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Soon: Trump Meets With Salvadoran President Amid Court Battle Over Mistakenly Deported Man. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired April 14, 2025 - 11:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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[11:01:30]

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now, breaking news. A closely watched meeting at the White House. President Trump will soon greet the leader of El Salvador, President Nayib Bukele, could control the fate of the Maryland man mistakenly deported to a notorious prison in his country.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: And all of this comes, Pamela, as the Trump administration claims it is not required to work with Salvadoran officials to bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia home. It's a position that appears to directly contradict an order from the United States Supreme Court. We want to welcome our viewers here in the United States and around the world. I'm Wolf Blitzer with Pamela Brown, and you're in The Situation Room.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is CNN Breaking News.

BROWN: And let's get straight to the breaking news on this critical meeting. Our team of journalists is covering every angle. First, to CNN chief and national affairs correspondent, Jeff Zeleny, at the White House. Jeff, what is at stake as these two leaders meet?

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, good morning, Pamela. El Salvador has emerged as a central piece of the Trump administration's immigration policy all because of the prison that President Bukele has. And he has essentially entered into a business arrangement with the United States to take many of the -- the immigrants who are part of the immigration system that the President has established under that Alien Enemies Act that he has signed. It's been very controversial. There's no doubt about it.

But along the way, the President has also elevated the El Salvadorian leader. There's no doubt. I mean, he is one of the President's closest -- closest allies, certainly in Central America. And this meeting in the Oval Office is going to essentially elevate him on the world stage as well. But it is the fate of the Maryland man that you were talking about that is front and center in this meeting today, after the Supreme Court ruled once again late last week that -- that they have to return him.

The question is, who will do that? Will the President call for that? So we're expecting his arrival here at the White House at any moment, Pamela.

BLITZER: And David Culver is joining us right now. David, you were recently in El Salvador. You actually toured that notorious prison where so many are being held right now. What should we make of the relationship between these two leaders, the presidents of the United States and El Salvador? As you know, President Trump was very critical of El Salvador out on the campaign trail.

DAVID CULVER, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, and that's what's really interesting here, Wolf. I mean, as Jeff mentioned, this is a huge ally now to the United States, El Salvador in Latin America. But you go back just a few months, and President Trump was not speaking very positively about El Salvador or the Salvadoran leader, President Nayib Bukele, and saying that this is a man who was dumping criminals on the U.S., sending them over the border.

That's something that when I was on multiple visits now down in El Salvador speaking with advisers to Bukele, they pushed back on. And quite frankly, they were frustrated at that time, thinking, why is the President of the United States, or at least the person who at that time was running to be president once again, speaking this way about El Salvador? Yet they chose not to publicly react because they were looking forward to a day like today, where they believed that they could mend that relationship and that they could become allies and strategic ones at that.

Now, Jeff mentioned an important word in all of this, business. This is a business arrangement. Certainly, that's how President Bukele looks at it. He first came to power in 2019 in El Salvador and then was able to run again after, as critics have pointed out, essentially replacing the Supreme Court judges in El Salvador with his appointees and then the Constitution was able to change, and hence he came to a second term, which he's currently serving. That first term of his was focused on security.

[11:05:09]

El Salvador was the murder capital of the world. It's done a 180 in transformation. It really is incredibly safe when you're on the streets there. Folks have questioned the tactics to get to that point. But now in the second term, people will tell you they need the economy to follow, and that's something that President Bukele is looking to the U.S. in hopes of getting some of those investors to put their money down south.

BROWN: All right, Katelyn, I want to go to you now, because at that prison that David visited is Mr. Abrego Garcia, right? And there's an ongoing court battle over him and bringing him back to the U.S. Tell us what the latest is on that front.

