Trump to meet El Salvador president at White House amid backlash over deportations
Donald Trump is due to meet El Salvador president Nayib Bukele at the White House on Monday with the small Central American country having become a focus of the US administration’s mass deportation operation.
Since March, El Salvador has accepted from the US more than 200 Venezuelan immigrants – whom Trump administration officials have accused of gang activity and violent crimes – and placed them inside the country’s notorious maximum-security gang prison just outside the capital, San Salvador, called Cecot, an acronym for Terrorism Confinement Centre in Spanish.
That has made Bukele, the most powerful leader in El Salvador’s modern history, a vital ally for the Trump administration, which has offered little evidence for its claims that the Venezuelan immigrants were gang members, nor has it released names of those deported.
Bukele won a decisive victory in elections last year after voters cast aside concerns about erosion of democracy to reward him for a fierce gang crackdown that transformed security in El Salvador. The alliance between Trump and Bukele “has become an example for security and prosperity in our hemisphere”, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said yesterday. Trump told reporters he thought Bukele was doing a “fantastic job” and “taking care of a lot of problems that we have that we really wouldn’t be able to take care of from a cost standpoint”.
US officials said in court filings on Sunday that they were not obliged to help a Maryland resident get out of prison in El Salvador after he was erroneously deported, despite a supreme court ruling directing the government to “facilitate” his return to the US.
Attorneys for the Trump administration said the high court’s order to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Abrego García, 29, meant they should “remove any domestic obstacles that would otherwise impede the alien’s ability to return here”, not help extract him from El Salvador.
The Trump administration has acknowledged that García, a Salvadoran migrant who was living in Maryland and has had a work permit since 2019, was deported in March in violation of an immigration judge’s order blocking his removal to El Salvador.
The White House has admitted that Garcia was deported due to an “administrative error”. He was one of the 238 Venezuelans and 23 Salvadorans the Trump administration has deported to Cecot – which houses both convicted criminals and those still going through El Salvador’s court system – under an agreement between the two countries.
The case highlights the administration’s tensions with federal courts. Several have blocked Trump policies, and judges have expressed frustration with administration efforts – or lack of them – to comply with court orders.
Bukele’s visit comes days after the US deported 10 more people to El Salvador.
Key events
Pennsylvania arson suspect planned to beat governor with hammer, documents say
A man who authorities said scaled an iron security fence in the middle of the night, eluded police and broke into the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion – where he set a fire – had planned to beat the governor, Josh Shapiro, with a hammer if he found him because he hates the politician, according to court documents released on Monday.
The fire left significant damage and forced Shapiro, his family and guests to evacuate the building early on Sunday. The man, arrested later in the day, faces charges including attempted homicide, terrorism, aggravated arson and aggravated assault, authorities said.
During a police interview, authorities said Cody Balmer told them after he was taken into custody that he would have beaten Shapiro with a small sledgehammer if he had found him. Balmer had walked an hour from his home to the governor’s residence in Harrisburg, and during the police interview, “Balmer admitted to harboring hatred towards … Shapiro,” according to a police affidavit. The affidavit did not note why Balmer purportedly hated Shapiro.
