Jeffries to Trump: ‘Enough with the Fake Bravado’—Bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia Home from El Salvador
“Mr. Abrego Garcia must be returned immediately before he is killed in one of the most dangerous prisons in the world,” said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.)
Democrats are blasting the Trump administration for wrongfully deporting a Maryland man to El Salvador, defying a Supreme Court order and placing his life in danger. The case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia has sparked outrage on Capitol Hill, with lawmakers demanding immediate action to bring him home.
“Donald Trump and his cruel, mean-spirited administration wrongfully deported Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, ripping him away from his family and putting his life in grave danger,” said U.S. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.).
“Mr. Abrego Garcia must be returned immediately before he is killed in one of the most dangerous prisons in the world. Enough with the fake bravado. This is not America. The Supreme Court must aggressively enforce its order immediately,” he added.
U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) didn’t mince words either: “This is lawlessness. Trump can get Abrego Garcia back tomorrow and comply with the Supreme Court.”
“(1) El Salvador is our agent (and junior partner) in this arrangement by which we pay them millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to hold our deportees; (2) they are dependent on U.S. support; (3) and the president of El Salvador is coming to the White House this week. Act now,” he added.
Maryland Governor Wes Moore laid out the core of the issue plainly, “Here are the facts: The Trump administration wrongfully deported a father, sheet metal apprentice, and Maryland resident to El Salvador. They admitted to this ‘administrative error’ and the Supreme Court unanimously demanded they fix it.”
But the Trump administration—and the president of El Salvador—aren’t budging.
On Monday, both President Trump’s top advisers and El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele doubled down, saying there’s no reason for the Central American country to return Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man wrongly deported last month.
Despite a unanimous Supreme Court order urging the U.S. government to "facilitate" his return, Bukele flat-out rejected the idea, calling it “preposterous.”
“The question is preposterous. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States?” Bukele told reporters from the Oval Office, seated next to Trump.
“I don’t have the power to return him to the United States,” he added.
Attorney General Pam Bondi echoed the hands-off stance, saying the U.S. would offer a plane if El Salvador wanted to send him back—but otherwise, it’s out of their hands.
“First and foremost, he was illegally in our country,” she said. “That’s up to El Salvador if they want to return him. That’s not up to us.”
According to a Monday evening court filing, the Department of Homeland Security argued that it can't forcibly remove Abrego Garcia from El Salvador because he’s in the custody of a foreign government. The department’s attorney, Joseph Mazzara, has claimed Abrego Garcia is no longer eligible for protection from deportation because the U.S. now considers him to be a member of MS-13.
On the contrary, counsel for Abrego Garcia says the government hasn’t shown a shred of evidence linking him to MS-13—or any gang. Meanwhile, he’s being held in a notorious maximum-security prison in El Salvador, one typically reserved for the country’s most violent gang members.
The legal battle has grown increasingly tense. A federal judge in Maryland is now considering whether to hold the U.S. government in contempt for failing to explain how it plans to comply with the Supreme Court's directive.
Abrego Garcia’s case has become the latest flashpoint in a larger fight over Trump’s mass deportation push, which has heavily leaned on El Salvador’s cooperation. Since March, El Salvador has accepted more than 200 Venezuelan immigrants from the U.S., placing them in the same prison outside San Salvador where Abrego Garcia now sits.
The move is part of Bukele’s harsh crackdown on gangs—a campaign that’s jailed 84,000 people and made him wildly popular at home, despite a three-year-long state of emergency suspending basic rights. Bukele’s government struck a deal with the Trump administration where El Salvador would take Venezuelans and the U.S. would foot the $6 million bill for their incarceration.
While Trump praised Bukele during their Oval Office meeting, “I want to just say hello to the people of El Salvador and say they have one hell of a president,” Democrats back home weren’t so impressed.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) tried to meet with Bukele during his Washington visit to push for Abrego Garcia’s return. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called for the release of Abrego Garcia and others held with no credible criminal record.
“Disregarding the rule of law, ignoring unanimous rulings by the Supreme Court and subjecting individuals to detention and deportation without due process makes us less safe as a country,” she warned.
Even with the Supreme Court stepping in, the Trump administration seems to be ignoring its call to act. Over the weekend, Trump claimed he’d bring Abrego Garcia back if the court told him to, saying “I have great respect for the Supreme Court.”
But come Monday, his team’s tone shifted drastically.
“He’s a citizen of El Salvador,” said White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.
“So it’s very arrogant, even for American media, to suggest that we would even tell El Salvador how to handle their own citizens,” he added.
AG Bondi insisted that two immigration judges—under the Department of Justice—had found Abrego Garcia to be a gang member based on a tip from a confidential informant in New York, a place Abrego Garcia has never even lived.
As the legal wrangling continues and the Supreme Court’s order hangs in the air, Abrego Garcia remains trapped in a foreign prison—with his fate caught in a political tug-of-war that shows no signs of letting up.
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