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I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

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The Supreme Court says the U.S. must "facilitate" Kilmar Abrego Garcia's return. Is Trump defying the order?

Next Monday, April 21, we are going to be off in observance of Easter, so we won’t be in your inbox to start the week. But to end this week, we’re working hard on an in-depth piece on the SAVE Act — we cover what it does, why it’s controversial, and other questions about the bill from Tangle readers.

Quick hits.

1. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg said he had found probable cause that the Trump administration had violated his March order to return two planes deporting migrants to El Salvador. Boasberg said he would begin contempt proceedings against the Trump administration unless it takes action to bring the deportees back into U.S. custody. (The ruling)
2. The Trump administration asked the Internal Revenue Service to start the process of revoking Harvard University’s tax-exempt status. (The request) Separately, the Department of Homeland Security said it would revoke Harvard’s eligibility to enroll foreign students if it did not comply with the Trump administration’s demand that it share disciplinary records on some visa holders. (The latest)
3. The Justice Department announced it would sue Maine over its failure to comply with President Trump’s executive order banning transgender women from participating in women’s sports. (The announcement)
4. President Donald Trump participated directly in negotiations with Japanese officials in discussions on a new trade agreement between the two countries. (The talks)
5. The United Kingdom’s Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the legal definition of “woman” excludes transgender women and only refers to biological sex. The court added that this interpretation did not remove discrimination protections for transgender people. (The ruling)

Today's topic.

Nayib Bukele’s White House visit. On Monday, President Donald Trump hosted Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele at the White House amid a protracted legal fight over Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man mistakenly sent to prison in El Salvador by the Trump administration. During an Oval Office press conference, Bukele said he did not have the power to return Abrego Garcia to the United States. The comments follow a Supreme Court decision upholding a federal judge’s order that the administration must work to return Abrego Garcia to the United States.

Back up: The Trump administration has worked closely with President Bukele to transfer hundreds of alleged gang members from the United States to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center. Abrego Garcia was among those sent to the prison in March; after his removal, the Trump administration acknowledged they had mistakenly deported him due to an “administrative error” (a 2019 court order had blocked his deportation to El Salvador due to threats on his life) but maintained it could not force El Salvador to return him. On April 10, the Supreme Court upheld U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis’s order to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return, but sent the case back to the judge to clarify her use of the word “effectuate.” Since then, the Trump administration has argued that the Supreme Court has not required it to seek Abrego Garcia’s release and that the federal judge had overstepped her authority in issuing the ruling.

We covered the latest in Abrego Garcia’s case on Monday.

During the Oval Office meeting, President Bukele directly addressed the question of whether he would return Abrego Garcia, saying, “How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? Of course I’m not going to do it. The question is preposterous.” Other White House officials at the meeting affirmed the Trump administration’s stance. “The foreign policy of the United States is conducted by the president of the United States, not a court,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said that the administration did not interpret the Supreme Court’s ruling as a direct order to bring Abrego Garcia back to the U.S. “The Supreme Court ruled that if El Salvador wants to return him… we would facilitate it: meaning, provide a plane,” Bondi said.

Separately, while touring the Oval Office, President Trump told Bukele that he wanted to send “home-grown” criminals to El Salvador, seemingly referring to U.S. citizens convicted of crimes. On Tuesday, Trump expanded on his comments in an interview with Fox Noticias, saying his administration was “looking into” the possibility of sending U.S. citizens to prison in El Salvador.

Democratic lawmakers have continued to push for Abrego Garcia’s release, and on Wednesday, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) traveled to El Salvador in an attempt to pressure the government to release him. “The goal of this mission is to let the Trump administration, to let the government of El Salvador know that we are going to keep fighting to bring Abrego Garcia home until he returns to his family,” Van Hollen said.

Today, we’ll survey arguments from the left and right about Bukele’s White House visit, followed by my take.

What the left is saying.

• The left is outraged by Bukele’s and the administration’s comments, arguing that Trump is laying the groundwork to imprison U.S. citizens abroad.
• Some say Bukele gave the administration cover for its defiance of the courts.
• Others call on the Supreme Court to issue a firmer order on the case.

In The Hill, Max Burns wrote “you could be the next one unlawfully imprisoned in Trump’s Salvadoran gulag.”

