AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González, as we turn to President Trump’s unusual Oval Office meeting Monday with President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador. During a long back-and-forth with the press at which key Trump administration officials and advisers were also present, President Bukele flatly refused to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States, the Maryland father who was wrongly deported, sent to the notorious Salvadoran prison CECOT. In a tense exchange about Abrego Garcia, several members of Trump’s Cabinet and team also weighed in. And the message was clear: Despite last week’s unanimous Supreme Court ruling that the U.S. government should “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States, President Trump and his Cabinet insisted they are not required to do so.

We’re going to begin by playing this astounding exchange. During the back-and-forth, President Trump turns to Attorney General Pam Bondi, homeland security adviser Stephen Miller, Secretary of State Marco Rubio. It begins with a question from CNN’s Kaitlan Collins.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Go ahead. Let’s — let’s hear the question from this very low-rated anchor at CB — at CNN.

KAITLAN COLLINS: Thank you, President Trump. Do you plan to ask President —

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Low-rated.

KAITLAN COLLINS: — Bukele to help return the man who your administration says was mistakenly deported?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Which one was it?

KAITLAN COLLINS: The man who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, let me ask Pam. Would you ask — answer that question?

ATTORNEY GENERAL PAM BONDI: Sure, President. First and foremost, he was illegally in our country. He had been illegally in our country. And in 2019, two courts, an immigration court and an appellate immigration court, ruled that he was a member of MS-13, and he was illegally in our country. Right now it was a paperwork — it was 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, President, that if, as El Salvador wants to return him, this is international matters, foreign affairs. If they wanted to return him, we would facilitate it, meaning provide a plane.

KAITLAN COLLINS: So, will you return him, President Bukele?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: You are doing a great job. Thank you, Pam.

ATTORNEY GENERAL PAM BONDI: Thank you.

REPORTER: Mr. President — 

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Stephen Miller — wait a minute — could you just also respond to that question? Because, you know, it’s asked by CNN, and they always ask it with a slant, because they’re totally slanted, because they don’t know what’s happening. That’s why nobody’s watching them. But would you answer that question also, please?

STEPHEN MILLER: Yes, sir, gladly. So, as Pam mentioned, he’s an illegal alien from El Salvador. So, with respect to you, he’s a citizen of El Salvador. So, it’s very arrogant even for American media to suggest that we would even tell El Salvador how to handle their own citizens, as a starting point, as two immigration courts found that he was a member of MS-13. When President Trump declared MS-13 to be a foreign terrorist organization, that meant that he was no longer eligible, under federal law, which I’m sure you know — you’re very familiar with the INA — that he was no longer eligible for any form of immigration relief in the United States. So he had a deportation order that was valid, which meant that, under our law, he’s not even allowed to be present in the United States and had to be returned because of the foreign terrorist designation.

This issue was then, by a district court judge, completely inverted, and a district court judge tried to tell the administration that they had to kidnap a citizen of El Salvador and fly him back here. That issue was raised to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court said the district court order was unlawful, and its main components were reversed 9-0, unanimously, stating clearly that neither secretary of state nor the president could be compelled by anybody to forcibly retrieve a citizen of El Salvador from El Salvador, who, again, is a member of MS-13, which, as I’m sure you understand, rapes little girls, murders women, murders children, is engaged in the most barbaric activities in the world. And I can promise you, if he was your neighbor, you would move right away.

KAITLAN COLLINS: So, you don’t plan to ask President Bukele that?

REPORTER: But the Supreme Court is asking to — 

KAITLAN COLLINS: Is that — is that the decision?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: And what was the ruling in the Supreme Court, Steve? Was it 9 to nothing?

STEPHEN MILLER: Yes, it was 9-0.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: In our favor.

STEPHEN MILLER: In our favor, against the district court ruling, saying that no district court has the power to compel the foreign policy function of the United States. As Pam said, the ruling solely stated that if this individual, at El Salvador’s sole discretion, was sent back to our country, that we could deport him a second time. No version of this, legally, ends up with him ever living here, because he is a citizen of El Salvador. That is the president of El Salvador. Your questions about it, per the court, can only be directed to him.

KAITLAN COLLINS: I ask President Bukele: What do you — can President Bukele weigh in on this? Do you plan to return him?

PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Well, I can’t — I hope you’re not suggesting that I smuggle a terrorist into the United States, right?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: It’s only CNN.

PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: How could I? How can I smuggle — how can I return him to the United States? Like, I smuggle him into the United States? Well, of course, I’m not going to do it. It’s like, I mean, it’s the — 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.

