Trump: Man Wrongfully Deported To El Salvador Won't Return To U.S.
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Love it. Way to go, Monica. My fellow Nostonites. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. I'm Ximena Bustillo and I cover immigration policy. And I'm Frank Ordonez. I cover the White House.

And today on the show, we're looking at the growing relationship between El Salvador and the United States. The country's president, Nayib Bukele, visited the White House yesterday. And the two countries have an agreement where some people deported from the U.S. will be housed at a prison in El Salvador.

Franco, this relationship has been in the news a lot these last few weeks. I kind of want to just start with the basics, though. How did this agreement start and why did it start in the first place? I mean, I'll go back even farther. I mean, Trump's signature issue is obviously immigration, and he's long been looking for allies to help him with border policy, taking in migrants.

And during the campaign, this latest campaign, he promised to go after gang members. He spent a lot of time talking about the Venezuelan gang Tren de Agua and promised to change rules so that they could be more easily deported, named them a terrorist organization, for example. So once in office, he signed an order allowing him to use this obscure law, it's called the Alien Enemies Act, to deport gang members.

But again, he obviously needed somewhere for them to go. And that's where Bukele kind of came into the picture. Yeah. Well, why him? Like, what is it about Bukele that sort of prompted this relationship in the first place?

Well, I mean, the challenge, again, is where to send them. I mean, many of these migrants are from Venezuela and their relationship with Venezuela is not the greatest. The Venezuelan government has mostly, not always, but mostly refused the entry of migrants deported from the U.S., though they've accepted some.

And Bukele is a very key ally of Trump. He has built a reputation in El Salvador as well and across the region of, you know, housing gang members in this mega prison in El Salvador. And he agreed to house alleged gang members from the U.S. who were deported using this old law, the Alien Enemies Act.

And, you know, this relation keeps going. Trump's talking about expanding it, sending more migrants, building more prisons. I mean, he's even floated the idea of sending some U.S. convicts there. But there are really big questions about the legality of that. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure. Well, Jimena, let's talk about someone who has been

at the center of this deal between the U.S. and El Salvador, Kilmar Abrego-Garcia. He's a citizen of El Salvador, but he's been living in Maryland, and he was wrongfully deported, even according to administration officials. Broadly, what can you tell me about what happened here and how he ended up back in El Salvador in the first place? Kilmar Abrego-Garcia was one of the over 200 people that were put on those first flights

Yeah.

He was not supposed to be taken to El Salvador, but administration officials, even Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials say that there was a, quote, administrative error in their back end that resulted in him being arrested, detained, moved across detention facilities, and then eventually put on a flight that he should have never been on. Yeah.

What was Abrego Garcia's immigration status at the time? Like, how is it that he was even able to be even erroneously lifted from from the U.S.? So immigration courts are really complicated. I think a lot of people think that it's you are either granted status or you're not granted status and you're removed from the country. But it's actually not that black and white.

So a really good way to think about it is in immigration court, when you go through immigration proceedings, there's two questions that judges need to find answers to. The first is if you are even removable from the country to begin with. So Abrego Garcia went through the immigration court process in 2019. During this time, a judge did find that he was removable. He had entered the country illegally. But then the second question is, is there any relief that

to prevent someone from being removed. And that's how you get things like asylum claims. And there are various arguments that people get a chance to make, even if a judge decides they are removable. So Abrego Garcia was able to make a claim for something that's called withholding of removal.

Withholding means that you're withheld, like your removal does not actually happen. And he was able to successfully claim in front of a judge that if he was returned to El Salvador, he could be persecuted. He could face violence, particularly from gangs in El Salvador.

So what happens then is you're in a little bit of a limbo. There is no significant pathway to something like a green card. Now, his lawyer told me that he did have a work permit. So, you know, the judge decided he could not be deported to El Salvador. If the government wanted to pursue deportation proceedings to, let's say, a third country, they could do that. But he was granted permission to be in the United States.

Yeah. Okay. Well, let's take a quick break. And when we come back, we're going to talk about the latest in his case.

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And we're back. So yesterday in the White House, President Trump and President Bukele were asked about the possibility that Garcia would be returned to the U.S. Here's how Bukele responded.

