President Donald Trump’s top adviser and El Salvador President Nayib Bukele said Monday they have no basis for the return of a small Central American country to a Maryland man who was wrongly deported last month.
Trump administration officials stressed that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was sent to the notorious gang prison in El Salvador, is a citizen of the country and the United States has no say in his future. Bukele, who has been a key partner in the Trump administration's deportation efforts, said: “Of course, I don't intend” to release him back to our land.
“This question is ridiculous,” Buckler said. “I don't have the ability to return him to the United States.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi said if El Salvador wants to return to Abrego Garcia, the United States will “promote it, which means providing aircraft.”
A member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus held a photo of Kilmar Abrego Garcia at a press conference to discuss Abrego Garcia's arrest and deportation in the Cannonhouse office building in Washington, D.C. on April 9, 2025. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus held a press conference to discuss the expulsion of Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia from the Center for Terrorism Incarceration (CECOT), the largest security prison in El Salvador, a Trump administration claimed the incident called it an “administrative error” but refused to bring Abrego Garcia back to the United States.
Alex Huang/Getty Images
But she added: “He is illegal in our country.”
The meeting was because El Salvador has always been a key key to the US government's massive expulsion.
Since March, El Salvador has accepted more than 200 U.S. Venezuelan immigrants, which Trump administration officials accused of gang activities and violent crimes – and placed it in the country's notorious largest security gang prison, just outside the capital, San Salvador. Despite the court orders to do so, it also holds Abrego Garcia, who has not yet returned to the United States.
This makes Berkeley still very popular in El Salvador, partly due to the crackdown on the country’s powerful street gangs, a key ally of the Trump administration, which is actually a gang member for Venezuelan immigrants, and does not provide evidence, nor does it release the name of deportation.
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Asked if he had any concerns about the deported prison, Trump told reporters earlier Sunday that Buckley was doing “excellent work.”
“He's taking care of a lot of problems and we really can't take care of it from a cost perspective,” Trump said. “And he's really doing it, he's amazing. We have some really bad people in that prison. Those who have never been allowed to enter our country.”
Since Secretary of State Marco Rubio's visit in February, Bukele's administration has arrested more than 84,000 people as part of his three-year crackdown on the gang, he has made it clear that he is ready to help the Trump administration with its ambition to deport.
Bucker reached an agreement that the United States would pay about $6 million for El Salvador to imprison Venezuelan immigrants for one year. When a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to reverse a flight carrying an immigrant on his way to El Salvador, Buckley wrote on social media: “Oh… it's too late.”
Although other judges ruled against the Trump administration, this month the Supreme Court cleared Trump's use of the Alien Enemies Act, which is the 18th-century wartime law that deported immigrants. Rubio said Sunday that the justice did insist that the immigrants were removed from office over the weekend, before the U.S. dismissal, while Tren de Aragua Gangs arrived in El Salvador.
“We have also established cooperation in other countries that are willing to take some of these people, some very dangerous criminals,” Rubio said at a cabinet meeting on Thursday. “Bukler is indeed a good friend of the United States in this regard. These are the worst people you've ever met.”
Trump publicly stated that he also wanted El Salvador to take away U.S. citizens who committed violent crimes, although he added: “I only comply with the law.” It is unclear how to deport legal U.S. citizens elsewhere. Levitt said the citizens would be “heeriously violent criminals who repeatedly violated state laws.”
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court called on the government to “promote” Abrego Garcia's return, who had an immigration court order that blocked his fear of gang persecution and expelled from his homeland. Levitt said the administration’s work is to “promote rewards, not realize rewards,” but Trump said late Friday that he would return Abreg Garcia to the United States if the Supreme Court justice allegedly brought him back.
“I have a lot of respect for the Supreme Court,” Trump told Air Force One reporter. Government lawyers pointed out in Saturday's legal documents that Abrego Garcia was still in El Salvador, but did not elaborate on what steps the government is taking to return him to the United States if anything to return to the United States in the required daily status update on Sunday, and the government basically said there was nothing to add except Saturday's documents.
Although Buckley's crackdown on gangs has gained public support, the country resides in a state of emergency and the state has suspended some basic rights for three years. He built a large prison outside San Salvador, the town of Tekoruca, to suppress those accused of being affiliated with gangs.
Part of the proposal he received from the Venezuelans was that the United States also sent back some El Salvador gang leaders. In February, his ambassador to the United States, Milena Mayorga, said in a radio show that having gang leaders face justice in El Salvador was a “issue of honor.”
Bucker can also seek relief through Trump's recent 10% tariff on Trump, an argument that weakens Berkler's attempt to strengthen the economy.
“It is crucial that[access]is not limited to diplomatic gestures, but translates into concrete actions that benefit from El Salvadorians abroad and at home,” said César Ríos, director of the Association for Immigration Agenda of El Salvador.
Successfully through the media, Buckler and Trump Hail successfully produced their own images, but showed similar trends in the connection between their respective countries and the press, political opposition and the judicial system.
Buckley came to power in the middle of Trump's first term and established direct relationships with the U.S. leaders. Trump is most concerned about immigration, and under Berkle's leadership, the number of El Salvadors heading to the U.S. border has declined.
Buckley’s relationship with the United States became more complicated at the beginning of the Biden administration, which was openly criticized some of his anti-democratic actions. Trump has also shown some stimulation to Buckley in the past
“He's just working with the people who cause problems and crime,” Trump said of Berkeley at last year's campaign rally. “He's not working with them. He dumped them in the United States, and the crime rate, the murder rate dropped by 72%.
Just before Buckler arrived in Washington, the State Department updated its El Salvador travel consultation to Level 1, the country considered the safest to visit U.S. citizens. The consultation notes that gang activity and accompanying murders and other violent crimes have declined in the past three years.
