> But we also know, see here, that the Trump administration did ask Bukele to release Garcia, and Bukele said no.
I am familiar with the article—it was actually my source for Bukele’s “smuggling” quote. Another Bukele quote from the article is, “I don’t have the power to return him to the United States.”
The closest that the article comes to saying that Bukele is refusing to send Garcia back is when it quotes Bukele as so: “said ‘of course’ he would not release him back to U.S. soil.” But as this is partly rewritten it is worth revisiting what Bukele actually said. Which is, “I hope you’re not suggesting that I smuggle a terroist into the United States. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? Of course I’m not going to do it. The question is preposterous.” (Source: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.578815/gov.uscourts.mdd.578815.74.0_5.pdf )
So Bukele is refusing to smuggle Garcia back, and going on record as not having the power to return him to the United States. But perhaps Bukele would send Garcia back if the US guaranteed Garcia’s safe return and asked nicely in a well worded letter.
Also worth noting that the AP article is from April 14th but the CBS article reporting on Van Hollen and Felix Ulloa is from April 16. So I think the editors of the AP article might have just gotten it wrong and misquoted Bukele, but understandbly so because they didn’t have all the details (the reveal from Ulloa not happening for another two days).
If Bukele was misquoted and is simply refusing to smuggle Garcia in (which no one is asking for), then there’s no contradiction between the reported remarks of Bukele and Ulloa. But if Bukele is in fact saying he was asked and he refuses to send Garcia back, then he and Ulloa seem to disagree. (Though another hypothetical possibility that would fit is that El Salvador was indeed paid, and the US administration did ask for Garcia back as well as the payments (that is, asking for a refund), and Bukele refused and said he’d only send Garcia back if El Salvador was allowed to keep the money.)
Importantly, no one in the article or elsewhere (including in the court document submission) says that someone in the US administration asked an official of El Salvador to return Garcia. It’s never spelled out that someone has actually asked this, even though there’s an active court case related to that very point (so if someone had indeed asked, the evidence of this would likely have been submitted to that court—granted that we might not know about it if it was done in camera, but as of April 21 no submissions have ever been made under seal).
> If such payments are actually occurring, then I agree we should stop them and see what happens, but I would bet against it resulting in Garcia’s release.
Actually I would emphasize caution here, and precisely for that reason. Perhaps there are other consequences to stopping the payments that haven’t been publicly revealed? Or even that threatening to withhold payments blindly might inflame the situation and make it harder to get Garcia back, when instead offering a carrot would work better? The courts are correct not to directly order this (at least not at this early stage), it’s best left to the Executive to find the right way to facilitate Garcia’s return while otherwise managing the foreign affairs of the United States.
That said, another possibility is that the payments are actually a prepaid lump sum. That is, El Salvador got paid in full first and took in people, including Garcia, only afterwards. So the payments cannot be stopped because they’re already completed.
> That says to me that even if there are payments coming from the US, those payments are definitely not the only reason El Salvador has to keep Garcia imprisoned. They have other reasons of their own.
This also seems to contradict the CBS article, where Ulloa told Van Hollen that the payments were the reason that El Salvador could not release Garcia.
> I think I’m counting at least 3 levels of hearsay for this claim that the US is paying El Salvador to imprison Garcia.
You mean from CBS News to Senator Chris Van Hollen to El Salvadoran Vice President Felix Ulloa?
I’d have thought that a statement from the official El Salvadoran Vice President would have been fairly reliable.
Here’s another source for that information though, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/17/us/politics/trump-deportation-flights-hearing.html paraphrases White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt as saying “The United States is paying El Salvador $6 million to take in the deportees,” (of which Abrego Garcia was one).
> But we also know, see here, that the Trump administration did ask Bukele to release Garcia, and Bukele said no.
I am familiar with the article—it was actually my source for Bukele’s “smuggling” quote. Another Bukele quote from the article is, “I don’t have the power to return him to the United States.”
The closest that the article comes to saying that Bukele is refusing to send Garcia back is when it quotes Bukele as so: “said ‘of course’ he would not release him back to U.S. soil.” But as this is partly rewritten it is worth revisiting what Bukele actually said. Which is, “I hope you’re not suggesting that I smuggle a terroist into the United States. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? Of course I’m not going to do it. The question is preposterous.” (Source: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.578815/gov.uscourts.mdd.578815.74.0_5.pdf )
So Bukele is refusing to smuggle Garcia back, and going on record as not having the power to return him to the United States. But perhaps Bukele would send Garcia back if the US guaranteed Garcia’s safe return and asked nicely in a well worded letter.
Also worth noting that the AP article is from April 14th but the CBS article reporting on Van Hollen and Felix Ulloa is from April 16. So I think the editors of the AP article might have just gotten it wrong and misquoted Bukele, but understandbly so because they didn’t have all the details (the reveal from Ulloa not happening for another two days).
If Bukele was misquoted and is simply refusing to smuggle Garcia in (which no one is asking for), then there’s no contradiction between the reported remarks of Bukele and Ulloa. But if Bukele is in fact saying he was asked and he refuses to send Garcia back, then he and Ulloa seem to disagree. (Though another hypothetical possibility that would fit is that El Salvador was indeed paid, and the US administration did ask for Garcia back as well as the payments (that is, asking for a refund), and Bukele refused and said he’d only send Garcia back if El Salvador was allowed to keep the money.)
Importantly, no one in the article or elsewhere (including in the court document submission) says that someone in the US administration asked an official of El Salvador to return Garcia. It’s never spelled out that someone has actually asked this, even though there’s an active court case related to that very point (so if someone had indeed asked, the evidence of this would likely have been submitted to that court—granted that we might not know about it if it was done in camera, but as of April 21 no submissions have ever been made under seal).
> If such payments are actually occurring, then I agree we should stop them and see what happens, but I would bet against it resulting in Garcia’s release.
Actually I would emphasize caution here, and precisely for that reason. Perhaps there are other consequences to stopping the payments that haven’t been publicly revealed? Or even that threatening to withhold payments blindly might inflame the situation and make it harder to get Garcia back, when instead offering a carrot would work better? The courts are correct not to directly order this (at least not at this early stage), it’s best left to the Executive to find the right way to facilitate Garcia’s return while otherwise managing the foreign affairs of the United States.
That said, another possibility is that the payments are actually a prepaid lump sum. That is, El Salvador got paid in full first and took in people, including Garcia, only afterwards. So the payments cannot be stopped because they’re already completed.
> That says to me that even if there are payments coming from the US, those payments are definitely not the only reason El Salvador has to keep Garcia imprisoned. They have other reasons of their own.
This also seems to contradict the CBS article, where Ulloa told Van Hollen that the payments were the reason that El Salvador could not release Garcia.