El Salvador President Nayib Bukele told the press that he will not return Kilmar Abrego Garcia during his meeting with President Trump on Monday, April 14, 2025, at the Oval Office.
“How can I return him to the United States? Like if I smuggle him into the United States? Of course I’m not going to do it. The question is preposterous,” Bukele said when he was asked whether he’d return Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
“We’re not very fond of releasing terrorists,” he continued, when asked if he’d be released in his country.
Trump has expressed his desire for Bukele to take in as many criminals as possible. During the visit, Bukele struck a deal with the Trump administration, with the US to pay $6 million to the country to imprison Venezuelan deportees for a year, according to PBS News.
This comes after the supreme court unanimous decision last week for Abrego Garcia’s release, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador. The Supreme Court has called his deportation illegal, directing the administration to “facilitate” his return to the United States.
Despite the court’s unanimous order, the administration has maintained that it doesn’t believe the US has the authority to return Abrego Garcia back to the country.
“The ruling solely stated that if this individual at El Salvador’s sole discretion was sent back to our country, we could deport him a second time,” according to Trump’s policy chief, Stephen Miller.
Paula Xinis, a Maryland US District Judge, is seeking Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States and noted that he has no criminal record in the United States or in El Salvador.
Xinis states that his gang-related charge stems from “a singular unsubstantiated allegation” of him wearing a Chicago Bulls hat and hoodie, which she states is a vague, uncorroborated allegation from a confidential informant claiming he belonged to MS-13’s Western clique in New York, a place he has never lived.
Abrego Garcia, along with three other men, was arrested in March 2019 at a Home Depot parking lot in Prince George, Maryland, with one of the men alleging that Abrego Garcia was a member of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, which is listed as a foreign terrorist organization. In October 2019, a judge granted him “withholding of removal” status to prevent him from being deported due to gang threats that would pose on him after his request for asylum was denied for not submitting his application within a year after arriving in the United States.
Kilmer Abrego Garcia was illegally deported to El Salvador on March 12, 2025, after picking up his 5-year-old from his grandmother’s home in Maryland. Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Stefania Vasquez Sura, sued the United States on March 24, 2025, following her husband’s deportation.