REPORTER: But you could release him inside El Salvador.

PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Yeah, but I’m not releasing — 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 — releasing criminals so we can go back to being the murder capital of the world? That’s not going to happen.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, they’d love to have a criminal, you know, released into our country.

PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Yeah, I mean, and what’s the fascination — 

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: They would love it.

PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Yeah.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: They are sick. These are sick people. Marco, did you have something to say?

SECRETARY OF STATE MARCO RUBIO: Yeah, I mean, Stephen outlined it. I don’t understand what the confusion is. This individual is a citizen of El Salvador. He was illegally in the United States and was returned to his country. That’s where you deport people, back to their country of origin, except for Venezuela, which is refusing to take people back, and places like that. I can tell you this, Mr. President. No — the foreign policy of the United States is conducted by the president of the United States, not by a court. And no court in the United States has a right to conduct the foreign policy of the United States. It’s that simple. End of story.

KAITLAN COLLINS: The courts specifically said couldn’t be sent back to El Salvador, though.

STEPHEN MILLER: And that’s what the Supreme Court held, by the way, to Marco’s point. The Supreme Court said exactly what Marco said, that no court has the authority to compel the foreign policy function of the United States. We won a case 9-0, and people like CNN are portraying it as a loss, as usual, because they want foreign terrorists in the country who kidnap women and children. But President Trump, his policy is foreign terrorists that are here illegally get expelled from the country, which, by the way, is a 90-10 issue.

KAITLAN COLLINS: Well, the president — Mr. President, you said that if the Supreme Court said someone needed to be returned, that you would abide by that. You said that on Air Force One just a few days ago. And they said that —

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: How long do we have to answer this question from you? Why don’t you just say, “Isn’t it wonderful that we’re keeping criminals out of our country?” Why can’t you just say that?

KAITLAN COLLINS: Well, it’s a legal decision [inaudible] —

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Why do you go over and over? And that’s why nobody watches you anymore, you know? You have no credibility. Please, go ahead.

AMY GOODMAN: President Trump, Trump’s security adviser Stephen Miller, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele all responding to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on the wrongful deportation or removal of Maryland father Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison. Last week, Democracy Now! spoke to Abrego Garcia’s lawyer, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, who laid out the facts of his client’s case.

SIMON SANDOVAL-MOSHENBERG: He was first arrested by ICE in 2019 when he was working as a day laborer in front of a Home Depot. There was this anonymous tip, a confidential informant, combined with the fact that he was wearing a Chicago Bulls hat, that, as far as ICE was concerned, was more than enough to label him a gang member.

When he was first detained by ICE, he had a preliminary hearing, and the immigration judge essentially said, “Well, I don’t know what’s going on. We’ve got this — you know, we’ve got this confidential tip. I can’t be satisfied. I don’t know what’s going on, so I’m going to deny his release.” So the judge essentially ordered that he continue to be detained during his immigration proceedings.

But then he had a trial, right? And he won his trial. The judge ordered him relief from removal, ordered that he could not be deported to El Salvador, granted him withholding of removal. And the government, the Trump administration at the time, didn’t even bother to appeal, right? They just sort of said, “All right, that’s fine.” They released him from detention, and they gave him a work permit. And he’s been working — which he’s renewed ever since, and he’s been working legally, now as a sheet metal worker apprentice, on a legal work permit ever since.

So, to the extent that they’ve got these allegations against him, they’re not even sort of contemporary allegations. They’re six years old.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, the attorney for Kilmar.

We turn now to talk about the Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s meeting in the Oval Office with President Trump and the cozy relationship he has with the administration — Bukele, the man who likes to call himself “the world’s coolest dictator.”

We’re joined by two guests. Joining us from Washington, D.C., Nayna Gupta, the policy director at American Immigration Council, her most recent article for Just Security headlined “The Missing Due Process for Gang Allegations.” And from Mexico City, we’re joined by the award-winning investigative journalist José Olivares. He is a Drop Site News contributor, has recently reported on El Salvador, and in a minute we’ll talk with him about the elections in Ecuador. But we’re going to start with Nayna Gupta.

Can you respond to this astonishing White House meeting?

NAYNA GUPTA: Yes. Thanks so much for having me.

What we saw yesterday was political theater and a set of administration officials lying to the American public. To be clear, Donald Trump and his administration can absolutely bring home Mr. Abrego Garcia. That is well within their power and authority. ICE has deported thousands of people wrongfully in the past. The agency does have a process to bring people back. I have worked on cases where the agency has immediately brought people home where they have admitted it was a wrongful removal, as the agency has done here. And the idea that the president cannot do this is a lie.

