Experts say President Nayib Bukele has the power but not the interest to return a man deported from Maryland to El Salvador in error.

© Eric Lee/The New York Times

Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia should not be in prison. Especially not in El Salvador.

President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador has found a spot on the global stage by opening the doors of his prison system to President Trump. Zolan Kanno-Youngs, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, explains how Bukele, a self-proclaimed dictator, has gone from a pariah to a partner of Trump.

President Trump says he is powerless to retrieve a man who was deported because of an administrative error. But he has done so before.

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Scholars say that the Trump administration is now flirting with lawless defiance of court orders, a path with an uncertain end.

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The Trump administration sent them to a prison in El Salvador under a wartime act, calling them members of a Venezuelan gang. But a New York Times investigation found little evidence of criminal backgrounds or links to the gang.

© Cristobal Olivares for The New York Times

An Oval Office meeting between President Trump and President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador was a blunt example of Mr. Trump’s defiance of the federal courts.

Once again, the president used the gilded room as a place to flex his executive muscle while recasting the narrative around a consequential policy.

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Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Sunday that “the alliance” between President Trump and President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador had “become an example for security and prosperity in our hemisphere.”

© Eric Lee/The New York Times

Trump is seeking to establish a truly chilling proposition: that no one can stop his administration from imprisoning anyone it wants, anywhere in the world.