El Salvador President Nayib Bukele made clear to White House reporters on Monday that he will not be returning the Salvadoran national recently deported by the United States.
There has been an outcry from Democrats and the mainstream media over the deportation of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia. Garcia had been in the U.S. illegally for almost 20 years. The U.S. government says he belonged to the MS-13 gang, a charge his family denies. Garcia was handed over to El Salvador and placed in the country’s Terrorism Confinement Center.
‘They’re sick. These are sick people.’
The Supreme Court ruled that while the U.S. would have to facilitate Garcia’s return to the U.S., the Salvadoran government would first have to agree to hand Garcia over. Garcia claimed in 2019 that he was in fear of the 18th Street Gang, a rival of MS-13, but both gangs reportedly no longer pose a national security threat within El Salvador.
When asked by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins if his government will give Garcia back to the U.S., Bukele said that is not possible and such a question is ridiculous.
“How can I return him to the United States? Like, I smuggle him into the United States? Of course I’m not going to do it. It’s like … this, the question is preposterous. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? I don’t have the power to return him to the United States,” Bukele said.
When the CNN reporter then asked if he will release Garcia from CECOT, Bukele said he does not release criminals.
“I mean, we’re not very fond of releasing terrorists into our country. We just turned the murder capital of the world into the safest country in the Western Hemisphere, and you want us to go back into the — the releasing criminals so we can go back to being the murder capital of the world? No, that’s not — that’s not going to happen,” he explained.
Gesturing to CNN and the rest of the media, Trump quipped, “They’d love to have a criminal released into our country. They’re sick. These are sick people.”
Deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller previously said Garcia has no legal right to remain in the U.S. and that it is up to other nations what they do with their citizens.
“If we deport, say, 100,000 people back to Haiti, should we open a case file for every 100,000 people and ask every day what’s their housing situation? What’s their health care situation? What might they need? What might they want? … These people chose to invade us. There’s a lot of concern from the corporate media about the invaders. But they chose to invade us,” Miller said.
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