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it's being managed on a daily basis now by a judge in Maryland, a federal judge. And this judge is asking for daily updates about Abrego Garcia's status at the prison. So far, the administration said he is still detained there, he is alive and secure, and they're offering no further information. But what this is now is it is a court battle that is becoming something more than just about the status of this one man who was deported from the U.S. It is about a fight over the power of the presidency, the executive branch, and the fight that has materialized in daily updates the administration is providing to the court is they're arguing that the courts should not micromanage how we deal with foreign policy. If the courts or the plaintiffs, his lawyers, want us to make demands of the Salvadoran government, send an aircraft into the space of that foreign nation, put people from the U.S. on soil to get him back from El Salvador, they're arguing that you shouldn't make us do that because the President should have the ability to manage his foreign policy.

So in some ways, this man has become much more of a political pawn in this court battle than just a court battle over him, himself, and where he is at this moment.

BLITZER: It's so sad, indeed. I interviewed, Priscilla, his wife, the other day, and they've got kids. They're in Maryland. It's so sad. Tell us a little bit about the toll that this horrible ordeal is having on his family in Maryland.

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, look, there's certainly a human toll to all of this and everything that Jeff, David, and Katelyn ties together. El Salvador, a key ally, is becoming the test case for this administration's very aggressive immigration agenda, and Abrego Garcia is one of many who have fallen to it. His wife, Jennifer, has talked about how devastated her family has been because this all really goes back to mid-March when he was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But it wasn't clear at the time why he was detained, but only three days after that was he deported suddenly to El Salvador.

So this has been an ordeal dating back several weeks now for this family who was completely dumbfounded when they found out that he was in El Salvador through, by the way, images and handouts that were distributed by the El Salvadoran government. But she's not the only one. I have been talking to many family members.

In fact, I get multiple calls from attorneys, from families who have learned in the course of these handouts by the Salvadoran government that their relatives were sent to that mega prison, and they cannot get in touch with them. I was with a woman when she found out for the first time that her brother was sent there, and that was confirmed by the Department of Homeland Security in that moment.

Now, when we asked the administration to provide evidence as to why these detainees were selected to be sent to this prison, very rarely are they able to provide any evidence of the sort. So this has been something that has weighed heavily not only on Abrego Garcia's family, but also on many others who are there, and the administration has shown no interest in stopping. In fact, they plan to continue to send migrants to this prison, CECOT.

BROWN: Yes, they just recently said, I think it was around 10, right, to El Salvador. ALVAREZ: It did.

BROWN: Do we know if they had any due process before being sent over?

ALVAREZ: So we know that they sent 10 over the weekend. That includes MS-13 members, as well as Tren de Aragua members. This is according to the Secretary of State. There has to be some level of due process, particularly for the Venezuelan migrants, for them to know that they're going to be sent to El Salvador, that's not their country of origin. And have an opportunity to file a complaint.

Now, they were in Guantanamo, and Guantanamo, which the administration has wanted to use to detain migrants, came under scrutiny because there wasn't access to legal counsel. So it's unclear at this point whether they were able to get that due process. The Supreme Court made clear that they do need.

BROWN: Right.

ALVAREZ: But there has already been other cases that have been cropping up across the United States of attorneys worried that their own clients are going to be selected to be sent to this prison. And again, this is all concerning because it's one thing to remove someone to a third country. We've seen that happen before. In fact, this administration sent migrants to Panama, which we've also covered. But when you send them to a prison in El Salvador, that's it. They are in El Salvadoran custody, and there is no communication. In fact, that is what the prison prides itself on, is that they -- you cannot communicate with your relatives.

[11:10:15]

So when they're sent there, it's really a black hole. And that is why this in particular has become such a controversy, because immigrant advocates and attorneys say, look, once they're sent there, how do we get them back? And they're not even from there.

BROWN: Well, and we should note that this is all happening as President Trump is about to meet with the Salvadoran president. We just saw the live picture there from the White House. So the president will welcome him in. They'll go meet at the Oval Office. Jeff Zeleny, on that note, we all remember, you know, the fireworks, what happened with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office. How does the president use this setting to get his message across? What are you expecting today on that front?

