X/@NayibBukele
El Salvador President Nayib Bukele took to social media on Thursday night to mock Sen. Chris Van Hollen’s (D-MD) meeting with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the migrant that the Trump administration deported and imprisoned in El Salvador by “error.” The New York Times noted in its report that Bukele, who has called himself the “world’s coolest dictator,” staged margaritas in the photo. The Times reported:
Mr. Bukele, in a social media post, even crowed that “Kilmar Abrego Garcia, miraculously risen from the ‘death camps’ & ‘torture,’” was “now sipping margaritas with Sen. Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador!” But according to a person familiar with the situation, a Bukele aide placed the two glasses with cherries and salted rims on the table in front of Mr. Van Hollen and Mr. Abrego Garcia in the middle of their meeting in an attempt to stage the photo.
The case of Abrego Garcia has roiled American politics in recent weeks, as the Trump administration using the Alien Enemies Act to imprison over 200 migrants in El Salvador has caused alarm among critics. The Supreme Court has since ruled that the U.S. must “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return and that anyone deported under the AEA “are entitled to notice and an opportunity to challenge their removal.”
Bukele’s post on X was later followed by one from Trump, who wrote, “Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland looked like a fool yesterday standing in El Salvador begging for attention from the Fake News Media, or anyone. GRANDSTANDER!!!”
Trump’s close relationship with Bukele has raised some eyebrows in the U.S. media in recent weeks. Glenn Greenwald, who has taken a pro-MAGA turn in recent years, reacted to a recent interview in which Trump suggested imprisoning Americans in El Salvador, saying, “El Salvador under Bukele is a negation of American values: its anthesis. No due process, no free speech, no rights at all. Many on the right claim they want to preserve “American values,” yet venerate and want to import this Central American authoritarianism to the US.”
“The very idea of deporting Americans to El Salvador — to be imprisoned in a monstrous dungeon where El presidente boasts that nobody gets out and are used for slave labor — is as anti-American as it gets. “American values” mean the Enlightenment, Bill of Rights, due process,” Greenwald added.
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