It was Monday in Washington, and the tension was palpable.
Last week, the Supreme Court had ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who was wrongly deported to a maximum-security El Salvadoran prison. The stakes were high — both for Mr. Abrego Garcia, whose wife has begged for his return, and for the question of whether the White House would comply with the courts.
Now, here was the answer, delivered from the Oval Office by a chorus of the administration’s top officials, as well as El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele (who once described himself as the world’s “coolest dictator”).
There was Secretary of State Marco Rubio, squished on a couch between Vice President JD Vance and Attorney General Pam Bondi. Susie Wiles, the president’s chief of staff, crowded in behind them, along with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller, the architect of much of the administration’s domestic policy. In the middle, center stage, was President Trump, sitting in a gold armchair.
As the cameras rolled and reporters jostled, each figure jumped in to play their parts. Their lines did not always hew to the facts.
“That’s up to El Salvador if they want to return him,” Ms. Bondi said. “That’s not up to us.”
“I don’t understand what the confusion is,” Mr. Rubio said. He added, “No court in the United States has a right to conduct a foreign policy of the United States. It’s that simple, end of story.”