Trump Escalates Fight Over Deportees in El Salvador, is ‘All For’ Sending Americans There Next

It didn't take long for the Oval Office meeting Monday between President Donald Trump and El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele to turn ominous. In his opening remarks, the El Salvadoran strongman offered to assist the U.S. with what he said were its crime problems. “We know you have a crime problem and a terrorism problem we can help with,” Bukele said. By the end of the ad hoc press conference 40 minutes later, Trump and his aides had taken him up on the offer by suggesting their own harsh and potentially illegal moves.

Advertisement

Advertisement

First, Trump’s aides made clear they wouldn’t comply with a Supreme Court order to “facilitate” the release of a Maryland man, Kilmar Abrego García, whom the administration has admitted was mistakenly deported to El Salvador in March and locked up in that country’s Terrorist Confinement Center, known as CECOT. Then Trump proposed sending U.S. citizens convicted of crimes to El Salvador, where prisoners are allegedly held incommunicado and face physical and mental abuse.

It was a striking example of Trump’s approach to his second term in office: when faced with challenges to his authority, even over basic civil liberties, he has reached for even more power. Asked by a reporter whether he was open to deporting U.S. citizens to El Salvador, Trump said, “You think there’s a special category of person? They’re as bad as anybody that comes in. We have bad ones too. I’m all for it.”

Observers went into the press conference expecting the two leaders to discuss the Abrego García case. After the Trump administration admitted to mistakenly deporting the Maryland man, a district court had instructed officials on April 4 to “facilitate and effectuate” his release from CECOT and return him to the U.S. The Supreme Court noted on April 10 that the Trump administration had admitted to violating “a withholding order forbidding his removal to El Salvador” and unanimously ordered the government to “facilitate” his release. The Court acknowledged the President's powers to conduct foreign affairs and instructed the district court to clarify its order that the Trump administration must “effectuate” Abrego García’s return to the U.S.

Asked whether the administration was going to comply with the court’s order, Trump asked his Attorney General Pam Bondi to respond. “First and foremost, he was illegally in our country,” Bondi said. She said that in 2019 an immigration court and a board of appeals had both ruled that he was a member of the criminal gang MS-13, which Trump has declared a terrorist organization. “That’s up to El Salvador if they want to return him. That’s not up to us,” she said, adding that if they did, the U.S. would provide a plane. When a reporter asked Bukele whether he would send Abrego García back to the U.S., he said, “Of course I’m not going to do it.”

Trump was then asked whether he would consider sending U.S. citizens to be imprisoned in El Salvador if they committed violent crimes. Trump welcomed the idea and said that Bondi, who sat on one of the Oval Office couches near him, is “studying” the laws. “If we can do that, that’s good,” Trump said. “I’m talking about violent people.”

El Salvador's prisons have been called out by Human Rights Watch for "cases of torture, ill-treatment, incommunicado detention, severe violations of due process and inhumane conditions, such as lack of access to adequate healthcare and food." Sending U.S. citizens there could cross the 8th Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment and violate restrictions against imprisoning people more than 500 miles from home that Trump signed into law in 2018 as part of the First Step Act. Bukele relishes being called the “coolest dictator” and has brushed aside civil rights in El Salvador as part of his crackdown on gang violence.

Abrego García had been living in Maryland with his wife and three children—all U.S. citizens. In 2019, immigration officials said he was a member of MS-13 and began removal proceedings. One immigration judge and the Board of Immigration Appeals agreed, but those decisions were overridden when another immigration judge determined that Abrego García and his family had shown the gang in El Salvador threatened and harassed his family. Abrego García was arrested in March and mistakenly added to one of the flights, the Trump administration has said.

In the April 4 ruling, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” Abrego García’s release from prison in El Salvador to ensure his deportation case is handled correctly and instructed officials to report on what actions were being taken. She called into question whether Abrego García had a gang affiliation at all, writing that the evidence the government produced “consisted of nothing more” than a Chicago Bulls hat and hoodie and a “vague, uncorroborated allegation” from a confidential informant that Abrego García belonged to an MS-13 clique in New York, “a place he has never lived.”

Abrego García’s case raises questions about whether the Trump administration has erroneously accused some people held in El Salvador of being gang members and then refused to correct their mistake. “As Americans, we should all be concerned by reports that 75 percent of the migrants the Trump Administration has sent to CECOT have no criminal record,” said Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Since Trump came to office on Jan. 20, his administration has flown more than 200 people from the U.S. to El Salvador to be imprisoned in CECOT.