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**Hugh** · 15-04-2025, 07:42

Quote:

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said Monday that he does not plan to return a Maryland man whom the Trump administration mistakenly deported to his country, as the U.S. judicial system barrels toward a potential constitutional crisis over the standoff.

“How can I return him to the United States?” Bukele said in an Oval Office meeting with President Donald Trump, responding to a reporter’s question. “I smuggle him into the United States? Of course I’m not going to do it. The question is preposterous. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States?”

Kilmar Abrego García, a Salvadoran immigrant who is married to a U.S. citizen, was deported last month to El Salvador’s brutal mega-prison, CECOT. His case has become a focal point of the Trump administration’s attempt to deport more than 1 million immigrants from the United States — and the court battles over the legality of that campaign. The Supreme Court on Thursday backed a lower-court order that requires the White House to “facilitate” the release of Abrego García, but the justices stopped short of saying a lower-court judge could order the administration to “effectuate” his return.

Trump officials suggested Monday that the administration was not bound to follow court orders to return Abrego García from El Salvador.

“No court in the United States has a right to conduct the foreign policy of the United States,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said during the Oval Office meeting. But the administration in court proceedings also has conceded that Abrego García’s removal was the result of an “administrative error.”…

… Trump also told reporters Monday that he was open to deporting U.S. citizens if they had committed violent, criminal acts.

“If it’s a homegrown criminal, I have no problem,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “We’re studying the laws right now. Pam [Bondi, the attorney general] is studying. If we can do that, that’s good.”…

… The Trump administration had acknowledged in court proceedings that Abrego García was subject to a withholding order forbidding his removal to El Salvador — and that the removal to El Salvador was therefore illegal. But government attorneys said Sunday night that the administration is not required to engage El Salvador’s government in efforts to facilitate Abrego García’s return, arguing that he “is no longer eligible” for the protection from deportation that should have prevented him from being sent to El Salvador in the first place.