El Salvador President Nayib Bukele visited the White House, Monday, marking the first visit by a Latin American head of state during Trump’s second term.
The presidents were joined by cabinet members and members of the press in the Oval Office, largely discussing immigration enforcement and crime control. The pair also discussed the recent court battle regarding Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia.
The Salvadoran president praised Trump, saying, “Actually, what you’re doing with the border is remarkable.”
Bukele is known for reducing homicide rates in his country. In 2019, when Bukele took office, the homicide rate was 36 per 100,000 people. In 2024 it dropped to 1.9, per Statista.
“The fact is, Mr. President, that you have 350 million people to liberate. But to liberate 350 million people, you have to imprison some,” Bukele told Trump. “You know that’s the way it works. You cannot just free the criminals and think that crime is going to go down magically. You have to imprison them so you can liberate 350 million Americans that are asking for the end of crime and the end of terrorism.”
Bukele on Trump’s mass deportations
Bukele said his administration in El Salvador interviewed one of the men who had been deported from the U.S. “to get some information.”
The president described that conversation to Trump. “He said, ‘You know, I got arrested six times, but they released me the six times, so I should be released again.’ And then we said, ‘Well what’s the last thing you did?’ And he said, ‘Well, I shot a cop in the leg, but I didn’t kill him. I just shot him in the leg.’ And we’re like, this guy was arrested six times here in the United States. Six times,” Bukele said.
“There’s something broken,” Bukele said. “He was released five times, and the last time he was sent to El Salvador, so he’s not getting released.”
Bukele did not mention the deportee’s name.
Bukele and Trump discuss men in women’s sports and feminism
Trump asked Bukele if his country allows men to participate in women’s sports.
Bukele responded by mentioning the women’s rights movement in El Salvador. “We enacted specific laws to avoid men abusing women, and I think those laws were great because there were a lot of men abusing women,” Bukele said. “But now some of the same people are trying to backtrack and actually trying to make new laws allowing men to abuse women in sports. So actually, that doesn’t make sense.”
Trump then told Bukele about U.S. members of Congress advocating for men’s participation in women’s sports, and he said, “But your country isn’t too big in that.”
“No, of course not,” Bukele responded. “We’re big in protecting women. And as you can see, most of my cabinet is women.”
Trump then acknowledged the women in his own Cabinet and pointed out Suzie Wiles. “Most powerful woman in the Cabinet,” he said. “They’re all afraid of her.”
“Most powerful woman in the world according to magazines. I think she probably is, but what do I know,” Trump said.
Wiles is the first woman to serve as a White House chief of staff.
Trump denounced arson attack on Pennyslvania governor’s mansion
When a reporter asked the president if he’d learned anything from the FBI investigation on the weekend attack at the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion, Trump said he hadn’t heard anything.
However, he added, “But the attacker was not a fan of Trump, I understand, just from what I read and from what I’ve been told.”
“The attacker basically wasn’t a fan of anybody,” Trump continued, “It’s probably just a whack job. And certainly a thing like that cannot be allowed to happen.”
Bukele says he will not return man to the U.S.
A CNN reporter asked whether Trump was planning on allowing Kilmar Abrego Garcia back into the country. Trump has said he belonged to MS-13. Abrego Garcia illegally migrated to the U.S. in 2011 as a 16-year-old, but his removal was withheld in 2019 after a judge reviewed his case and said that he could be at risk if returned to El Salvador. Abrego Garcia has three children living in the United States.
His case has more recently been examined in both Maryland’s district court and in the Supreme Court, with the district ruling to block Garcia’s deportation.
Trump allowed U.S. Homeland Security Adviser Stephen Miller to answer the reporter’s question.
“As two immigration courts found that he (Garcia) was a member of MS-13, when President Trump declared MS-13 to be a foreign terrorist organization, that meant that he was no longer eligible under federal law, which means that he was no longer eligible for any form of immigration relief in the United States,” Miller said.
Miller continued, “So he had a deportation order that was valid, which meant that under our law he’s not even allowed to be present in the United States and had to be returned because of the foreign terrorist designation. This issue was then by a district court judge completely inverted, and a district court judge tried to tell the administration that they had to kidnap a citizen of El Salvador and fly him back here.”
“That issue was raised by the Supreme Court,” Miller explained, “And the Supreme Court said the district court order was unlawful and its main components were unlawful, and its main components were reversed 9-0 unanimously, stating clearly that the secretary of state nor the president could be compelled by anybody to forcibly retrieve a citizen of El Salvador from El Salvador.”
The reporter asked Bukele if he would return Abrego Garcia to the U.S.,, and he responded, “How can I return him to the United States?”
“Do I smuggle him into the United States? Of course, I’m not going to do it,” Bukele said. “It’s like, I mean the question is preposterous. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States?”
Bukele continued, “We’re not very fond of releasing terrorists into our country. We just turned the murder capital of the world into the safest country in the Western Hemisphere, and you want us to go back into releasing criminals so we can go back to being the murder capital of the world? That’s not going to happen.”
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