President of El Salvador Nayib Bukele rejected a request for the release of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran wrongfully deported from the US and currently being held at the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), El Salvador’s mega-prison, in a meeting at the White House on Monday.
Abrego Garcia, 29 years old and legally residing in Maryland, was deported on 15 March 2025 by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) despite having a court order prohibiting his removal due to the risk of persecution in El Salvador.
During a meeting with US President Donald Trump, Bukele said he had the authority to repatriate Abrego Garcia and refused to facilitate his return, arguing that he would not let a “terrorist” smuggled into the US.
“Of course I won’t do that. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States?,” Bukele told reporters present at the Oval Office.
According to Efe news agency , the Salvadoran president acknowledged that he could indeed order his release, but stressed that he had no intention of doing so. “We don’t really like to release terrorists in our country,” he expressed with an ironic tone.
In addition, he emphasised that El Salvador has become the “safest” country on the continent and that he does not want it to become “the murder capital of the world” again.
Wave of criticism and outrage
Before his speech, the US Attorney General, Pam Bondi, made it clear that the decision to return Abrego Garcia is no longer up to the US government, but is in the hands of the Salvadoran authorities, as the young man is now in the custody of the authorities of that country.
President Trump’s adviser, Stephen Miller, who is seen as the main architect of the migration policy implemented by the White House in recent months, emphasised that Abredo is a citizen of El Salvador and it would be very “arrogant” to tell El Salvador what to do with its citizens.
The case has drawn criticism from human rights organisations and US lawmakers who are demanding the release of Abrego Garcia.
The US trial chamber ruled his deportation was illegal and ordered that his return be facilitated, but the Trump administration says it is under no obligation to repatriate him unless El Salvador co-operates.
Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vásquez, has publicly requested Bukele’s intervention to reunite her family. At the same time, the Salvadoran government has received six million dollars from the US as compensation for accepting deportees under the Foreign Enemies Act, reinstated by Trump.
Nayib Bukele met with Donald Trump at the White House on Monday, in a meeting that cemented a close bilateral alliance on migration and security.
The meeting was accompanied by a series of public statements that demonstrated the political and rhetorical closeness between the two leaders. Bukele thus becomes the first Latin American president to be officially welcomed by Trump during his second term.
