A US judge has blasted the Trump administration for failing to do anything to return a man wrongly deported to a high-security jail in El Salvador.

“What the record shows is that nothing has been done. Nothing. I asked for reports from individuals with direct knowledge and I’ve gotten very little information of any value,” District Court Judge Paula Xinis said during the hearing on Tuesday (local time).

She noted she’d given “a very simple directive” for updates on steps the government had taken to bring back Salvadoran Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

Abrego Garcia’s case has drawn attention as the Trump administration deports hundreds of people to El Salvador with help from El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, whose country is receiving $US6 million ($A10 million) to house the migrants in a high-security mega-prison.

The US government has described his deportation on March 15 as an administrative error.

But in court filings and at the White House on Monday, the administration indicated it did not plan to ask for Abrego Garcia back, raising questions about whether it is defying the courts.

Bukele, who met US President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Monday, said he had no plans to return Abrego Garcia to the US.

“The question is preposterous. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States?” Bukele said, echoing the Trump administration’s claim that Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang, which the US labels a terrorist organisation.

Abrego Garcia’s lawyers deny he is a gang member, saying the US has presented no credible evidence.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia was deported on one of three planeloads of migrants sent to El Salvador. Photo: AAP

Trump officials maintain they are not required to bring Abrego Garcia back, despite a Supreme Court order saying it must organise the Maryland resident’s return.

On Tuesday, Xinis clashed repeatedly with US Justice Department lawyer Drew Ensign, as she said the government had flouted her orders demanding updates on efforts to bring Abrego Garcia home.

Xinis, an Obama appointee, said she was still deciding if the government should be held in contempt for ignoring her orders.

She has ordered the Trump administration to respond to questions and requests for documents. She also ordered four government officials who signed affidavits in the case to sit for depositions by April 23, giving Abrego Garcia’s lawyers a chance to question key immigration officials in the administration.

Ensign signalled the administration may assert legal privileges to avoid at least one of the depositions. He also suggested the government may appeal Xinis’s order.

“You lost. This is now about the scope of the remedy,” Xinis said, adding that there was nothing to appeal.

Earlier, Trump said journalists asking if his administration would follow orders to return Abrego Garcia were “sick people”.

“The foreign policy of the United States is conducted by the president of the United States, not by a court,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said during the Oval Office meeting.

Trump said he would send as many people living in the US illegally to El Salvador as possible and help Bukele build new prisons. He has also flagged targeting US citizens.

“Homegrown criminals next,” he said, according to a livestream posted by Bukele’s office.

“I said homegrowns are next, the homegrowns. You gotta build about five more places.”

Migrants accepted by El Salvador from the US are sent to a facility known as the Terrorism Confinement Centre. Critics say it engages in human rights abuses.

Lawyers of the detained migrants say they are not gang members and had no opportunity to contest the US government assertion that they were.

In March, after a judge said flights carrying migrants processed under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act should return to the US, Bukele wrote “Oopsie… Too late” on social media alongside footage showing men being hustled off a plane at night.

An immigration judge had previously granted Abrego Garcia protection from being deported to El Salvador, finding that he could face gang violence there.

He held a permit to work in the US, where he had lived since 2011.

The next hearing in the case is scheduled for Tuesday.

-with AAP