Zolan Kanno-Youngs: El Salvador’s President Says He Won’t Return Maryland Man Who Was Wrongly Deported

In an Oval Office meeting with President Trump on Monday, President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador said that he would not return a Maryland man who was wrongly deported from the United States and sent to a notorious Salvadoran prison.

“Of course I’m not going to do it,” Mr. Bukele said when reporters asked if he was willing to help return the man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old father of three who was deported last month. The Trump administration has acknowledged that his deportation was the result of an “administrative error.”

The message from the meeting was clear: Neither Mr. Trump nor Mr. Bukele had any intention of returning Mr. Abrego Garcia, even though the Supreme Court had ruled that he should come back to the United States. The case has come to symbolize Mr. Trump’s defiance of the courts and his willingness to deport people without due process.

What. The. Fuck?

Mr. Trump also mused about the possibility of sending American citizens convicted of violent crimes to prison in El Salvador, although he said Attorney General Pam Bondi was still studying the legality of the proposal.

This is insane, and the executive branch’s refusal to recognize the power of the Supreme Court is a genuine crisis. As soon as one branch throws away the other co-equal branches’ authority, we’re in very dangerous territory. Doubly so when the President is wants to deport American citizens to foreign prisons at his discretion. Our government has protections in place to prevent this from happening, but not if they ignore the Supreme Court and Congress when asked to jump just asks, “how high?”