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President Donald Trump skirted questions about the Supreme Court’s order to bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia back from a mega-prison in El Salvador, and about his administration’s defiance of a federal judge’s order to not deport hundreds of people to the Salvadoran prison without due process.
“I’m not involved in it,” Trump said at a press conference in the Oval Office on Thursday when a reporter asked whether he would move to bring Abrego Garcia back to the U.S. and give him a trial. “I’m going to respond by saying you’ll have to speak to the lawyers, the DOJ.”
The Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” the return of Abrego Garcia last week. The administration illegally deported Abrego Garcia to El Salvador last month, and admitted in a court filing that an “administrative error” was responsible. White House advisers and El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, said they would not be sending him back.
On Tuesday, a federal judge found that Trump officials defied the order, calling for the testimony of four top officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the State Department. Abrego Garcia, a citizen of El Salvador, was granted a “protection from removal” order on the basis that he would be persecuted by gangs in his home country. The Trump administration alleges he is part of the MS-13 gang, despite producing no real evidence he is a member.
After claiming he’s “not involved” in the case on Thursday, Trump turned to the issue of immigration more broadly. “I’ve heard many things about him and we’ll have to find out what the truth is, but I will say this: we were inundated by millions of people, many millions of people during the Biden administration,” he said. “And I was elected to get rid of those criminals, to get them out of our country. Or to put them away, but to get them out of our country.”
“And I don’t see how judges can take that authority away from a president,” the president added.
Earlier in the press conference, a reporter mentioned U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who ordered the Trump administration to not deport people to the notorious Salvadoran prison. The Trump administration sent two planes to the prison shortly after Boasberg had barred them from doing so.
On Wednesday, Boasberg said that there was probable cause to hold Trump administration officials in criminal contempt for defying his order.
“The Constitution does not tolerate willful disobedience of judicial orders — especially by officials of a coordinate branch who have sworn an oath to uphold it,” Boasberg wrote in his decision.
“Do you agree with that statement?” the reporter asked, quoting Boasberg.
“Well you’re going to have to speak to the lawyers,” Trump said. “We have great lawyers. I can tell you this: We’re doing a fantastic job of getting criminals out of this country who Biden allowed into the country. Hundreds of thousands of criminals, murderers, and drug dealers … One of the primary reasons I was elected is because I said ‘I’m going to get the criminals that he allowed to come into our country so stupidly through open borders, I’m going to get them out.’”
