U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said he met Thursday in El Salvador with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran illegal immigrant who was deported due to what the Justice Department called an administrative error.
Van Hollen, who has been advocating for Abrego Garcia to be brought back to the United States, arrived in El Salvador on April 16 and met with Salvadoran Vice President Félix Ulloa. Abrego Garcia has been incarcerated in CECOT, the country’s largest maximum security prison.
Van Hollen, who recorded his trip in several posts to the social media platform X, was initially unable to meet with Abrego Garcia on April 16, but was later permitted to do so on April 17.
“I said my main goal of this trip was to meet with Kilmar. Tonight I had that chance,” Van Hollen said in a post on social media platform X. “I have called his wife, Jennifer, to pass along his message of love. I look forward to providing a full update upon my return.”
In a post on X, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele showed photographs of the meeting between Abrego Garcia and Van Hollen with a caption rejecting the claim that Abrego Garcia is being mistreated by El Salvador.
“Kilmar Abrego Garcia, miraculously risen from the ‘death camps’ & ‘torture,’ now sipping margaritas with Sen. Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador!” Bukele wrote.
In a follow-up post, Bukele said, “Now that he’s been confirmed healthy, [Abrego Garcia] gets the honor of staying in El Salvador’s custody.”
Abrego Garcia’s deportation to El Salvador has become a political flashpoint in ongoing debates about the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration. Democrats say Abrego Garcia’s deportation violated the law as well as his due process rights.
Abrego Garcia was living with his wife and child, both U.S. citizens, in Maryland when he was arrested. The administration has said that he has ties to MS-13—a criminal gang designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. government—which Abrego Garcia’s attorney has denied.
He was protected from deportation back to El Salvador under a 2019 court order that determined that he would face severe threat to his life and safety in his home country.
In an earlier court filing in a case that challenged Abrego Garcia’s removal from the United States, the Trump administration indicated that the deportation was a mistake.
“On March 15, although [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador, Abrego Garcia was removed to El Salvador because of an administrative error,” a March 31 court filing reads.
On Thursday evening, the same day as Van Hollen’s meeting with Abrego Garcia, a federal appeals court blocked the Trump administration’s April 16 filing asking the court to reverse a ruling by a district judge.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis’s earlier orders required the government to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States. The judge also ordered expedited discovery to determine whether the administration complied with an order for that facilitation. She questioned the evidence that the government said tied Abrego Garcia to MS-13.
The appeals court declined the administration’s request, noting that Xinis’s order was merely an effort to align with a prior Supreme Court directive instructing her to clarify her instructions for the government to bring about Abrego Garcia’s return.
On April 10, in response to the Supreme Court’s ruling, Xinis released an amended order to “Direct that defendants take all available steps to facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia to the United States as soon as possible.”
The administration argued that the order violated the executive branch’s prerogative over foreign affairs.
Joseph Mazzara, acting general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), told Xinis in an April 15 declaration that “DHS does not have authority to forcibly extract an alien from domestic custody of a foreign sovereign nation.”
He added that if Abrego Garcia presented at a port of entry, “DHS would take him into custody in the United States and either remove him to a third country or terminate his withholding of removal because of his membership in MS-13.”
On April 16, Attorney General Pam Bondi posted on social media a link to documents about Abrego Garcia.
One was a Prince George’s County Police Department report from 2019 stating that “officers contacted a past proven and reliable source of information, who advised Kilmar Armando Abrego-Garcia is an active member of MS-13 with the Westerns clique.”Sam Dorman contributed to this report.
