Trump: ‘Not my decision’ to bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia back from El Salvador

President Trump says he didn’t make the call to bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran migrant at the heart of a major deportation legal battle, back to the U.S.

Instead, Mr. Trump said the Justice Department “decided to do it that way, and that’s fine.”

“That wasn’t my decision,” Mr. Trump told NBC News on Saturday.

Mr. Trump also said he hadn’t spoken lately to Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele about whether to bring back Mr. Abrego Garcia despite earlier consultations about the case.

Mr. Trump weighed in the day after Mr. Abrego Garcia returned to the U.S. to stand trial on criminal charges.

His return broke the White House’s vow that Mr. Abrego Garcia would never set foot in the U.S. and, if he did, he would be promptly deported again.

Instead, the Justice Department said he will face charges stemming from a prior incident in which police in Tennessee thought he was transporting illegal immigrants in 2022.

“It should be a very easy case” for federal prosecutors, Mr. Trump told NBC.

Mr. Abrego Garcia was in the custody of El Salvador for three months after his deportation in March. He was living in Maryland before his ouster.

Initially, a Justice Department lawyer said he was wrongly deported, and that attorney was fired. An immigration judge had said that while Mr. Abrego Garcia could be deported, he couldn’t be sent to his home country because he risked being persecuted or tortured.

Later, the administration insisted the deportation was, in fact, allowed.

That’s because Mr. Abrego Garcia was a member of MS-13, and now that MS-13 has been declared a terrorist organization, the grounds for withholding his removal to El Salvador don’t matter.

The situation became a political flashpoint, with Sen. Chris Van Hollen, Maryland Democrat, flying to El Salvador in April to visit Mr. Abrego Garcia, who was being held in the CECOT prison.