“Of course I’m not going to do it,” Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele told reporters when asked if he would return the wrongfully deported Maryland worker Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States. Bukele was surrounded by Trump administration officials and seated next to President Trump himself in the Oval Office, who smiled at the Central American leader in approval. Bukele claimed that returning the 27-year-old Maryland sheet metal worker would be akin to smuggling “a terrorist into the United States.” Neither the US or El Salvador’s governments have provided any evidence that Garcia participated in gang or criminal activity.
After Bukele’s response, Trump said of the assembled reporters, “They’d love to have a criminal released into our country. These are sick people.”
After being deported due to what the Trump administration admitted was an “administrative error,” Garcia was imprisoned without trial in El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), alongside over 200 other immigrants who were sent on Trump’s illegal deportation flights to the Central American country in defiance of a federal court order. CECOT is notorious for human rights abuses, and notably no inmate has ever been released from the prison since its opening in late January 2023. The government of El Salvador does not expect that CECOT prisoners will ever be released.
The Trump administration conceded that Garcia should not have been deported to El Salvador because of a 2019 decision by an immigration judge, which barred him from being sent there due to a potential threat to his life from gang violence. On April 10, the US Supreme Court unanimously found Garcia’s deportation to be illegal, rejecting the Trump administration’s claim that because they had no jurisdiction over El Salvador, the government could not bring him back to the United States. The Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” Garcia’s release. The administration has argued that this only requires it to adjust Garcia’s immigration status to readmit him into the US if El Salvador chooses to release him from CECOT.
As Bukele and Trump met in the oval office, Trump was shown on camera telling the Salvadoran President to prepare for deportations of “home-growns” next to prison camps like CECOT. “You gotta build about five more places. It’s not big enough,” Trump told the El Salvadorean leader. Trump’s comments have raised alarms that all people in the US, not solely immigrants, could be targeted by the Trump administration to be sent to CECOT without due process.
A wide array of forces have rallied for Garcia’s return to his family, including the union he was a part of as a sheet metal worker in the United States, the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers (SMART).
Faith leaders gathered in front of the White House today for a vigil and prayer for Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Bring him home! pic.twitter.com/ehlt98E2Tz
— SMART Union (@smartunionworks) April 14, 2025
