Bukele and Trump pretend they can’t return wrongfully deported man
President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador joined President Donald Trump for a Q&A session with reporters on Monday, during which he pigheadedly said that he would not return Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador’s CECOT prison.
“I suppose you’re not suggesting that I smuggle a terrorist threat to the United States. I'm not going to do it. It's like, I mean, the question is preposterous,” he said.
Bukele continued to claim, “I don’t have the power to return him to the United States,” before Trump eventually jumped in to call the press “sick people” for asking about Garcia's Supreme Court-ordered return.
Garcia, a Salvadoran citizen and legal U.S. resident who is married to a U.S. citizen, held valid documents of residency issued by the Department of Homeland Security
Despite admitting that Garcia was wrongfully deported, the Trump administration has offered up a series of disingenuous and unconstitutional claims to justify leaving Garcia in El Salvador’s notoriously violent prison.
But the Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s ruling that the Trump administration must facilitate Garcia’s return to the United States.
Unsurprisingly, the Trump administration is now wrongfully claiming that the Supreme Court has no jurisdiction over this case—because that would be a democracy with checks and balances, not a dictatorship.