ZELENY: Well, Pamela, we definitely do not expect a redo of this meeting that you're seeing on screen there in February with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. That was an extraordinary really breakdown of diplomatic relations. This is altogether different. This is the President. And we have seen him use this Oval Office meeting. He has been meeting a parade of leaders since he's been back in office here.

And this is one that is entirely different for many reasons, because President Bukele is very much coming here to likely, you know, to appraise the U.S. President. He's very much a strong ally. He's very much an admirer. And the Trump administration is very grateful that they do have this business relationship because it helps them carry out their really the centerpiece of their agenda, and that's the immigration sweeps that have been happening.

So I do not expect this Oval Office meeting to be anything like the Zelenskyy one, of course. It'll be much more akin to many of the friendlier sessions here. But the fact that the President, U.S. President is inviting the El Salvador president here for this meeting, it certainly elevates him on the world stage in a way that he otherwise would not be.

BLITZER: You would think since these two presidents, Jeff, have a good relationship, President Trump could simply say to President Bukele, You know what, we made a mistake. We sent the wrong guy to the prison in El Salvador. Please let him come back to the United States. I'm sure that the president of El Salvador would respond to that, don't you think?

ZELENY: I would certainly think he would respond to that because, again, I mean, the U.S. here is the one that's paying the bills, but it's unclear and unlikely that the President of the United States will do that. I mean, they certainly have not given any indication that they will do that. But there's no doubt that -- that President Bukele, it would seem, would do whatever President Trump asked of him.

BROWN: And I want to go to you on this, Katelyn. Thanks, Jeff. Because just this morning, Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, was on, I believe he was on "Fox," and he called Garcia an illegal alien and denied that his deportation was a mistake. But then you also had that court filing from a DOJ lawyer saying that he was sent over an administrative error. So what do you make of this?

POLANTZ: Yes, there's actually, this is a moving target in court in some ways. So Stephen Miller is now saying nobody was mistakenly sent to El Salvador. That just isn't true. There have been several people that were mistakenly sent to this El Salvadoran prison in March on the flights. We know that not just this man. There were others as well.

But in his case, six years ago when he was before an immigration judge, he can be removed from the country. He can be deported. What the judge had found was that he and his family were under threat in El Salvador, so he wasn't supposed to be removed there. That's the mistake. And that's the mistake the administration still says, yes, indeed, he should not have been removed to El Salvador. That was just written in a court filing by a Department of Homeland Security official this weekend.

What they do say now, though, is they're arguing a little bit differently in court. They're now saying we don't think he's eligible anymore for this block on sending him back to El Salvador because we believe he is a member of MS-13. That's something that the administration wants to say is within their purview to make that determination, but it still is going through courts, and we're going to get another update on his status today by 5:00. BROWN: And we should note the administration hasn't provided the evidence to support that. We had his wife on and asked her, was he a gang member, and she denied that.

BLITZER: Totally. His lawyers totally denied as well.

POLANTZ: Yes. Maintaining that, yes.

BLITZER: Yes.

BROWN: All right. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thank you to everyone. We're going to take you back to the White House once this meeting begins.

BLITZER: And still ahead, we're watching the markets right now, as we have been on a daily basis, how tech stocks are reacting after the White House rolled out some very confusing exemptions for some electronics.

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BROWN: Plus, we are watching a major monopoly case playing out in court. Mark Zuckerberg's Meta could be forced to sell Instagram and WhatsApp. Stay with us. You're in The Situation Room.

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BLITZER: All right, take a look at this. Live pictures coming in from the White House right now. These are live pictures from just outside the West Wing of the White House. We're expecting the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, to be arriving within the next few minutes for a very important meeting in the Oval Office with the President of the United States.

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Lots on the agenda between the United States and El Salvador. These two presidents, Pamela, they have a good relationship, but let's see if they can work out a deal to allow this Maryland man, who the Trump administration says was inappropriately sent off to some prison in El Salvador, to at least come home to his wife and kids.

