WASHINGTON (AP) — After a meeting with Donald Trump at the White House, the President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele described as “absurd” the idea of sending back to the United States a resident of Maryland who was mistakenly deported to a prison in the Central American country last month.
PUBLICIDAD
The main advisors of Trump and Bukele said that there is no basis for the Central American nation to carry out the return, despite the Supreme Court of the United States calling on the federal government to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Ábrego García.
PUBLICIDAD
U.S. government officials emphasized that Ábrego García, who was sent to a Salvadoran prison where gang members are detained, is a citizen of El Salvador and the United States cannot decide on his future.
“The question is absurd. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States?”, Bukele declared to the press in the Oval Office. “I do not have the authority to send him back to the United States.”
“If El Salvador wanted to return Ábrego García, the United States ‘would facilitate it’, that is, would make a plane available,” said Justice Secretary Pam Bondi. But “above all, he was illegally in our country,” emphasized the Attorney General. “It depends on El Salvador if they want to send him back. It does not depend on us.”
The United States disregarded the order of an immigration court
The refusal of both countries to allow Ábrego García to return, who had an immigration court order that prevented his deportation to El Salvador out of fear of being persecuted by gangs, has intensified the dispute over the future of the Maryland resident.
It is also happening against a backdrop of heated court hearings in which the federal government of the United States has repeatedly refused to tell a judge what it plans to do, if anything, to repatriate him.
The judge handling the case, Paula Xinis, is considering granting a request from Ábrego García’s legal team to compel the government to explain why he should not be considered in contempt.
Bukele supports Trump’s immigration restrictions
Since March, El Salvador has accepted more than 200 Venezuelan immigrants coming from the United States, whom Trump administration officials have accused of belonging to gangs and committing violent crimes.
They were placed in a maximum security gang prison in the country, located on the outskirts of the capital, San Salvador. The Cecot (Counterterrorism Confinement Center) is part of Bukele’s broader efforts to crack down on the country’s powerful street gangs, measures that have resulted in the imprisonment of 84,000 people and have made the president a highly popular figure in his country.
“I just want to greet the people of El Salvador and say that they have an incredible president,” said Trump upon receiving Bukele, who was wearing a black turtleneck sweater without a tie.
Bukele reached an agreement under which the United States will pay around 6 million dollars for El Salvador to imprison Venezuelan immigrants for a year.
But Democrats have expressed their concern about the treatment of Ábrego García and other migrants who may be unjustly detained in El Salvador. Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen is seeking a meeting with Bukele while he is in Washington to discuss the possible return of Ábrego García, and Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, urged the government to release Ábrego García and other immigrants “without credible criminal records” who were deported to maximum security prison.
Trump wants to expand his deportation plans
Trump has openly stated that he is also in favor of El Salvador receiving American citizens who have committed violent crimes, an opinion he reiterated on Monday.
“We also have homegrown criminals...“I’d like to include them in people to get out of the country,” Trump declared during the meeting. “And we have a huge prison population.” It is not clear how American citizens could legally be deported to another place in the world.