El Salvador President Bukele says he won't be releasing a Maryland man back to the US

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's top advisers and Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, said Monday that they have no basis for the small Central American nation to return a Maryland man who was wrongly deported there last month. Bukele called the idea “preposterous” even though the U.S. Supreme Court has called on the administration to “facilitate” Kilmar Abrego Garcia's return.

Trump administration officials emphasized that Abrego Garcia, who was sent to a notorious gang prison in El Salvador, was a citizen of that country and that the U.S. has no say in his future. And Bukele, who has been a vital partner for the Trump administration in its deportation efforts, said “of course" he would not release him back to U.S. soil.

“The question is preposterous. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States?” Bukele, seated alongside Trump, told reporters in the Oval Office Monday. “I don't have the power to return him to the United States."

Should El Salvador want to return Abrego Garcia, the U.S. would “facilitate it, meaning provide a plane,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said.

But “first and foremost, he was illegally in our country, and he had been illegally in our country,” she said. “That’s up to El Salvador if they want to return him. That’s not up to us.”

In a court filing Monday evening, Joseph Mazzara, the acting general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security, said it “does not have authority to forcibly extract” Abrego Garcia from El Salvador because he is “in the domestic custody of a foreign sovereign nation.”

Mazarra also argued that Abergo Garcia is “no longer eligible for withholding of removal” because the U.S. designated MS-13 as a foreign terror organization. Abergo Garcia’s attorneys say the government has provided no evidence that he was affiliated with MS-13 or any other gang.

The refusal of both countries to allow the return of Abrego Garcia, who had an immigration court order preventing his deportation over fears of gang persecution, is intensifying the battle over the Maryland resident's future. It has also played out in contentious court filings, with repeated refusals from the government to tell a judge what it plans to do, if anything, to repatriate him.

The judge handling the case, Paula Xinis, is now considering whether to grant a request from the man’s legal team to compel the government to explain why it should not be held in contempt.

The fight over Abrego Garcia also underscores how critical El Salvador has been as a linchpin of the U.S. administration’s mass deportation operation.

Since March, El Salvador has accepted from the U.S. more than 200 Venezuelan immigrants — whom Trump administration officials have accused of gang activity and violent crimes — and placed them inside the country's maximum-security gang prison just outside of the capital, San Salvador. That prison is part of Bukele's broader effort to crack down on the country’s powerful street gangs, which has put 84,000 people behind bars and made Bukele extremely popular at home.

“I want to just say hello to the people of El Salvador and say they have one hell of a president," Trump said as he greeted Bukele, who was wearing a black mock turtleneck sans tie.

Bukele struck a deal under which the U.S. will pay about $6 million for El Salvador to imprison the Venezuelan immigrants for a year.

But Democrats have raised alarm about the treatment of Abrego Garcia and other migrants who may be wrongfully detained in El Salvador. Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland pushed for a meeting with Bukele while he was in Washington to discuss Abrego Garcia's potential return, and New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, urged the administration to release Abrego Garcia and others “with no credible criminal record” who were deported to the maximum-security prison.

“Disregarding the rule of law, ignoring unanimous rulings by the Supreme Court and subjecting individuals to detention and deportation without due process makes us less safe as a country,” Shaheen said.

Though other judges had ruled against the Trump administration, this month the Supreme Court cleared the way for Trump to use the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th century wartime law, to deport the immigrants. The justices did insist that the immigrants get a court hearing before being removed from the U.S. Over the weekend, 10 more people who the administration claims are members of the MS-13 and Tren de Aragua gangs arrived in El Salvador, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday.

The president has said openly that he would also favor El Salvador taking custody of American citizens who have committed violent crimes, a view he repeated Monday.

“We have bad ones too, and I'm all for it because we can do things with the president for less money and have great security,” Trump said during the meeting. “And we have a huge prison population.” It is unclear how lawful U.S. citizens could be deported elsewhere in the world.

Before the press entered the Oval Office, Trump said in a video posted on social media by Bukele that he wanted to send “homegrowns” to be incarcerated in El Salvador, and added that “you’ve got to build five more places,” suggesting Bukele doesn’t have enough prison capacity for all of the U.S. citizens that Trump would like to send there.

The Supreme Court has called for the Trump administration to “facilitate” the return of Abrego Garcia.

Trump indicated over the weekend that he would return Abrego Garcia to the U.S. if the high court’s justices said to bring him back, saying “I have great respect for the Supreme Court.” But the tone from top administration officials was sharply different Monday,

“He's a citizen of El Salvador,” said Stephen Miller, a White House deputy chief of staff. “So it's very arrogant, even for American media, to suggest that we would even tell El Salvador how to handle their own citizens.”

Bondi asserted that two immigration court judges — who are under Justice Department purview — found that Abrego Garcia was a member of MS-13. The allegation is based on a confidential informant’s claim in 2019 that Abrego Garcia was a member of a chapter in New York, where he has never lived.

