OAN Staff Brooke Mallory
5:19 PM – Tuesday, April 15, 2025
Attorney General Pam Bondi criticized Democrats and the mainstream media for their continued outrage over the deportation of illegal alien Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an alleged member of the MS-13 gang and a Salvadoran national, to a mega prison in El Salvador last month — telling Jesse Watters of Fox News that “we [don’t] want him back.”
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“These people are so detached from reality that they don’t care about the victims of crimes in this country,” Bondi said on Monday.
“There is a reason that Donald Trump declared MS-13 as a foreign terrorist organization because they have come to our country, they are highly organized, they are murdering people, they are raping people. They are organized crime at its worst. They are spread rampant throughout our country, and we are going to rid our country of MS-13 and TDA [Tren de Aragua],” she continued.
Following President Trump’s meeting with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele in the Oval Office and Maryland Democrat Senator Chris Van Hollen’s request for a meeting with Bukele, as Hollen claims that the illegal alien was falsely deported — Bondi’s remarks are blunt response to the ongoing media “uproar.”
Bukele and Trump officials both argued that they lacked the power to bring Abrego Garcia back to the United States, calling the action “preposterous.”
“How can I smuggle a terrorist into the U.S.? I don’t have the power to return him to the United States,” President Bukele stated.
Bondi also told Watters that the United States is “grateful” to President Bukele for his willingness to incarcerate violent criminals and illegal aliens within his country’s prison system.
Despite a previous Supreme Court decision stating that the Trump administration should take “steps to facilitate” the possible return of the purported MS-13 member living in Maryland, who was deported to the Central American country, Bukele asserted on Monday that he is powerless to send the man back to the United States.
Additionally, Salvadoran officials, including the president, are not obligated to adhere to rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court. United States Supreme Court rulings apply only within the jurisdiction of the United States.
While there may be extradition treaties or international agreements between the U.S. and El Salvador, any cooperation based on those is voluntary and subject to Salvadoran law, not U.S. court mandates. The U.S. may request that El Salvador take certain actions, like extradition or deportation, but compliance is up to Salvadoran authorities — including the president.
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