El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele has said he won’t return Maryland gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States, despite the Supreme Court ruling that the Trump administration must “facilitate” his release after an admitted deportation error landed the Maryland resident in one of the world’s most notorious prisons.
Speaking in the Oval Office alongside President Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi, Bukele dismissed the notion outright. “How can I return him to the United States? I smuggle him into the U.S., or what do I do? Of course, I’m not going to do it,” Bukele said, brushing off the question as absurd. He labeled Abrego Garcia a “terrorist” and claimed he had no authority to unilaterally send him back.
Bondi, for her part, shifted the burden squarely onto El Salvador, saying, “It’s up to El Salvador if they want to return him. First and foremost, he was illegally in our country.”
She explained the U.S. would “provide a plane” if El Salvador agreed to release him but made clear the final decision was in Bukele’s hands.
However, legal documents paint a more complicated picture. The U.S. Supreme Court didn’t condition its ruling on El Salvador’s willingness.
It found that a lower court correctly ordered the U.S. to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release and ordered further hearings to determine how that should proceed. The Justice Department has since said it’s prepared to take “all available steps to remove domestic obstacles” to bring him home.
Abrego Garcia, who lives in Maryland with his U.S. citizen wife and their children, has no criminal record in either the U.S. or El Salvador.
His lawyers assert he has no affiliation with any gang and was mistakenly deported as part of a broader crackdown on alleged gang members, many of whom were sent to CECOT, El Salvador’s infamous Terrorism Confinement Center.
State Department official Michael Kozak confirmed in a court filing that Abrego Garcia is alive and detained under El Salvador’s domestic authority. While acknowledging the deportation was an “administrative error,” the U.S. has yet to secure his release.
An investigation by 60 Minutes found that 75% of Venezuelans deported to CECOT had no criminal record, and only a small fraction were accused of violent crimes. Many were charged with petty theft or trespassing.
Meanwhile, Trump floated a provocative idea: outsourcing incarceration of U.S. citizens to El Salvador. “If it’s a homegrown criminal, I have no problem,” Trump said, noting that the administration is “studying the laws” to see if Americans could legally serve prison time abroad.
Legal scholars quickly pointed out that such a policy could violate constitutional protections, citing the 1936 Valentine v. United States case that forbids extraditing U.S. citizens without Congressional approval.
Despite the legal chaos surrounding Abrego Garcia’s case, Trump praised Bukele’s cooperation on law enforcement and border security. “President Bukele has graciously accepted into his Nation’s custody some of the most violent alien enemies of the World,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “They will never threaten or menace our Citizens again!”
Bukele, for his part, said it was “an honor” to support Trump’s agenda and praised the sharp decline in illegal border crossings, touting his own success in dramatically reducing El Salvador’s crime rate.