Now, it’s true, of course, that the president and executive branch have wide discretion and latitude when it comes to matters of foreign policy and national security. But that power is not limitless. And this is an administration now that has violated an immigration court order that prevented Mr. Abrego Garcia’s removal to his home country of El Salvador. They are violating a Supreme Court and federal district court order that have required the administration to facilitate Mr. Abrego Garcia’s return. This is the Trump administration violating the rule of law and violating due process. And they’re doing that by cozying up to President Bukele, who has a track record of also violating the rule of law and human rights in his country. And it is a dangerous and cruel tactic that the administration is using here.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Nayna Gupta, I wanted to ask you — the administration obviously is claiming that because they’ve declared MS-13 a foreign terrorist organization, that this now becomes an issue of foreign policy of the United States, not just of immigration. But this whole issue of whether Abrego Garcia was ever judged to be a member of MS-13, what do you know about that? Because we had his lawyer say, put out his position a few days ago.

NAYNA GUPTA: Right. Look, the Trump administration has never proven that Mr. Abrego Garcia is a member of MS-13. Mr. Abrego Garcia had an immigration court hearing where that issue was not meaningfully litigated. In this country, we believe in a right to a fair day in court. No, you cannot disappear somebody to a foreign country, to a prison in a foreign country, based on mere allegations or sham allegations.

Unfortunately, there is a history in the Department of Homeland Security of using weak and flimsy evidence of gang affiliation as a basis to deport people, particularly men from Latin America. In this instance, the Trump administration has taken that to its extreme. They have removed a person, in violation of multiple court orders at this point, to a foreign prison based on really no evidence. That was not the main issue in his case. He is not a member of MS-13. And if the Trump administration says otherwise, they should have to prove that in a court of law.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And can you talk about the ACLU lawsuit back in 2017 that led the Trump administration to release over 30 children and teenagers from ICE detention after it was revealed that the government’s evidence of gang affiliation was essentially nonexistent?

NAYNA GUPTA: Yes. So, again, this is not the first time the Trump administration has pulled this kind of sham and flimsy evidence to deport people or detain them and weaponize our U.S. immigration laws. In the first Trump administration, there was a lawsuit that the ACLU filed on behalf of over 30 young adolescent men who had been accused of being members of gangs. This was based on evidence of tattoos and evidence in notoriously flawed gang databases, that are based on mere allegations, as basic as “this young man was seen in the same area where there is a lot of gang activity.” That evidence was so flimsy and unsubstantiated that the federal court in that ACLU case said, in fact, that some of those young men should just be immediately released from immigration detention, and others at the very least needed, as a first step, a day in court, for the government to actually prove those allegations for that evidence to be used — for that evidence to be fairly brought in a court of law.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about another point before we go to the Drop Site investigation into how this meeting took place. And that is Trump’s comment in the Oval Office yesterday that he wants to send violent criminals who are U.S. citizens to El Salvador, adding Attorney General Pam Bondi is studying the law. He was caught on a hot mic — you have to listen really carefully — telling President Bukele, “Homegrown criminals are next,” adding, “You’re going to need about five more places.” But in this clip in the Oval Office, President Trump is talking about it openly.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We always have to obey the laws, but we also have homegrown criminals that push people into subways, that hit elderly ladies on the back of the head with a baseball bat when they’re not looking, that are absolute monsters. I’d like to include them in the group of people to get them out of the country, but we will have to be looking at the laws on that, Steve, OK?

REPORTER: You mentioned that you’re open to deporting individuals that aren’t foreign aliens, but are criminals, to El Salvador.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Love it.

REPORTER: Does that include potentially U.S. citizens, fully naturalized Americans?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: If they’re criminals and if they hit people with baseball bats over the head that happen to be 90 years old and if they rape 87-year-old women in Coney Island, Brooklyn, yeah, yeah, that includes them. What? Do you think there’s a special category of person? They’re as bad as anybody that comes in. We have bad ones, too. And I’m all for it. Because we can do things with the president for less money and have great security. And we have a huge prison population. We have a huge number of prisons. And then we have the private prisons, and some are operated well, I guess, and some aren’t. But he does a great job with that. We have others that we’re negotiating with, too. But, no, if it’s — if it’s a — if it’s a homegrown criminal, I have no problem. Now, we’re studying the laws right now. Pam is studying. If we can do that, that’s good. And I’m talking about violent people. I’m talking about really bad people, really bad people, every bit as bad as the ones coming in.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Nayna Gupta of the American Immigration Council, can you respond? Can you respond to what Trump has just put forward, that U.S. citizens could be sent to the prisons of El Salvador? Nayna Gupta, if you could respond — I know your IFP just dropped out — very quickly to President Trump proposing U.S. citizens could be sent to El Salvador?

