El Salvador President Bukele Says He Won’t Be Releasing A Maryland Man Back To The US

US President Donald Trump meets with El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, April 14, 2025. Trump on Monday hosted El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, the self-described “world’s coolest dictator” who is now the US leader’s key ally in a controversial push to deport illegal migrants to a notorious Salvadoran prison. The meeting comes as the White House faces pressure over the case of a father who was mistakenly deported to the jail in the Central American country — whose return a US court has ordered the Trump adminstration to facilitate (Photo by Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP) (Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s top advisers and El Salvador president Nayib Bukele say that they have no basis for the small Central American nation to return a Maryland man who was wrongly deported there last month. Trump administration officials are emphasizing that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was sent to a notorious gang prison in El Salvador, was a citizen of that country and that U.S. has no say in his future. And Bukele, who has been a vital partner for the Trump administration in its deportation efforts, said “of course” he won’t release him back to U.S. soil. The Supreme Court has called for the Trump administration to “facilitate” the return of Abrego Garcia to the U.S.