Trump and Bukele Bond Over El Salvador Deportation in Oval Office
President Donald Trump welcomed El Salvador’s president and self-proclaimed “world’s coolest dictator,” Nayib Bukele to the White House on Monday amid a backdrop of controversy and court battles over his administration’s shipment of hundreds of migrants to El Salvador’s notorious prison system without due process.
While taking questions from the press in the Oval Office, Bukele said he would not return Kilmar Abrego Garcia — a Maryland man the Trump administration admitted it wrongfully deported after accusing him of being a member of MS-13 — to the United States. Trump, meanwhile, lashed out at the press for asking about Abrego Garcia’s return, and expressed interest in sending American citizens to El Savlador’s prisons.
“How long do we have to answer this question?” Trump griped when CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked him why he wouldn’t bring Abrego Garcia back despite saying last week that he will respect the decision of the Supreme Court, which ruled that the administration must indeed bring him back. “Why don’t you just say, ‘Isn’t it wonderful that we’re keeping criminals out of our country?’ Why can’t you just say that?” Trump continued to Collins. “That’s why no one watches you anymore.”
Bukele and Trump have been publicly forging a partnership centered around extending the “judicial black hole” of El Salvador’s prisons to the United States as a tool for Trump’s deportation agenda. Last month, the Trump administration sent over 200 Venezuelan and Salvadoran migrants into Bukele’s custody — depositing them in the notorious Center for Terrorism Confinement (CECOT) mega-prison without a hearing, criminal charges, or conviction.
With little information regarding the whereabouts and conditions of those sent to El Salvador, the so-called deportations could constitute illegal enforced disappearances under international law, and violations of American civil rights law. On Sunday, the Trump administration claimed it had no responsibility to facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia to the U.S. despite an order from the Supreme Court. Abrego Garcia has never been charged or convicted of any crime, much less a gang-related one.
Bukele has imprisoned tens of thousands of Salvadorans without trial or due process, raising the nation’s incarceration rate to two percent of the population — the highest in the world. Human rights organizations have documented extensive abuse, torture, and even murder of prisoners within El Salvador’s prisons, with prisoners having virtually no recourse to seek justice. In the White House on Monday, Bukele claimed that by imprisoning thousands, he had “liberated millions” — and encouraged Trump to do the same. “They say that we imprisoned thousands. I say we liberated millions […] to liberate that many you have to imprison some,” he told Trump.
“Who gave him that line? You think I could use that?” Trump replied with a laugh.
Bukele also said that he would not help “smuggle a terrorist” into the United States, when asked if he would allow Abrego Garcia to be released from El Salvador’s custody. “I don’t have the power to return him to the United States,” Bukele said of the man currently trapped in his own prison system.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller defended Abrego Garcia’s unlawful detention, practically yelling at reporters gathered in the room that returning him to the United States would be akin to “kidnapping” a citizen of El Salvador. Miller once again baselessly asserted that Abrego Garcia was “a member of MS-13, which rapes little girls, murders women,murders children, is engaged in the most barbaric activities in the world.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi also lied about Abrego Garcia’s situation, telling reporters that he was an MS-13 member who was illegally in the United States. Bondi also said it’s up to El Salvador whether Abrego Garcia is returned to the Supreme Court. “If they wanted to return him, we would ‘facilitate’ it, meaning provide a plane,” she said.
Abrego Garcia was in the United States legally at the time of his deportation, and the Trump administration said in a court filing that he was mistakenly sent to El Savlador due to an “administrative error.” The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that the administration needs to bring him back to the U.S. The administration has been reluctant to comply.
As previously reported by Rolling Stone, the Trump administration has also been looking into how to send naturalized citizens to El Salvador. When asked on Monday about the nature of those plans, Trump indicated that he was open to deporting “criminals” and that the Justice Department was “studying the laws” around potential ways to do so. “I’d like to go a step further. I said it to Pam [Bondi,] I don’t know what the laws are, we always have to obey the laws, but we also have homegrown criminals […] that are absolute monsters. I’d like to include them in the group of people to get them out of the country,” the president said.
Given that the vast majority of the migrants sent to El Salvador so far have no existing criminal records — despite the accusations of terrorism leveled against them by the administration — it’s safe to say that the White House’s definition of criminality is no safeguard for justice.
