April 14, 2025, 7:23 p.m.
El Salvador’s president on Monday threw cold water on the prospect of returning a Maryland man wrongfully identified as a violent gang member and deported to the Central American country’s famous maximum security prison, dismissing the idea as "preposterous."
During an Oval Office meeting with President Trump, President Nayib Bukele said he “doesn’t have the power” to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States.
Trump and his White House team have also rejected the idea, despite the Supreme Court agreeing with a lower court that the administration must “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return. In response, Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland is requesting an urgent meeting with Bukele while he is in Washington and even pledging to travel to El Salvador to check on the prisoner’s well-being.
Van Hollen said in a statement that if “Kilmar is not home by midweek—I plan to travel to El Salvador this week to check on his condition and discuss his release.”
He “never should have been abducted and illegally deported, and the courts have made clear: the Administration must bring him home, now,” Van Hollen said. “However, since the Trump Administration appears to be ignoring these court mandates, we need to take additional action. That’s why I’ve requested to meet with President Bukele during his trip to the United States.”
Van Hollen also wrote Sunday to the Embassy of El Salvador asking for the meeting and steps detailing Abrego Garcia’s return. The senator's office did not immediately respond to a request from National Journal for comment in response to Bukele's refusal to send the prisoner back to the U.S.
Van Hollen told reporters on Monday that if a meeting doesn’t happen in the U.S. with Bukele that he does “intend [later this week] to go to El Salvador to discuss the release of this individual who is illegally detained.” Van Hollen said he also supports holding the administration’s lawyers “in contempt.”
“They’re clearly snubbing their nose at the courts, including the Supreme Court,” he said. “The courts, in my view, need to exercise their ability to sanction people who ignore court orders.”
The Trump administration claims that the Supreme Court ruling does not mean it is obligated to return Abrego Garcia to the United States, only that it must allow him to enter if he can get himself to the U.S. border. However, Abrego Garcia is now reportedly detained in one of the highest-security prisons in the Western Hemisphere, a place from which no one has ever made it out alive.
The only way the Maryland resident could return to the U.S. would be if Bukele, El Salvador’s 43-year-old president, allows his release.
Immigration lawyers argue the U.S. has a legal obligation to make a good-faith attempt to return Abrego Garcia, who entered the U.S. illegally in 2011 to escape gang violence in El Salvador, back to his wife and young son in Maryland.
A Trump administration lawyer admitted in court that Abrego Garcia was deported due to an administrative error. The administration claims Abrego Garcia is part of the MS-13 gang, now designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization, but has provided no evidence to substantiate the claim. His family denies he is a gang member. In 2019, a judge ruled against deporting Abrego Garcia, based on the threat he and his family faced from gangs in El Salvador.
The Trump administration has so far deported a few hundred men to the maximum-security prison in El Salvador, the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), which is alleged to subject prisoners to torture, solitary confinement, and lack of adequate food and health care.
Lawyers note that wrongful deportations are not uncommon. However, this is the first time an administration has refused to address errors it acknowledges.
During the Oval Office meeting Monday, Attorney General Pam Bondi said it was “up to El Salvador” to return Abrego Garcia, while Bukele responded that he doesn’t “have the power to return him to the United States."
As part of a court order, the State Department on Sunday said that the Maryland resident was “alive and secure” in CECOT.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Monday, “President Bukele’s comment today is pure nonsense.”
“The law is clear. Due process was grossly violated, and the Supreme Court has clearly spoken that the Trump administration must facilitate and effectuate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia," Schumer said. "He should be returned to the U.S. immediately. A threat to one is a threat to all.”
The Trump administration is using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, arguing that gang members have launched a criminal invasion on behalf of the Venezuelan government. Legal experts say that argument is flimsy at best.
A federal judge last month ordered several of the planes carrying migrants, many of whom were Venezuelan men, not to depart for El Salvador until a court had reviewed each case. The aircraft left anyway, and a federal judge said he believes the administration violated a court order when it failed to halt the deportation.
Organizations suing on behalf of the Venezuelan migrants accused of belonging to the Tren de Aragua gang filed a request for the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold a temporary block on Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport more migrants to El Salvador’s mega-prisons.
