The Trump administration recently sent a diplomatic note to officials in El Salvador to inquire about releasing a Salvadoran immigrant whom government officials have been ordered by the Supreme Court to help free, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.
But the authoritarian government of Nayib Bukele, the leader of El Salvador, said no, two of the people said. The Bukele administration claimed the man should stay in El Salvador because he was a Salvadoran citizen, according to one of those people.
It remained unclear whether the diplomatic effort was a genuine bid by the White House to address the plight of the immigrant, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, whom administration officials have repeatedly acknowledged was improperly expelled to El Salvador last month in violation of a court order expressly prohibiting him from being sent there.
Some legal experts suggested that the sequence of events could have been an attempt at window dressing by officials seeking to give the appearance of being in compliance with the recent Supreme Court ruling ordering the White House to “facilitate” Mr. Abrego Garcia’s release.
The disclosure about the note adds to the confusion about the Trump administration’s efforts to free Mr. Abrego Garcia and whether it is seeking to comply with court orders. Even as the administration appeared to be moving privately to work toward Mr. Abrego Garcia’s release, it has publicly expressed unwillingness to bring him back to the United States.
The revelation came just hours after the president, reversing course on his administration’s previous statements, said in an interview with ABC News that he had the ability to bring Mr. Abrego Garcia back. The president added that he did not believe Mr. Abrego Garcia was a good person and that his administration’s lawyers would decide. The Justice Department is also facing a court-ordered deadline of early next week to provide information about what it has done to seek his freedom.
The White House declined to comment on the diplomatic note. A spokeswoman for the State Department did not respond to a request for comment. A spokeswoman for Mr. Bukele did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio declined on Wednesday to say whether the State Department had been in touch with El Salvador about the release and return of Mr. Abrego Garcia.
“I would never tell you that,” Mr. Rubio said during a question-and-answer portion of a cabinet meeting with Mr. Trump. “And you know who else I would never tell? A judge. Because the conduct of our foreign policy belongs to the president of the United States and the executive branch. Not some judge.”
In a statement, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said, “In the Oval Office, President Bukele made it very clear he will not be smuggling Abrego Garcia, who is a designated foreign terrorist, MS-13 gang member and El Salvadoran national, back into the United States.”
Judge Paula Xinis, who is overseeing Mr. Abrego Garcia’s case in Federal District Court in Maryland, has opened a searching inquiry in the case. She is looking into whether Trump officials acted in bad faith by ignoring both her instructions and the Supreme Court’s to work toward freeing Mr. Abrego Garcia and obtaining for him the sort of due process he would have been afforded if he had not been wrongfully sent to El Salvador on March 15.
Judge Xinis, after putting that investigation on an extraordinary two-week fast track, abruptly placed it on hold last week after the Trump administration asked for a delay after revealing that the State Department had “engaged in appropriate diplomatic discussions with El Salvador regarding Abrego Garcia.”
On Tuesday, the Justice Department asked for an additional delay, but Judge Xinis rejected the request after a sealed court proceeding on Wednesday.
That left the administration still facing a deadline of Monday to give Mr. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers detailed information about who authorized his detention in El Salvador and what steps the White House has taken, and intends to take, on seeking his release. The lawyers will also take depositions no later than May 9 of four Trump aides, including Michael G. Kozak, a State Department official.
Stephen Miller, the architect of Mr. Trump’s domestic agenda, and Attorney General Pam Bondi had said that because Mr. Abrego Garcia was in a Salvadoran prison, the responsibility of his release falls solely on Mr. Bukele. The Justice Department has argued it would be complying with the Supreme Court’s order to facilitate Mr. Abrego Garcia’s return by simply letting him into the United States if he were ever to make it to a port of entry.
Sitting alongside Mr. Trump in the Oval Office this month, Mr. Bukele said he would not release Mr. Abrego Garcia, arguing that it would be akin to releasing a terrorist.
But in his interview with ABC News on Tuesday, Mr. Trump acknowledged that he did have power to bring Mr. Abrego Garcia back. He said his administration, specifically his government lawyers, simply did not want to.
“I’m not the one making this decision,” Mr. Trump said in the interview. “We have lawyers that don’t want to do this.”
Stephen I. Vladeck, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, said that the Supreme Court had given Mr. Trump “a graceful way” out of the legal morass involving Mr. Abrego Garcia by ordering him merely to take steps to seek the migrant’s release from foreign custody. The diplomatic note might have satisfied the Supreme Court’s demands, albeit in an extremely narrow way, he added.
“But as usual the president is his own worst enemy in court,” Mr. Vladeck said. “When you have the president publicly saying there are things he can do but is choosing not to do, I think any federal judge or Supreme Court justice worth their salt may eventually order him to do those things. I think if the president had just kept his mouth shut, the government’s case would have been a lot stronger.”
Mr. Abrego Garcia entered the United States illegally in 2012 and was arrested in 2019 while looking for casual work outside a Home Depot in suburban Maryland. The administration’s own career officials have acknowledged in court filings that including him in a series of deportations to El Salvador last month was an “administrative error.”
In October 2019, an immigration judge ruled that Mr. Abrego Garcia could not be deported back to El Salvador because he could face violence or persecution from a gang, Barrio 18. He was allowed to stay in the United States and issued a work permit.
But Mr. Trump and his advisers have in recent weeks said they were right to deport him to El Salvador. While they have faced pressure from the courts to return Mr. Abrego Garcia, the administration has sought to win the battle of public opinion by posting photos on social media of Mr. Abrego Garcia’s tattoos — including a doctored label that the symbols on his hand were related to the gang MS-13.
The tattoos themselves appear to be real, but some gang experts have questioned whether they are truly MS-13 symbols, or whether tattoos in general are reliable evidence for identifying members of gangs.
