 "El Salvador’s Bukele says he won’t return migrant wrongly deported from the US")
El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele said that he had no intention of returning a man mistakenly deported from the United States during his meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House.
Trump warmly welcomed the 43-year-old Bukele — who calls himself the “world’s coolest dictator” — in the Oval Office, presenting him as a key ally in his push to deport undocumented migrants.
The meeting came amid questions over a father who was erroneously deported to El Salvador and sent to the mega-prison. A US court has ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return.
The Trump administration has deported hundreds of people, mostly Venezuelans, to El Salvador under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, including a Maryland resident it has acknowledged deporting by mistake.
Bukele said he did not have the power to return Salvadoran Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States.
“The question is preposterous. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States?” Bukele said, echoing the Trump administration’s claim that Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang.
Trump, who came into office in January promising to reform U.S. immigration policy, has found a kindred spirit for that effort in Bukele. The migrants El Salvador accepts from the U.S. are housed in a high-security prison critics say engages in human rights abuses.
Trump met Bukele at the White House to discuss further cooperation on security and migration, El Salvador’s embrace of Bitcoin, and tariffs.
Trump’s immigration policies focused on what he says is the threat of a gang-led crime wave in the United States, are meanwhile among his most popular, receiving much higher ratings than on the economy.
Impact Shorts
View All“You are helping us out, and we appreciate it,” 78-year-old Trump told Bukele.
Trump also reiterated that he was even considering deporting some US citizens who commit violent crimes to El Salvador, saying “I’m all for it” and asking Attorney General Pam Bondi to look into the idea.
‘Administrative error’
Trump and Bukele also share a taste for conservative, strongman-style politics. They spent several minutes criticizing the media and then talking about the issue of transgender athletes in women’s sports.
Shortly after Trump’s inauguration for a second term, Bukele made the extraordinary offer to take in prisoners from the United States, in exchange for a fee of $6 million.
Trump took the Salvadoran leader up on his proposal, sending more than 250 migrants there – a majority of them under a rarely used wartime law dating to 1798, which stripped the deportees of due process.
Slickly produced footage of their arrival – including chained and tattooed men having their heads shaved and being frog-marched by masked guards – was widely promoted by both the Salvadoran and US governments.
The Trump administration contends that the migrants are members of criminal gangs designated by the United States as terrorist organizations, including El Salvador’s MS-13 and Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua.
However, relatives of several of the men contend they have no connection to organized crime and in some cases had been swept up simply because they had tattoos unrelated to any gang activity.
The expulsion to El Salvador of Abrego Garcia has set off a major legal crisis, after the Trump administration admitted he had been deported in an “administrative error.”
A federal judge ordered the government to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States, but Trump officials contend he is now solely in Salvadoran custody, leaving the man in legal limbo.
Despite the partnership, El Salvador was among the dozens of US trade partners that the Trump administration slapped with 10 percent tariffs earlier this month.
The United States is the main destination for Salvadoran exports. Of the nearly $6.5 billion in goods exported from El Salvador in 2024, $2.1 billion went to the United States, including clothing, sugar and coffee, according to the central bank.
But Trump and Bukele also share a fondness for cryptocurrency, with El Salvador becoming the world’s first country to establish bitcoin as legal tender in 2021.
With inputs from agencies
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