“The idea that Trump would deport U.S. citizens to specially built foreign mega-prisons outside the reach of the American justice system should cause a national shockwave,” Burns said. “If Trump can willfully violate a unanimous Supreme Court order and strip due process rights from legal non-citizens, there is nothing stopping him from doing the same to Americans. Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s unending nightmare is not some bizarre legal freak of nature. It is a warning that once a president has discarded the rule of law for some people, nothing stops him from discarding the rule of law for anyone.”

“Bukele’s sprawling CECOT mega-prison has earned a horrific reputation for violence and torture. Many legal migrants who have committed no crimes now live in fear of being black-bagged and shipped off to El Salvador. This is part of the cultural terrorism Trump hoped to inflict,” Burns wrote. “We are living through a profound criminalization of political opinion and a horrifying disregard of the courts. Republican lawmakers who swore an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution now stand passively mute as that Constitution is trampled in full view of the public.”

In MSNBC, Jordan Rubin suggested “Nayib Bukele’s White House performance plays into Trump’s litigation defiance.”

“Ahead of a Tuesday hearing in Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s case, a court filing from the Trump administration also shows how U.S. officials are enlisting Bukele in their defiant litigation stance in that case,” Rubin said. “The government’s status report, which appeared on the court docket about an hour after the administration’s 5:00 p.m. daily deadline, quoted Bukele’s response to a reporter’s question: ‘I hope you’re not suggesting that I smuggle a terrorist into the United States. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? Of course I’m not going to do it.’”

“Monday’s reference to Bukele’s comments simply offers them without explaining the government’s view of their relevance. The administration’s implication could be that there’s no point in taking any facilitation steps because they won’t lead to Abrego Garcia’s return without Bukele’s support. But again, that doesn’t address the underlying question of what steps U.S. officials have taken to comply with the order to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return — regardless of whether those steps are ultimately successful.”

In Newsweek, Thomas G. Moukawsher said “the Supreme Court must make Trump feel pain.”

“The administration is making a mockery of the [court] order. Bukele even flew up to join in the fun, declaring in the Oval Office in front of a smiling Trump, ‘of course I'm not going to do it.’ What do they have to do before the Supreme Court takes this seriously, climb up the courthouse steps and slap each one of the justices in the face,” Moukawsher wrote. “Unfortunately, the justices asked for this treatment when they gave Trump enormous loopholes in their recent order. They suggested that Judge Paula Xinis likely couldn't order Trump's administration to effectuate Abrego Garcia's return—to ensure it actually happened.”

“Yes, we can sympathize with the high court as it tries to head off a showdown with the Trump administration. But shouldn't they understand Trump by now? He is a mini-mafia boss, a bully who backs down when people stand up to him and runs roughshod when they don't,” Moukawsher said. “Justices, there's nowhere to hide. Let the lower court build a record. It issued a clear directive. Trump himself controls this matter and is ignoring the order. Xinis should fine Trump personally in an amount he will pay attention to—let's say $5 million a day collectible after he leaves office—until he obeys.”

What the right is saying.

• Many on the right criticize Democrats for prioritizing Abrego Garcia’s case over domestic issues.
• Some say the left is blowing the story out of proportion at its own peril.
• Others caution against escalating a standoff with the courts.

In The Federalist, Eddie Scarry said “Democrats drop everything to bring back a deported illegal alien.”

“Maryland Democrat Sen. Chris Van Hollen flew 2,000 miles on Wednesday from Washington, D.C., to San Salvador, arranging a meeting with local and American officials there. Van Hollen isn’t facilitating the rescue of a wrongly imprisoned U.S. citizen or engaging in diplomatic relations with a foreign nation. He’s literally there conducting a welfare check on a Salvadoran,” Scarry wrote. “I guess there weren’t any actual U.S. citizens in need of Van Hollen’s time. If there are, surely they can wait while he addresses the needs of a Salvadoran first.”

“In any event, the Trump administration sent him to El Salvador — again, his home — and though a subsequent court order by Democrat-appointed Judge Paula Xinis demanded that he be returned to the U.S., both the White House and El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele have said they won’t and can’t,” Scarry said. “Van Hollen won’t be the last Democrat to embark on the holy journey for noncitizens who broke the law by trespassing our borders… Every Democrat in Congress should make the trip and let their constituents, the American ones, know where their priorities lie.”

In The Washington Examiner, Conn Carroll argued “Abrego Garcia isn’t the winning political issue Democrats think he is.”

