During a meeting at the Oval Office on Monday, President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador said he did not plan to return a Maryland man to the United States.
“I'm not going to do it. I mean, the question is preposterous,” said Bukele, after reporters pressured him on whether Kilmar Abrego-Garcia, a Beltsville man, would be returned.
Abrego-Garcia’s case has sparked a closely watched court battle that lawyers worry has major implications for the separation of powers and the rule of law.
This latest turn of events directly contradicts comments made by President Donald Trump last week where he said, “If the Supreme Court said, ‘Bring somebody back,’ I would do that. ... I respect the Supreme Court.”
Lawyers for Abrego-Garcia say that is precisely what the country’s highest court did last week in their unanimous unsigned decision when they largely upheld a lower court ruling.
Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller said on Monday that a Maryland’s judge's order to return Abrego-Garcia was akin to “kidnapping” a citizen of El Salvador.
A contempt order could be next if there’s any chance of bringing Abrego-Garcia back to the States, one of his lawyers told ABC News' Start Here.
"Whether it's DOJ or DHS getting held in contempt and the judge taking some move there, we'll see how that plays out," Benjamin Osorio told the station. "I imagine if they stall too much, that's what you're going to see."
Abrego-Garcia had been living in Maryland for 14 years when on March 12, he was apprehended and detained by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement on his way home from work. His wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, identified Abrego-Garcia by his tattoos in a photo of incarcerated men at El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center. That prison is widely condemned for alleged human rights’ abuses.
Abrego-Garcia is an El Salvador native but in 2019, a Maryland immigration judge ruled that he could not be sent back to his home country as he could be a target for persecution by gangs there.
Despite the fact that the United States Department of Homeland Security admitted that “an administrative error” was made in sending Abrego-Garcia to El Salvador, officials in both countries are using the man’s nationality to say they cannot send him to the United States.
“How can I return him to the United States? I smuggle him into the United States?” said Bukele.
"That's up to El Salvador," said Attorney General Pam Bondi. "If El Salvador ... wanted to return him, we would facilitate it."
“President, first and foremost, he was illegally in our country,” said the Attorney General. While Abrego-Garcia did enter the country unauthorized, he has since obtained a work permit and checked in with ICE yearly until he was removed from the country last month, according to court filings.
Trump praised El Salvador’s harsh prisons and said he wanted to explore those possibilities for American citizens.
“We also have homegrown criminals… I'd like to include them in the group of people to get them out of the country, but you'll have to be looking at the laws on that,” said the president.
Abrego-Garcia’s wrongful deportation has sparked outcry from the state’s top Democratic leaders. Governor Wes Moore through a spokesman wrote to WYPR and said that it is a “fact” that Abrego-Garcia was wrongfully deported.
“They admitted to this ‘administrative error’ and the Supreme Court unanimously demanded they fix it. But, instead of taking action, Trump refused to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia and is now even threatening to deport U.S. citizens to El Salvador,” the governor wrote.
“This situation is appalling, and I will not stand idly by as this administration disappears Americans to foreign prisons,” said Moore, although he did not provide additional details on actions he would or could take.
Ahead of Bukele’s White House visit on Monday, Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen requested a meeting with Bukele.
“If Kilmar is not home by midweek — I plan to travel to El Salvador this week to check on his condition and discuss his release,” the senator said in a statement. Van Hollen also shared text of a letter he sent to Salvadoran Ambassador Milena Mayorga.
Van Hollen’s office did not immediately respond to questions about whether that meeting will or has taken place.
