Donald Trump, Cabinet Officials School CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on El Salvadoran’s Deportation Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP via Getty

WASHINGTON–President Donald Trump and several members of his cabinet torched CNN’s Kaitlan Collins when she asked if the administration would seek the return of suspected MS-13 member and El Salvadoran national, Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

Trump, Attorney General Pam Bondi, White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security Stephen Miller, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele took Collins to task in the Oval Office on Monday, explaining that it is up to El Salvador to decide Abrego Garcia’s fate. Pro-migration attorneys argue he was wrongfully deported.

Speaking after Bondi, who noted that two immigration courts ruled that Abrego Garcia was an MS-13 member, Miller said:

So as Pam mentioned, there’s the illegal alien from El Salvador. So with respect to you, he’s a citizen of El Salvador, so it’s very arrogant even for American media to suggest that we would even tell El Salvador how to handle their own citizens as a starting point.

“When President Trump declared MS-13 to be a foreign terrorist organization, that meant that he was no longer eligible under federal law… for any form of immigration relief in the United States,” Miller said.

Miller added that a district court ruling directing the administration to bring Abrego Garcia back to the United States was overruled unanimously by the Supreme Court:

This issue was then, by a district court judge, completely inverted, and a district court judge tried to tell the administration that they had to kidnap a citizen of El Salvador and fly him back here. That issue was raised to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court said the district court order was unlawful and its main components were reversed nine-zero — unanimously — stating clearly that neither secretary of state, nor the president, could be compelled by anybody to forcibly retrieve a citizen of El Salvador from El Salvador, who, again, is a member of MS 13, which as, I’m sure you understand, rapes little girls, murders women, murders children, is engaged in the most barbaric activities in the world. And I can promise you, if he was your neighbor, you would move right away.

After Trump underscored the 9-0 ruling, Miller emphasized there is no scenario that results in Abrego Garcia legally living in the United States.

“As Pam said, the ruling solely stated that if this individual, at El Salvador’s sole discretion, was sent back to our country, that we could deport him a second time. No version of this legally ends up with him ever living here, because he is a citizen of El Salvador,” Miller said.

Bukele called Collins’s question “preposterous” when she asked him to weigh in.

“The question is preposterous. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States?” Bukele shot back at Collins. “I don’t have the power to return him to the United States.”

Another reporter asked about releasing him into El Salvador, which Bukele rejected:

I mean, we’re not very fond of releasing terrorists into our country. We just turned the murder capital of the world into the safest country in the Western Hemisphere, and you want us to go back to releasing criminals so we can go back to being the murder capital of the world? That’s not going to happen.

Trump said, gesturing to reporters, “They’d love to have a criminal, you know, released into our country. These are sick people.”

After Rubio also took Collins to task following Bukele’s remarks, she persisted with her questioning, forcing Trump to shut her down.

“How long do we have to answer this question from you?” Trump asked.

“Why don’t you just say, ‘Isn’t it wonderful that we’re keeping criminals out of our country?’ Why can’t you just say that?” he asked. “Why do you go over and over–and that’s why nobody watches you anymore. You know, you have no credibility.”

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