Franco,

What has been the administration's reasons for saying Abrego Garcia can't be returned to the U.S. so far? I mean, it's kind of evolved quite a bit over time. First, they argued that the lower courts had no authority to call for his return.

They also, while acknowledging that he was mistakenly sent to El Salvador, they kind of downplayed it and said it was just a paperwork issue and that he actually is an MS-13 member. Again, his lawyer says he's not now.

They're arguing that this is a foreign policy matter and that the courts have no jurisdiction over U.S. foreign policy and that they can't force El Salvador to return Abrego Garcia, that it's up to Bukele. But as you just heard, Bukele has no interest in doing that. But from the White House standpoint, it just changes quite a bit. Yeah. And Jimena, an important wrinkle in all this is that the Supreme Court ordinance

ordered the administration to, quote, facilitate his return. Why does the administration think that that's like open to interpretation? So yesterday during that same press conference at the White House, Attorney General Pam Bondi told reporters that if El Salvador wanted to return him, you know, she says we would facilitate it, meaning provide a plane. Now, that's the same like

few minutes also where you hear President Bukele say that they can't return him at the same time. So the stories are also a little bit confusing there over who has that authority. But administration officials are pretty united in that the court's

should not have anything to do with foreign policy. They have been pretty in line with that, and that's how they've interpreted the ruling. Now, in a court filing that was issued by Abrego Garcia's lawyers today, they argue that the government should at least be required to request the release of Abrego Garcia, and that to date it has not done so, meaning that the Trump administration has not put in a formal application

ask to El Salvador. I mean, like when I talk to lawyers about this, they tell me that the Trump administration is basically kind of playing footsie with the court's orders. They're pushing it as far as they can, kind of using deniability, just kind of playing around, you know, so that they can say that they didn't. Obviously, facilitate is kind of a

Yeah.

And it's a lot of language that might not sound right.

sound like it means something, but legally it ultimately does. Right. So having the power to return someone, being able to facilitate something like all of those verbs ultimately have some legal meaning or some legal argument that is up to interpretation being fought out in the courts is

But it gets really complicated in terms of who actually bears the responsibility and who actually has the mechanisms to follow through. Yeah. And I think it's worth mentioning that even though the administration is making this sound like it would be such a heavy lift, there have been folks who were sent to El Salvador who have already been returned. Right. Like logistically, this has already been worked out in some way.

Correct. So from those same three first flights that went to El Salvador, there were about nine people that were returned, eight women and one Nicaraguan man. The women were returned because at that prison, Secot, they don't house women. And so Bukele sent the women back.

almost that same night. And then the Nicaraguan man, according to other media reports, was returned because Bukele said that it would harm other relations with other Central American countries if he was to house other nationals from those countries. And so there is a precedent for sending people back that the United States sent in for logistical reasons, for technical reasons, and for foreign policy reasons as well.

Well, before we wrap things up, I want to know what you guys are going to be watching for in the days to come. I mean, the relationship with Bukele and Trump is the kind that where if Trump asked for Abrego Garcia to come back or any of the migrants to come back, I find it very hard to believe that Bukele would not comply and do so.

So this case is not over, but it also has huge, huge implications on so many other cases of the 200 migrants that were sent before. The American Civil Liberties Union has filed suit against the use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport them. And they're arguing that, one, it's already wrong to deport people without due process, but it's another thing when the U.S. is not willing to correct its mistakes.

So what happens with Abrego Garcia could have big impacts on these other cases. The ACLU says others were wrongly deported. So this would have impacts. It also could have impacts on future relationship issues.

with El Salvador. We were just talking earlier about Trump wanting to expand this. So this would have an impact on that as well. I also agree with Franco that there are a lot of implications as to the way that the government is handling this case could be indicative of how it handles other cases. And experts say the administration is moving really fast. They wanted to move really fast. They are moving really fast on a lot of these arrests, deportations, and that could result in more mistakes in the future.

Yeah. Lots to keep up on. All right. Well, let's leave it there for today. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. I'm Ximena Bustillo and I cover immigration policy. And I'm Frank Ordonez. I cover the White House. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.

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