On April 14, El Salvador’s self-described “cool dictator” President Bukele appeared in a skit in the Oval Office with Donald Trump, where both men pretended they couldn’t undo their own actions in imprisoning Abrego Garcia.
Both Trump and Bukele delivered Oscar-worthy performances as they smirked for the cameras, mocking the audacity of a Supreme Court that would dare restrain a president’s unconstitutional overreach.
Acting pursuant to an agreement between the U.S. and El Salvador, Trump officials arrested Garcia, a father and sheet metal worker, on March 12, 2025, held him without a hearing despite a known court order protecting him from deportation, and flew him to an El Salvador prison. After a DOJ lawyer truthfully admitted the administration’s error in court, Pam Bondi placed the lawyer on permanent leave.
Under Trump’s unprecedented, eighth Amendment-defying arrangement, he paid Bukele $6 million to incarcerate more than 200 people in the notoriously harsh El Salvador prison known as CECOT. Prisoners at CECOT walk in chains, are not allowed visitors or correspondence, sleep 75 to 80 men to a cell, are never allowed outdoors, and, in the words of Bukele’s justice minister, are “never expected to leave” the prison.
The farce
In response to last week’s unanimous Supreme Court order directing Trump “to facilitate” Garcia’s return to the U.S., Trump said he had “no control” over El Salvador and that it was “up to President Bukele to decide” what to do. For his scripted response, Bukele said there was “no way” he’d send Garcia back to the U.S., calling the idea “preposterous” because releasing him would be like “smuggling a terrorist into the US.”
Every judge in every courthouse in the nation, including Judge Boasberg, who ordered the administration to turn planes headed to El Salvador around, knows that all Trump has to do is ask, and Bukele would release Garcia to the custody of U.S. officials within an hour.
Trump and Bukele, together, put Garcia into CECOT. Now pretending that they can’t get him out insults the intelligence of every American outside the Fox News bubble.
Bukele governs El Salvador under Draconian ‘States of Exception’
After he was elected president of El Salvador in 2019, Bukele declared a state of emergency in 2022 to “tackle gang crime and sky-high homicide rates.” Bukele’s state of emergency extinguished free speech and protest rights, disappeared media critics, and wiped human rights and legal process off the books.
El Salvador today, under the Bukele regime’s continuing state of emergency, arrests and imprisons people on mere suspicion, detaining thousands of people on suspicion alone — no due process, no trial, and no review.
According to NPR, a news outlet Trump now seeks to silence, Bukele’s state of emergency has led to the imprisonment of 85,000 people, of which only 1,000- less than 2%- have been convicted of a crime.
Trump shares Bukele’s love of “Emergency Declarations” and gulags
Bukele’s “State of Exception” under his “national emergency” is the legal cover Bukele employs to silence his critics and send people to gulags with no legal process. States of Exception were also Hitler’s initial cover for controlling the media, dispatching SS henchmen, and sending millions of innocent people to unthinkable deaths.
Like Bukele, Hitler, and other autocrats throughout history, Trump is also fond of declaring “national emergencies,” the precursor to rogue police powers. After only three months in office, Trump has already declared six national emergencies.
Trump previewed his plan to imprison American citizens in El Salvador too, suggesting that Bukele needed to “build five more” enormous CECOTs. Trump says he “looks forward to watching” Tesla vandals (he called them “sick terrorist thugs”) get sent to permanent prison in El Salvador.
Sending Americans to CETOC, where no unstaged press gets in and no real-time photos get out, would violate the eighth Amendment against cruel and unusual punishment.
The District Court Judge needs to find Bondi’s team in contempt
Judge Xinis has ordered the Trump administration to provide daily updates on steps the government has taken to return Garcia, but as of this writing, Trump’s defiance persists. The next step is for both Judge Xinis and Judge Boasberg to require under-oath testimony of DOJ decision-makers, going as high up the ladder as necessary to get answers. Whoever next defiantly withholds the truth, or persists in claiming they “don’t know” what they ought to, should be held in contempt of court.
As Garcia perishes in an inhumane cell in El Salvador, Trump’s henchmen should be also be imprisoned while he waits. They should spend as many weeks, months or years behind bars as it takes for federal courts to get the truth. And they should be reminded, Bondi particularly, that Trump’s criminal immunity does not extend to kidnapping, and will not protect their law license if they continue to defy the courts.
Sabrina Haake is a 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her columns are published in Alternet, Chicago Tribune, MSN, Out South Florida, Raw Story, Salon, Smart News and Windy City Times. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.
