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In an Oval Office meeting with President Trump on Monday, President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador said that he would not return a Maryland man who was wrongly deported from the United States and sent to a notorious Salvadoran prison.
Mr. Bukele, who has positioned himself as a key ally to Mr. Trump, in part by opening his country’s prisons to deportees, sat next to the president and a group of cabinet officials who struck a combative tone over the case, which has reached the Supreme Court.
“Of course I’m not going to do it,” Mr. Bukele said when reporters asked if he was willing to help return the man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old father of three who was deported last month.
The Trump administration has acknowledged that his deportation was the result of an “administrative error.”
The message from the meeting was clear: Neither Mr. Trump nor Mr. Bukele had any intention of returning Mr. Abrego Garcia, even though the Supreme Court has ruled that he should come back to the United States. The case has come to symbolize Mr. Trump’s defiance of the courts and his willingness to deport people without due process.
Mr. Trump also mused about the possibility of sending American citizens convicted of violent crimes to prison in El Salvador, although he said Attorney General Pam Bondi was still studying the legality of the proposal.
“Mr. Abrego Garcia has never been charged with or convicted of being in a gang. In 2011, his lawyers say, he fled threats and violence in El Salvador and came to the United States illegally to join his brother, a U.S. citizen, in Maryland. He later married an American citizen.
Mr. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Bukele followed suit, saying that returning Mr. Abrego Garcia would be akin to smuggling “a terrorist into the United States.” As the Salvadoran president talked, Mr. Trump, surrounded by cabinet members who spoke in support of the president on cue, smiled in approval.
In a legal filing on Sunday, the Justice Department also argued that the courts lacked the ability to dictate steps the White House should take to return Mr. Abrego Garcia because only the president has the power to handle U.S. foreign policy.
Though the administration resisted helping Mr. Abrego Garcia, Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, said on Monday that he wanted to discuss with Mr. Bukele returning the Salvadoran migrant.
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