BROWN: Right. The administration admitted it was an administrative error, but now you have White House officials coming on and trying to argue that actually, no, it wasn't a mistake and that this, you know, that he, you know, was here illegally and this is where he belongs. So certainly that will be part of the discussion, one would think, between the two presidents. And they have many other topics on the agenda.

But -- but make no mistake that this is very different. This will have a very different tone and tenor than what we saw between President Trump and President Zelenskyy because the two presidents here are very friendly and El Salvador is really a central part of President Trump's immigration plans and policy. BLITZER: All right. They just indicated that the vehicle bringing the president of El Salvador to the White House has arrived and will be pulling up to that area just outside the West Wing momentarily. I want to curiously, Pamela, I want to see the reaction. The relationship, is this a simple handshake? Do they give each other a hug? I want to see what they do once the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, gets out of his vehicle and begins the process of seeing. There's a lot on the agenda right now between the United States, as you know, Pamela, and El Salvador.

BROWN: That's right. All right, so as we await for this to happen, let's see. We're just waiting for -- for the President Bukele to -- to arrive. You know, it's interesting because President Trump on the campaign trail, he was critical of El Salvador.

BLITZER: Right.

BROWN: And much the chagrin of those in El Salvador. But now that approach has changed and, you know, the administration continues to send over those that it claims are members of gangs to El Salvador. In fact, over the weekend, Wolf, the administration sent 10 people that they said were part of the gangs to El Salvador, to that prison -- prison.

And we just had our David Culver visit that prison as well to look at the conditions there. It has been accused of human rights abuses and other issues. The President, though, over the weekend waved that off and said he didn't know anything about human rights abuses there. But again, we're waiting for the two leaders to meet.

BLITZER: And President Bukele is getting all the honors as he begins to arrive at the White House. They're going to be meeting. The President will greet him at this door here, and then they'll go into the Oval Office for a formal bilateral meeting between these two presidents. And later, the President will participate in a bilateral lunch with the president of the Republic of El Salvador, I'm reading from the official White House schedule. Jeff Zeleny is over at the White House for us.

Jeff, do we anticipate this meeting will result in the freedom, the release of this man from Maryland who was inappropriately deported to El Salvador to this notorious prison there?

ZELENY: Wolf, that really is one of the central questions hanging over this meeting, it certainly could be one of the outcomes, but I would caution against expecting that or having high expectations of that. We shall see. This, of course, is somewhat of an unprecedented moment, not only the meeting itself, but the entire signing of the Aliens Enemy Act from, you know, has only been used three times in American history, always in a time of war.

That is the backdrop for all of this. That's the backdrop that has allowed the President and his administration to affect their immigration policy. So we shall see if that is one of the outcomes here. But we do know that the meeting is running slightly behind. That is likely because of the U.S. President's schedule. How this works here, the visiting leader is across the street from the White House at the Blair House. That's where all visiting leaders stay.

And when the U.S. president is ready, the -- the visiting leader essentially drives over across the street. There's the honor guard behind me here, and we will have a sense of when he's coming in. But again, just the fact that this meeting is happening is fairly extraordinary, particularly for a President Bukele from, you know, a leader from a smaller nation, there's no doubt, but a central nation to the President and the U.S.'s immigration strategy overall, Wolf. It's certainly been very, very controversial, as we know.

BLITZER: Quick question, Jeff. At the -- we're told that the bilateral meeting will be closed to the press, but following that, there will be a bilateral lunch that will be closed as well. Will there be opportunities for the news media to ask any questions of these two presidents?

ZELENY: Wolf, we do believe they will, and that's likely to be in the Oval Office, where a pool of reporters, a small group of reporters, will be in there to ask questions and to witness some of this meeting, but also some of the -- the work, the business, if you will, happens behind closed doors just with the -- the leaders of the respective country and their representatives.

