garcia fled gang threats in his home country as a teenager. He has no criminal record in the United States and denies the federal immigration authorities’ allegations that he is affiliated with the notorious MS-13 transnational gang.
Here's Stephen Miller to clarify a few things...
BOOM! Top Trump advisor Stephen Miller just went BERSERK for 3 minutes straight on Fox over the media narrative that Trump must bring home Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador.
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh)
Miller perfectly debunked this ENTIRE claim that Garcia's deportation was an "error." This entire… pic.twitter.com/TfGa1VjvpS