While Bukele's crackdown on gangs has popular support, the country has lived under a state of emergency that suspends some basic rights for three years. He built the massive prison, located just outside San Salvador in the town of Tecoluca, to hold those accused of gang affiliation under his crackdown.

Part of his offer to receive the Venezuelans there was that the U.S. also send back some Salvadoran gang leaders. In February, his ambassador to the U.S., Milena Mayorga, said on a radio program that having gang leaders face justice in El Salvador was “an issue of honor.”

Populists who have successfully crafted their images through media, Bukele and Trump are of different generations but display similar tendencies in how they relate to the press, political opposition and justice systems in their respective countries.

Bukele came to power in the middle of Trump’s first term and had a straightforward relationship with the U.S. leader. Trump was most concerned with immigration and, under Bukele, the number of Salvadorans heading for the U.S. border declined.

Bukele’s relationship with the U.S. grew more complicated at the start of the Biden administration, which was openly critical of some of his antidemocratic actions. Trump has also shown some irritation with Bukele in the past, accusing El Salvador of lowering its crime rate by sending people to the U.S.

Alemán reported from San Salvador, El Salvador. Associated Press writers Michael Kunzelman and Chris Megerian in Washington, and Darlene Superville in West Palm Beach, Florida, contributed reporting.

El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele gives a thumbs up as he departs following a meeting at the White House with President Donald Trump, Monday, April 14, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

President Donald Trump greets El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele as he arrives at the West Wing of the White House, Monday, April 14, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele gives a thumbs up as he departs following a meeting at the White House with President Donald Trump, Monday, April 14, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

President Donald Trump greets El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele as he arrives at the West Wing of the White House, Monday, April 14, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

President Donald Trump greets El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele as he arrives at the West Wing of the White House, Monday, April 14, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

FILE - Jennifer Vasquez Sura, the wife of Kilmar Abrego Garcia of Maryland, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, speaks during a news conference at CASA's Multicultural Center in Hyattsville, Md., April 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, file)

As prisoners stand looking out from a cell, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks during a tour of the Terrorist Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, March 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

FILE - President Donald Trump, right, meets with El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele during the United Nations General Assembly, Sept. 25, 2019, in New York. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

LONDON (AP) — Elon Musk's AI chatbot Grok is preventing non-paying users from generating or editing images after a global backlash erupted over sexualized deepfakes of people, but the change has not satisfied authorities in Europe.

The chatbot, which is accessed through Musk's social media platform X, has in the past few weeks been granting a wave of what researchers say are malicious user requests to modify images, including putting women in bikinis or in sexually explicit positions.

Researchers have warned that in a few cases, some images appeared to depict children. Governments around the world have condemned the platform and opened investigations.

On Friday, Grok responded to image altering requests with the message: “Image generation and editing are currently limited to paying subscribers. You can subscribe to unlock these features.”

While subscriber numbers for Grok aren't publicly available, there was a noticeable decline Friday in the number of explicit deepfakes that Grok is now generating compared with just days earlier.

Grok was still granting image requests but only from X users with blue checkmarks given to premium subscriber who pay $8 a month for features including higher usage limits for the chatbot.

An X spokesperson didn't respond immediately to a request for comment.

The restrictions for users save for paying subscribers did not appear to change the opinions of leaders or regulators in Europe.

“This doesn't change our fundamental issue. Paid subscription or non-paid subscription, we don't want to see such images. It's as simple as that,” said Thomas Regnier, a spokesman for the European Union's executive Commission. The Commission had earlier slammed Grok for “illegal” and “appalling” behavior.

The British government was also unsatisfied.

Grok’s changes are “not a solution," said Geraint Ellis, a spokesman for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who on Thursday had threatened unspecified action against X.

“In fact, it is insulting to the victims of misogyny and sexual violence,” he said, noting that it shows that X “can move swiftly when it wants to do so.”

“We expect rapid action,” he said, adding that “all options are on the table.”

Starmer, speaking to Greatest Hits radio, had said that X needs to "get their act together and get this material down. We will take action on this because it’s simply not tolerable.”

The U.K.'s media and privacy regulators both said this week they’ve contacted X and Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI for information on measures taken to comply with British regulations.

France, Malaysia and India have also been scrutinizing the platform and a Brazilian lawmaker has called for an investigation. The European Commission has ordered X to retain all internal documents and data relating to Grok until the end of 2026, as part of a wider investigation under the EU’s digital safety law.

Grok is free to use for X users, who can ask it questions on the social media platform. They can either tag it in posts they've directly created or in replies to posts from other users.

Grok launched in 2023. Last summer the company added an image generator feature, Grok Imagine, that included a so-called “spicy mode” that can generate adult content.

The problem is amplified both because Musk pitches his chatbot as an edgier alternative to rivals with more safeguards, and because Grok’s images are publicly visible, and can therefore be easily spread.

AP writers Jill Lawless in London and Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed to this report.

FILE - Workers install lighting on an "X" sign atop the company headquarters, formerly known as Twitter, in downtown San Francisco, July 28, 2023. (AP Photo/Noah Berger, File)