THE PRESIDENT OF El Salvador and US President Donald Trump’s top officials claim there is no basis for El Salvador to return a man who was wrongly deported there last month.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an El Salvador citizen who had been residing in the US state of Maryland, was wrongly deported and sent to a notorious gang prison in El Salvador last month.

El Salvador has been a critical part of the US administration’s mass deportation operation.

Since March, El Salvador has accepted from the US more than 200 Venezuelan immigrants — whom Trump administration officials have accused of gang activity and violent crimes — and placed them in the country’s notorious maximum-security gang prison just outside the capital, San Salvador.

It is also holding Abrego Garcia, who has not been returned to the US despite court orders to do so. 

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, who has been a vital partner for the Trump administration in its deportation efforts, said “of course I’m not going to” release Abrego Garcia back to US soil.

“The question is preposterous,” Bukele said. “How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? I don’t have the power to return him to the United States.”

US attorney general Pam Bondi said that should El Salvador want to return Abrego Garcia, the US would “facilitate it, meaning provide a plane”.

But “first and foremost, he was illegally in our country, and he had been illegally in our country”, she said. “That’s up to El Salvador if they want to return him. That’s not up to us.”

Abrego Garcia had initially immigrated to the US without documentation in 2011 as a teenager but had been working legally since 2019.

The refusal of both countries to allow the return of Abrego Garcia, who had an immigration court order preventing his deportation over fears of gang persecution, is intensifying the battle over his future.

It has also played out in contentious court filings, with repeated refusals from the government to tell a judge what it plans to do, if anything, to repatriate him.

The judge handling the case, Paula Xinis, is considering whether to grant a request from the man’s legal team to compel the government to explain why it should not be held in contempt.

Bukele has struck a deal under which the US will pay about $6 million for El Salvador to imprison the 200 Venezuelan immigrants for a year. When a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to turn around a flight carrying the immigrants already en route to El Salvador, Bukele wrote on social media: “Oopsie … too late.”

Though other judges had ruled against the Trump administration, this month the Supreme Court cleared the way for the president to use the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th century wartime law, to deport the immigrants.

The justices did insist that the immigrants get a court hearing before being removed from the US. Over the weekend, 10 more people who the administration claims are members of the MS-13 and Tren de Aragua gangs arrived in El Salvador.

Democrats have raised alarm about the treatment of Abrego Garcia and other migrants who may be wrongfully detained in El Salvador.

Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has urged the Trump administration to release Abrego Garcia and others “with no credible criminal record” who were deported to the maximum-security prison.

“Disregarding the rule of law, ignoring unanimous rulings by the Supreme Court and subjecting individuals to detention and deportation without due process makes us less safe as a country,” Shaheen said.

Trump has said he would also favour El Salvador taking US citizens who have committed violent crimes, although he added: “I’d only do according to the law.”

It is unclear how lawful US citizens could be deported elsewhere.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said such citizens would be “heinous, violent criminals who have broken our nation’s laws repeatedly”.

The Supreme Court has called for the administration to “facilitate” the return of Abrego Garcia, who had an immigration court order preventing his deportation to his native country over fears of gang persecution.