In an Oval Office meeting with President Trump, President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador said on Monday that he would not return a Maryland man who was wrongly deported from the United States and sent to a notorious prison in El Salvador.
“Of course I’m not going to do it,” Mr. Bukele said when reporters asked if he was willing to help return the man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, whose case is at the heart of a legal battle that has reached the Supreme Court.
Mr. Bukele said returning Mr. Abrego Garcia would be akin to smuggling “a terrorist into the United States.” As the Salvadoran president talked, Mr. Trump smiled in approval, surrounded by cabinet members who spoke in support of the president on cue.
The Trump administration has said in court that the deportation of Mr. Abrego Garcia was an “administrative error.” In 2019, an immigration judge had barred the United States from deporting him, saying he might face violence or torture if sent to El Salvador. He came to the United States illegally in 2011.
The Supreme Court last week ordered the administration to “facilitate” Mr. Abrego Garcia’s return. But in a legal filing on Sunday, the Justice Department argued that the courts lacked the ability to dictate steps the White House should take to return Mr. Abrego Garcia, because only the president had the power to handle U.S. foreign policy.
The meeting in the Oval Office on Monday was a blunt example of Mr. Trump’s defiance of the courts. The president and his top White House officials said the decision over Mr. Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old father of three, would have to be made by Mr. Bukele.
The Trump administration has justified its use of a wartime authority to deport migrants to El Salvador by alleging that they are members of violent gangs like MS-13, which originated in the United States and operates in South America, and the Venezuelan criminal group Tren de Aragua.
While some of the deportees had criminal convictions, court papers have shown that the evidence the government has relied on to label some of them gang members was often little more than whether they had tattoos or had worn clothing associated with a criminal organization.
