It defies a Supreme Court ruling, flouts a lower court ruling, and undermines the basic principle that the government must provide due process before depriving someone of their freedom. Yet the man wrongly deported to a Salvadoran prison will remain there indefinitely, President Donald Trump and El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele said during a Monday Oval Office meeting.
The pair of strongmen told reporters they would not seek the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran citizen deported from the U.S. last month during a hastily executed operation that also removed more than 100 Venezuelans under the Alien Enemies Act.
Bukele and senior Trump officials indicated they felt no obligation to comply with court orders. Bukele suggested at one point he had received no U.S. request to release Abrego Garcia, saying that doing so would be to “smuggle” him into the country. Trump advisor Stephen Miller argued the courts had no authority to compel the government to act in matters of foreign relations.
In practical terms, that administration’s arguments asserted that the White House has the power to remove people to prisons in foreign countries, and then claim a mixture of powerlessness before foreign sovereignty and absolute authority over foreign affairs in refusing to secure those people’s release and return to the United States. Its position directly defies a court order and nudges us closer still to a constitutional crisis. The reality is that the Supreme Court has already sided with Abrego Garcia, upholding a lower court ruling that requires the administration to “facilitate” his “release from custody in El Salvador” and to ensure his case proceeds as if he had not been wrongly deported. A lower court judge continues to demand updates on efforts to comply.
Bukele and senior Trump administration officials suggested throughout the Oval Office meeting that no such efforts have taken place. The El Salvador leader, a seasoned practitioner of the kind of obfuscation that conflates lawless, authoritarian rule with efforts to fight crime, called Abrego Garcia a “terrorist.”
“The question is preposterous. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States?” Bukele said. “I don’t have the power to return him to the United States.”
Trump, for his part, asked Attorney General Pam Bondi and aide Stephen Miller to respond to a question from a reporter about whether he would return Abrego Garcia. Bondi mostly deflected, saying that the decision was up to El Salvador. Miller went further: he claimed falsely that Trump had won at the Supreme Court, and repeated an assertion first seen in a government declaration filed in Abrego Garcia’s case Sunday evening. He said that because Secretary of State Marco Rubio had declared MS-13 a terrorist organization, that overrides the immigration court order barring Abrego Garcia’s removal.
The meeting had all the obsequiousness that’s typical of White House meetings in the Trump II era. Cabinet officials went out of their way to praise the President for whatever first came to mind; everyone nodded along as Trump complained that the press had not yet asked him about the cognitive test that he recently took. After Trump asserted that border crossings were down by more than 90 percent, Bukele grinned slyly and mused, “why are those numbers not in the media?” That launched Trump on a tangent about how the “fake news” doesn’t like “putting out good numbers” because “they hate our country.” “Isn’t that a great question?” Trump asked. “Why doesn’t the media — why don’t they put out numbers?”
In addition to Bondi and Miller, several other senior Trump aides appeared. Emil Bove, the former Trump attorney and current principal associate deputy attorney general, stood in the background. National Security Adviser Mike Waltz was there, as were Vice President JD Vance, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and Secretary of State Rubio.
As Bukele entered the Oval Office, before the public press conference began, his official X account streamed live video and audio. Trump could be heard on that audio saying that “home-grown criminals are next,” that El Salvador should build five more prisons to house new entrants from the U.S., and lauded videos Bukele’s government had created of deportees being unloaded from planes, saying that they inspired “respect.”
During the conference itself, Trump suggested that the U.S. would help El Salvador fund the construction of more prisons for more deportees.
But he also crossed a bigger rubicon.
After a reporter asked Trump whether he was open to sending U.S. citizens to prison in El Salvador, the President said yes, using the same language of “home-grown criminals.”
Trump said that Bukele houses prisoners cheaply and with “great security.” The CECOT prison has been repeatedly accused of torture.
“We have others who we are negotiating with, too,” Trump said. “If it’s a home-grown criminal, I have no problem. We’re studying the laws right now.”
Current law gives habeas protections to a wide breadth of people, holding that the U.S. government can arrest people through a wide range of intermediaries — private prisons, foreign governments — and thereby grant detainees certain constitutional protections.
For now, the question is partly what courts can do to order compliance once the government has already removed someone outside the United States. But the Trump administration’s actions over the past week threaten a bigger, structural issue: what does it matter if the White House won’t comply?
The Trump regime refuses to follow a unanimous Supreme Court decision requiring due process and bringing back the wrongfully kidnapped lawful U.S. resident Mr Garcia. Trump and his soulless lackey Rubio are talking about extending this to U.S. citizens. This is a full on constitutional crisis, and unless the district court judge orders contempt for the regime decision makers, the rule of law, which is on thin ice already, is dead.
if allowed to stand, anyone of us can be kidnapped and shipped to a foreign concentration camp and not allowed to return.
They intend to now kidnap citizens and ship them to concentration camps in El Salvador and God knows where else.
The U.S. is no longer a constitutional democracy.
Well, I think he might have the power to release Abrego Garcia to DHS officials waiting at the airport in El Salvado so they can “facilitate” his return to the US. Like Trump so often, he’s answering his own question, not the question he was asked.
The ultimate test would be if a Judge has the intestinal fortitude to start issuig contempt citations. If this happens and the convicted felon’s Administration ignores them and convinces the various Federal Law enforcement agency’s not to comply the Trump Coup will be complete.
And the Orange POS WILL NOT surrender the Presidency in 2028.
Start holding the attorneys in contempt.
He continually talks about a third term and nobody will stand in his way.