NAYNA GUPTA: Yeah, this is just the president playing a dangerous game here. He is testing the limits of his authority. He is testing the limits of United States rule of law. And he is flirting with the idea of sending U.S. citizens to a foreign prison. Right now U.S. citizens, to be clear, are not at risk of this. But if the Trump administration gets away with violating multiple court orders and refusing to return Mr. Abrego Garcia, that will be an emboldening moment for the president. That will mean the president feels emboldened and has the right, in his mind, to take actions like the one he’s threatening in this moment of political theater that we saw yesterday in the White House.

AMY GOODMAN: So, we want to bring José Olivares into this conversation. If you can comment quickly, before we talk about your investigation of Ecuador in the elections, to how this all happened, this meeting between Bukele and Trump, taking the immigrants, and now this proposal of U.S. citizens, to Salvador prisons, and also the role of Erik Prince, the notorious former head of Blackwater, and his role behind the scenes setting this all up? He’s back in the United States now that Trump is president again.

JOSÉ OLIVARES: That’s right. Thank you, Amy.

Yeah, so, it’s been a long time coming, these negotiations between the Bukele administration and the Trump administration. What we’ve seen is that in the months even leading up to the elections, we saw Erik Prince visiting El Salvador and touring this terrorism confinement center, this prison, and negotiating with the Bukele administration. And it seems likely that that’s when the original idea was proposed to send immigrants detained in the U.S. to this notorious prison in El Salvador to be held by the Salvadoran government.

So, what we saw is we saw negotiations also between the Trump administration — high-level negotiations between the Trump administration and the Bukele administration right as soon as the Trump administration took power, and they were able to negotiate a deal in which the Trump administration pays the Bukele government $6 million to detain all of these immigrants that are being expelled to this prison in El Salvador. But as part of the deal, we also saw a very secretive kind of maneuver by the Trump administration with Bukele.

Just for some very brief context, in 2019, the Bukele administration negotiated with top leadership of MS-13. Now, this top leadership is called the Ranfla Nacional, and they’re known as the sort of board of directors of MS-13, this top leadership of the gang. And Bukele administration officials were entering prisons to negotiate with these top MS-13 leaders. Now, as part of the deal, MS-13 was able to kind of keep some territorial control. Some of these leaders were released from prison. But at the same time, in exchange, MS-13 agreed to reduce the violence in El Salvador, reduce the number of murders, but also they agreed to mobilize their forces to support Bukele’s political party for the 2021 legislative elections.

Now, these elections were won overwhelmingly by Bukele’s political party, which allowed him to consolidate power even further. But a year later, in 2022, this pact between MS-13 and the Bukele administration essentially fell through, and we saw Bukele put in place his state of exception, with these massive prisons, rounding up thousands of people and putting these alleged gang members in these prisons.

But as a result of the state of exception, the knowledge, the information about this pact, this original pact from 2019 between the Bukele administration and MS-13, it’s an incredibly embarrassing thing for the Bukele administration, so he’s been wanting to kind of, you know, keep tight any sort of information that could be revealed about any potential links that his government had with MS-13. Now, there are two major indictments in New York accusing the Ranfla Nacional of various narcoterrorism and terrorism crimes. But in those indictments, they specifically mention these negotiations, this pact between the Bukele administration and MS-13.

Now, what we found out, according to some documents from the Department of Justice that were first accessed by El Faro, which is an excellent Salvadoran news organization, is that on March 11th, the Trump administration dropped all charges against one of these top MS-13 leaders. His name is César Humberto López-Larios. And on March 15th, as part of this initial flight of expulsions with the Alien Enemies Act, this man, this top MS-13 leader, was sent to El Salvador, essentially handed over to the Bukele administration as a gift, essentially saying, you know, “Here you go. Thank you for letting us use your prison. Now one of these top MS-13 leaders who could potentially speak in open court about the links between the Bukele administration and MS-13, here you go. He won’t get to speak in open court anymore, because all of his charges have been dismissed.” And so, it kind of shows kind of another layer of these kind of behind-the-scenes, top-level, high-level national security negotiations between the Trump administration and Bukele’s government.

AMY GOODMAN: José Olivares, we want you to stay with us. And, Nayna Gupta, we want to say thank you so much for being with us, policy director at the American Immigration Council, as we move to Ecuador.