“One might think that with President Donald Trump unilaterally sending the economy into recession, Democrats might become at least temporary champions of free trade in an effort to find their way back out of the political wilderness. But instead, Democrats have chosen a different path. Despite the fact that immigration is the one issue voters still give Trump the highest marks on, Democrats have chosen to make a man named Kilmar Abrego Garcia the face of Trump resistance,” Carroll wrote. “The problem is that Democrats leave a lot out of Garcia’s story, and the truth makes Trump’s failure to return him quite reasonable.”

“For starters, Garcia was not in the United States legally. By his lawyer’s own admission, he entered the country illegally in 2011. Then, eight years later, Garcia was arrested at a Home Depot while illegally soliciting employment,” Carroll wrote. “After years of aiding and abetting a completely open border where thousands of murdering rapists like Jose Antonio Ibarra, Victor Antonio Martinez-Hernandez, and Johan Jose Martinez-Rangel were free to enter without any meaningful background check, the argument by the Democrats that Trump should now move heaven and earth to bring an admitted illegal immigrant back to the United States, even though he still has no legal right to be here, rings hollow.”

The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote about “Trump, Abrego Garcia and the courts.”

“The judge on Friday demanded an immediate Administration report, and now the White House seems to have decided it can do a legal dance to claim it doesn’t need to facilitate anything. That was clear from the Kabuki theater Monday when Mr. Trump appeared in the Oval Office with El Salvador President Nayib Bukele,” the board said. “Since Mr. Bukele says he won’t cooperate, the U.S. can say it can’t deliver. The federal courts lack authority to direct the President’s foreign policy under Article II of the Constitution, let alone the actions of El Salvador.”

“Mr. Trump would be wise to settle all of this by quietly asking Mr. Bukele to return Mr. Abrego Garcia, who has a family in the U.S. But the President may be bloody-minded enough that he wants to show the judiciary who’s boss,” the board wrote. “Mr. Trump would be smarter to play the long game. He has many, much bigger issues than the fate of one man that will come before the Supreme Court. By taunting the judiciary in this manner he is inviting a rebuke on cases that carry far greater stakes.”

My take.

Reminder: "My take" is a section where I give myself space to share my own personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email, or leave a comment.

• Trump is asking the right question on immigration, but getting the wrong answer.
• The administration makes a few strong arguments about the practical implications of deporting so many unauthorized migrants.
• Ultimately, though, their arguments are legally unconvincing, and have truly disturbing implications.

David Brooks once said that President Donald Trump has the wrong answers to all the right questions, and I’ve been thinking about that quote all week.

President Biden and Democrats made an absolute mess of the immigration issue. Some politicians and members of the media put their heads in the sand about this during his term, but I did not. Biden oversaw historic, overwhelming levels of migrant crossings — a crisis that impacted cities as far away from the southern border as New York and Chicago. Those are huge cities with massive budgets; you can imagine what it did to much smaller, poorer towns near the border. And that’s to say nothing of the immigrants Biden worked to get here, en masse, through loopholes in our parole system and by inventing programs like the CBP One App.

One could argue that Trump inherited a relatively stable economy he’s now disrupting. One cannot argue that Trump inherited a functioning, stable, healthy immigration system. Indeed, immigration was a key issue that led to Trump’s reelection, and in his first few months he has had tremendous success continuing to reduce the number of illegal border crossings (which fell toward the end of Biden’s term) and unwinding some of the unwise programs Biden implemented through executive fiat.

At the same time, identifying this problem — asking the right question of “How do we fix it?” — is not an excuse for coming up with a very bad answer.

President Bukele’s visit to the White House this week gave us an interesting look into how Trump gets his information about his administration’s actions. Trump, in front of the cameras, looked to his senior immigration advisor Stephen Miller and asked him about a recent Supreme Court ruling. “Was it 9 to nothing?... In our favor?” Trump asks. “Yes, it was 9-0, in our favor,” Miller says.

Of course, this is not what happened. On Earth 1, the Trump administration tried to block a district court order that directed them to “facilitate” the return of Abrego Garcia from El Salvador. The Supreme Court ruled without any dissents not to block the order — definitionally ruling against the Trump administration. In ordering the lower court to clarify its wording, the justices told U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis that she should remember the “deference owed to the executive branch in the conduct of foreign affairs” and also clarify her use of “effectuate” (can the court force El Salvador to do something, should it merely oversee that the administration is trying, or something else?).