[11:25:17]

But again, this is a business relationship that the U.S. has entered into with El Salvador, and this is something that is a centerpiece of the U.S. immigration strategy now. There's no doubt about it. I'm going to look over to my side here. He still has not driven in the White House gates, so we could have a few more moments here, and often we've seen many world leaders visit the U.S. President. Since he has returned to power, this is something the Trump administration likes to do. It's the first of two meetings of this week.

He'll be visited by the Italian prime minister on Thursday. But of course this has highlighted the immigration policy and strategy of this administration unlike anything else, Wolf.

BLITZER: Yes, we are told that the two presidents, when they meet in the Oval Office, Jeff, there will be a White House press pool, there will be reporters inside to cover at least the beginning, the opening part of that meeting, and we'll get video of that, presumably, Pamela, and we'll share it with our viewers.

BROWN: Certainly, we have lots of questions for the two leaders.

BLITZER: There will be a lot of questions. We'll see if there are answers.

BROWN: We'll see if there are answers. That's right. Jeff, thank you so much. And, you know, President Bukele, he calls himself the world's coolest dictator, and, you know, he has a very high approval rating, actually, in El Salvador. He's also used some authoritarian-type tactics. He has deployed soldiers to intimidate lawmakers. He has replaced Supreme Court justices, and he's also attacked journalists. BLITZER: And there we can see the -- the area where the vehicle bringing President Bukele of El Salvador to the West Wing of the White House for the formal meeting in the Oval Office and then a luncheon with the president as well in the Cabinet Room. So he's getting all the pomp and circumstance, all the special treatment that a visiting leader gets, and the fact that they invited him to stay at Blair House, the official residence for foreign leaders who come for meetings with the President right across the street from the White House, is significant as well. They're giving him a lot of honor.

BROWN: They are giving him a lot of honor. And we should note, Jeff, that, you know, Bukele has been courting Trump's favor, right? He attended CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference. He invited Trump's allies to his inauguration for a second term. And he's also, you know, working with the inauguration -- with the administration on President Trump's immigration policies and allowing those that the administration says are gang members be -- to -- to be sent to their prison in El Salvador with a price tag. We should know, I think, that the U.S. allocated $6 million to -- to send to El Salvador. But this treatment, as Wolf just laid out, also comes after the president of El Salvador has been really working to be in -- in Trump's good graces, right?

ZELENY: And he absolutely is in Trump's good graces. There's no doubt about it. I mean, President Bukele is a strong admirer of the strongman nature of -- of what some critics believe that this administration has -- has taken on, particularly when it comes to the immigration policy. Don Jr., Donald Trump Jr., the President's son, attended the inauguration of President Bukele.

So there are some strong relations there. There's no question. I'm going to look again over to the White House gate. We do think the arrival is coming shortly. The gate is open here at the White House. Pennsylvania Avenue right outside is closed. So this is something that gives us a sign that things are imminent on a beautiful spring day here in Washington. And this is a central moment here for the Trump administration to highlight its immigration agenda. For all the challenges that the U.S. President is facing in terms of his tariff policy, his economic policy, this is something that actually his advisers believe that the American people voted for.

Perhaps not the specifics of the -- the deportation plans, but overall the immigration policy is one of the strong points this administration believes of its policy. So this will be highlighted in some respects here. But again, as we look over to the side, they will be arriving shortly. But again, these leaders on their own time. But whenever there's a delay like this is generally on the U.S. President's time. He's likely finishing up a phone call or doing something else.

We know he's in the West Wing of the White House because the Marine who stands guard, as you well both know from covering the White House respectively all the years, that's when the President is in the West Wing and he is in there this morning.

BROWN: Yes. [11:29:33]

BLITZER: And it's a short little drive from across the street at Blair House right into the White House where you are. That vehicle, that limousine from President Bukele will go right behind you as it gets towards the West Wing. We'll stay on top of this. We'll see if they make statements and answer reporters questions in the Oval Office. There will be media inside. We'll have coverage of all of that much more coming up right after this.

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