'How can I': Nayib Bukele says he can't return mistakenly deported Maryland man back to US

El Salvador president Nayib Bukele said he does not have the power to return Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia who was mistakenly deported to his country back to the US. He said this sitting beside President Donald Trump as the two met in the Oval Office in their first meeting after the US sent plane-loads of Tren de Aragua terrorists to El Salvador. Maryland's Kilmar was also sent to Salvador but it was an administrative error, and now his return to the US hangs in balance as Salvador's president asks how he can return him to the US. "Like, I smuggle him into the United States?”

Asked by reporters at the Oval Office on Monday whether he has the power to release Abrego Garcia inside El Salvador, Bukele said he does, but that his administration isn’t “very fond of releasing terrorists” in his country.

“You want us to us to go back to releasing criminals so we can go back to being the murder capital of the world? That’s not going to happen,” he said.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said if El Salvador decided to return Garcia, then the US would provide a plane as there's a Supreme Court ruling to that effect. “Additional paperwork had needed to be done. That’s up to El Salvador if they want to return him. That’s not up to us. The Supreme Court ruled that if El Salvador wants to return him … we would facilitate it: meaning, return a plane,” Bondi who was also present at the Oval Office during the meeting said.

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller also pointed out that Abrego Garcia is a citizen of El Salvador, suggesting it was “very arrogant” for American media to “tell El Salvador how to handle their own citizens.”