In essence, the Supreme Court said the Trump administration needed to correct its admitted error of sending Abrego Garcia to El Salvador and attempt to get him home — without any dissents. But it also left some room open for the Trump administration to prevail in the lower courts if it says it has tried but simply cannot bring Abrego Garcia back, which you can read as a kind of victory — but only if your intent is to openly defy a court order and leave Abrego Garcia rotting in a Salvadoran prison.

That ambiguous zone of interpreting the government’s responsibility is where we are now. In a post on X, Vice President JD Vance argued that Biden’s immigration crisis has strained our country; that observing “due process” is a matter of resources, the public interest, and the status of the accused; and that “the media” obsessing over an “MS-13 gang member” is really just demanding he be returned for a third deportation hearing because they “want the vast majority of illegal aliens to stay here permanently.” He then poses a question: “Ask the people weeping over the lack of due process what precisely they propose for dealing with Biden's millions and millions of illegals. And with reasonable resource[s] and administrative judge constraints, does their solution allow us to deport at least a few million people per year?”

The administration is still on incredibly poor legal footing, but this argument at least has some compelling elements (it’s a much stronger argument than “we can’t make them give him back” and “it’s up to El Salvador,” which are insulting to our intelligence). A lot of the context behind Abrego Garcia’s deportation — the border crisis, the flow of unauthorized migrants — is Biden’s fault. There is a real question of how best to use our limited resources. Abrego Garcia would likely just be deported again if he were brought home, just not to El Salvador. Many people don’t want anything about the immigration system Trump inherited to change (or don’t see a problem with it). Vance is right on all those counts.

But to frame Abrego Garcia’s case as only about illegal immigration is just unbelievably dishonest. Nobody would be upset about a proven gang member being deported legally — at least I wouldn’t. Abrego Garcia might very well be a “bad guy,” or he might not be. Maybe the cop who claimed he was a gang member is the actual bad guy. I really don’t know and, frankly, I don’t really care. Our government violated a court order while effectively sentencing Abrego Garcia to life in one of the harshest prisons in the world, built for terrorists and the most dangerous gang members on the planet, without even accusing him of a crime (other than coming here illegally). Now, it appears to be gleefully defying a Supreme Court ruling. That’s what people like me are upset about. That’s what Trump and Miller and Vance are dishonestly leaving out of their framing.

Vance’s argument is also dangerous. It turns due process into some optional, squishy requirement that can be observed or denied by our government, based on what they say is possible with the resources they have or the public interest as they define it. Is that a can of worms he wants to open? That due process is now conditional? Does Vance or Trump ever imagine that Republicans will once again in the near future be in the political minority? Has that thought crossed their minds?

If Vance’s argument is that the government lacks the resources, then it can create them. This same administration is currently proposing a $1 trillion (with a “t”) military budget, including up to $150 billion of new funding to the Pentagon, and it’s paying the Salvadoran government $6 million to imprison Abrego Garcia and hundreds of others for one year. Why not put some of that money toward increasing the number of immigration judges to adjudicate these cases and clear the backlog? That’s an argument I’ve been screaming into the void for years (and one I was thrilled to see pushed in National Review this week), and an actual solution that can uphold the values of law and order the administration purports to stand for.

I also want to emphasize and repeat that this is not just about Abrego Garcia. Naturally, the administration wants the debate to be contained to his case because they believe they can frame him as One Of The Bad Illegals.I’m not going to sit here and give you Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “Kilmar is all of us” speech (I’m genuinely amazed at how bad Democrats’ messaging can be), but the administration is not just targeting people who are here illegally. As I highlighted earlier this month, they are already sweeping up permanent U.S. residents — immigrants with legal visas and papers. Not only that, but U.S. citizens are getting caught in the government’s dragnet. During the meeting with Bukele, Trump was caught on a hot mic suggesting we could start sending our “home growns” to El Salvador, too. Trump then confirmed he was looking into sending U.S. citizens to the prison and wanted “five more” prisons built to accommodate them.

Just to put that all down clearly: The Trump administration is arguing that they cannot grant due process to every person due to resource and logistical constraints. They are also arguing that someone who ends up in a foreign prison because of the government’s own actions (or mistakes) is beyond their reach. They’ve deported some people who haven’t been accused of any crimes. And now they are suggesting they might start using this same process on U.S. citizens. If you put all of that together and don’t get extremely alarmed, then you are not paying attention.

