El Salvador President Bukele says he won't be releasing Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to the US

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump 's top advisers and Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, said Monday that they had no basis for the small Central American nation to return a Maryland man who was wrongly deported there last month.

Trump administration officials emphasized that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was sent to a notorious gang prison in El Salvador, was a citizen of that country and that U.S. has no say in his future. And Bukele, who has been a vital partner for the Trump administration in its deportation efforts, said "of course I'm not going to" release him back to U.S. soil.

"The question is preposterous," Bukele said. "I don't have the power to return him to the United States."