The Trump administration ratcheted up its confrontation with a U.S. District Court judge on Monday, as President Trump met El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele at the White House.

The key upshot is stark. Neither Trump nor Bukele appears willing to return the man at the center of a controversial deportation case — despite the fact that the judge has ordered the White House to “facilitate” his release.

Bukele said it was “preposterous” to suggest that he would return the man to the United States.

Stephen Miller, a key Trump aide, alleged that the judge in the case was in effect suggesting the U.S. government should “kidnap a citizen of El Salvador and fly him back here.”

Supporters of the man in question, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, see it completely differently, of course.

They say that Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador, the country of his birth, in defiance of an earlier court order protecting him from removal. They see the deportation as flagrantly illegal — and they worry that if the Trump administration gets away with it, it will have broken the law without consequence and may do so again.

Here is where things stand right now.

What exactly happened at the Trump-Bukele meeting?

Trump and Bukele have been allies for some time. But that alliance has grown even closer in recent weeks after the Trump administration struck a $6 million deal with El Salvador to house deportees from the U.S. in Salvadoran jails.

When Abrego Garcia’s case came up, Trump himself said little, handing the question off to his Attorney General Pam Bondi; Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff; and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Bondi rested her defense of the deportation of Abrego Garcia on the fact........

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