President Trump, President Bukele to discuss deported Maryland man

• Kilmar Abrego Garcia, mistakenly deported by the Trump administration, is currently detained in El Salvador. The Supreme Court ruled that U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis’s order to facilitate his return is proper, requiring the federal government to disclose his location and status.
• President Trump is scheduled to meet El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele at the White House, but the White House dismissed the possibility of Bukele returning Abrego Garcia on his plane.
• The State Department confirmed Abrego Garcia is alive and held in the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador.

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President Donald Trump is scheduled to meet El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele at the White House on Monday, April 14. The White House has dismissed the possibility of Bukele returning Kilmar Abrego Garcia on his plane. The Trump administration admitted that Abrego Garcia was mistakenly deported due to an error but previously argued it could not return him because he is now in the custody of a foreign government.

Who is Kilmar Abrego Garcia?

The 29-year-old was detained by immigration agents and deported in March. His attorney said he had a permit from the Department of Homeland Security to legally work in the U.S. and was a sheet metal apprentice pursuing a journeyman license. His wife is a U.S. citizen.

On Thursday, April 10, the Supreme Court ruled U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis’s order to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia is proper. Xinis’s order requests that the federal government take all steps available to bring Abrego Garcia home as soon as possible. She also ruled the Trump administration must disclose the Maryland man’s location and status, as well as the steps taken to this point to bring him back to the United States.

Michael Kozak, a senior bureau official in the State Department, filed a brief April 12 affirming Abrego Garcia was alive.

“It is my understanding based on official reporting from our Embassy in San Salvador that Abrego Garcia is currently being held in the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador,” he wrote. “He is alive and secure in that facility. He is detained pursuant to the sovereign, domestic authority of El Salvador.”

The filing from Kozak did not, however, say what steps the government was taking to bring Abrego Garcia home, as Xinis had also demanded.