Given all this, I have been very critical of the Trump administration, both in Tangle and on X, which has naturally invited accusations that the “nonpartisan news guy” suddenly caught a terrible case of “Trump Derangement Syndrome” or that I’m “showing my true colors as a partisan hack.” On the contrary, I think I’m seeing things with a great deal of clarity. In some alternative reality, the Trump administration is winning court cases 9–0 and protecting American citizens from a dangerous invasion. In this reality, they’re ignoring the Supreme Court, deporting people against lower court orders, and violating the rights and privacy of U.S. citizens. The discussion shouldn’t be about whether I’m suddenly a partisan hack, it should be about why a usually measured moderate is suddenly ringing the alarm bells.

For context, I was angry when President Biden tried to create the “Disinformation Governance Board” — now, Trump is snatching college students off the streets for op-eds they wrote. I was angry when we learned the Biden administration was pressuring Facebook to take down posts it deemed dangerous to public health — now, Trump is using AI to monitor people’s social media activity and forcing U.S. citizens to hand over their phones at points of entry. Shoot, I was even critical of Biden for pursuing student loan relief through executive action — imagine if he had actually ignored the court orders that stopped him.

So, yes, Trump inherited a serious crisis we need to solve: Millions of unauthorized migrants are still in our country, and millions of them came in under Biden. Yes, solving this problem is a major logistical and resource challenge, and it’s why Biden deserves ample criticism for failing to take action while millions of people illegally crossed the border in a short period of time. But no, we should not forfeit due process and violate court orders and fundamentally undermine the American project of liberty in trying to solve those problems. We should not allow this current administration, or any other future administration, to become the arbiter of when rules should or shouldn’t be followed.

If we open that door, then any one of us could be marched right through it.

Take the survey: What do you think of the administration’s standoff with the Supreme Court? Let us know!

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Under the radar.

Amid the ongoing trade war between the United States and China, the Chinese government has reportedly instructed the country’s airlines to halt further deliveries of Boeing aircraft, as well as orders of aircraft-related equipment and parts from any U.S. company. Boeing is currently preparing 10 737 Max jets to enter Chinese airline fleets, but it is unclear whether any of those planes will be cleared to enter China. While China hasn’t placed a major order with Boeing in recent years, the country is projected to make up 20% of global aircraft demand over the next two decades. Industry analysts suggest a sustained trade war could undermine the company’s long-term financial health as it seeks to rebound from a series of safety incidents and deadly crashes involving its planes. Bloomberg has the story.

Numbers.

• 2019. The year Nayib Bukele was first elected as president of El Salvador.
• 2022. The year El Salvador declared a state of emergency, allowing law enforcement to incarcerate anyone suspected of gang activity without a warrant.
• 83,600. The number of gang members arrested in El Salvador since the state of emergency was declared as of December 2024, according to data from National Civil Police and the Salvadoran Armed Forces.
• 311. The number of detainees who died while in state custody between the state of emergency being declared and August 2024, according to documentation from Humanitarian Legal Aid.
• 1.15. The number of homicides per 100,000 people in El Salvador in 2025, according to the Salvadoran National Police.
• 18.1. The number of homicides per 100,000 people in El Salvador in 2021, the last year before the state of emergency was declared.
• 103.0.The number of homicides per 100,000 people in El Salvador in 2015, the country’s highest recorded rate.
• 84.7%. The percentage of the vote Bukele received in his 2024 reelection.

The extras.

• One year ago today we covered the bills to aid Israel, Taiwan, and Ukraine.
• The most clicked link in yesterday’s newsletter was the school shooting in Dallas, TX.
• Nothing to do with politics: Why you shouldn’t — and should — scratch your itches.
• Yesterday’s survey: 3,838 readers answered our survey Harvard opposing the Trump administration with 88% supporting Harvard’s decision. “A stand against government overreach has been a conservative tenet for generations,” one respondent said.

Have a nice day.

The Masters Tournament, one of four major championship tournaments in professional golf, was held over the weekend in Augusta, Georgia. The tournament ended in a sudden-death playoff with Rory McIlroy, who has won golf’s other three majors, finally winning the event to complete his career “grand slam.” McIlroy collapsed with emotion after his dramatic victory, a moment captured on film by another athlete known for grand slams: Ken Griffey Jr. Following his Hall of Fame baseball career, Griffey is now excelling in his new profession of photography, but he’s remaining humble. “I’m still picking it up,” Griffey said. “If you’re not willing to learn then your pictures aren’t going to get any better.” Sports Illustrated has the story (and the pictures).

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