Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland sheet metal worker, was wrongfully deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador.
Maryland judge calls on US to return wrongly deported man
Following the Supreme Court’s support to return wrongly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a federal judge issued further guidance.
- “The question is preposterous,” Bukele said.
- The Supreme Court last week ruled that the Trump administration must facilitate the return of Garcia, who has lived in the U.S. for a decade.
WASHINGTON − El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele indicated that he does not plan to send a wrongfully deported Maryland man back to the U.S. after the Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return.
Bukele said during an Oval Office meeting with President Donald Trump that he does not have the power to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland father and sheet metal worker, whom he alleged is a terrorist.
“How can I return him to the United States? I smuggle him into the United States? Of course I’m not going to do it. The question is preposterous,” Bukele said. “I don’t have the power to return him to the United States. We’re not very fond of releasing terrorists into our country.”
Abrego Garcia is at the heart of a Trump administration legal battle after a court ruled that he was wrongfully deported to a supermax prison in El Salvador, where alleged members of MS-13 and the Tren de Aragua gang are being held.
The Supreme Court last week ruled that the Trump administration must facilitate the return of Garcia, who has lived in the U.S. for a decade.
On Friday, a federal judge ordered Trump officials to provide updates on what they are doing to return him, calling it “extremely troubling” that they could not say where he was. But on Saturday the Trump administration said in a federal court brief that while Abrego Garcia is “alive and secure” in the facility, he is detained “pursuant to the sovereign, domestic authority of El Salvador.”