Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said on April 16 that the government of El Salvador has denied him a meeting or phone call with a Salvadoran national the Trump administration mistakenly deported to a maximum security prison in the Central American nation.
While speaking with reporters in El Salvador after meeting with the country’s vice president, Félix Ulloa, Van Hollen said he was not allowed to meet with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an illegal immigrant granted humanitarian protection by the United States, or talk with him over the phone.
The senator asked Ulloa if he could meet with Abrego Garcia and was told he would need “earlier provisions” to visit the prison where the man was being held.
Van Hollen said that when he told Ulloa he wanted to talk with the deportee and not take a tour of the prison, he was denied.
“So I asked [Ulloa] if I could get on the phone, either video phone or just a phone, and talk to Mr. Abrego Garcia,” Van Hollen said.
“I could just ask him how he’s doing so I could report back to his family.”
Van Hollen said Ulloa refused and told him he “could not arrange that.”
“He said, ‘Maybe if the American Embassy were to ask, maybe that could happen,’” Van Hollen added.
The Trump administration deported Abrego Garcia, 29, to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) prison, a maximum security prison, on March 15, alleging he is a member of MS-13 gang, a terrorist organization. A Department of Justice official later said Abrego Garcia was deported due to an “administrative error.”
The judge presiding over his case has said that the government has never charged the Salvadoran man with a crime and has never presented evidence of his alleged gang affiliation.
The administration is relying on testimony from a confidential government informant prior to an immigration judge granting Abrego Garcia “withholding of removal” status in 2019, allowing him to stay in the United States legally.
The man’s lawyers and family have repeatedly denied the accusations of his affiliation with the international criminal organization MS-13 or any other gang.
Van Hollen said he had spoken to the American Embassy in El Salvador.
“The United States Embassy here has told me they’ve received no direction from the Trump administration to help facilitate his release,” the senator said. “So the Trump administration is clearly in violation of American court orders.”
He also asked Ulloa if he had any evidence that Abrego Garcia had been a gang member and had committed any crimes, and why El Salvador was detaining him if not.
“His answer was that the Trump administration is paying the government of El Salvador to keep him at [the prison],” Van Hollen said.
The senator asked if El Salvador could release Abrego Garcia if the man has not been charged with any crimes, and since the U.S. Supreme Court had asked the Trump administration to “facilitate” his release from the nation’s prison.
Ulloa told Van Hollen that El Salvador cannot “smuggle” Abrego Garcia back into the United States.
“I’m not asking him to smuggle Mr. Abrego Garcia into the United States. I’m simply asking him to open the door of [the prison] and let this innocent man walk out,” Van Hollen said.
“I pointed out that the attorney general of the United States, Pam Bondi, has said that the United States would send a plane to El Salvador to pick him up.”
The attorney general said that the Salvadoran national is not leaving El Salvador because Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has the final say.
“He is not coming back to our country. President Bukele said he was not sending him back. That’s the end of the story,” Bondi said.
“If [Bukele] wanted to send him back, we would give him a plane ride back. There was no situation ever where he was going to stay in [the United States]. None, none.”
Bukele told reporters April 14 that he will not send Abrego Garcia back to the United States during a White House meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump and other top officials.
“You’re suggesting I smuggle a terrorist into the United States,” Bukele said. “I’m not going to do it. The question is preposterous.”
El Salvador accepted the deportation flights from the United States earlier this year after making an agreement with the Trump administration.
Van Hollen reiterated that if El Salvador wanted to free Abrego Garcia, without sending him back to the United States, they could at any time.
“Why is the government of El Salvador continuing to imprison a man [where] they have no evidence he’s committed any crime, and they’ve not been provided any evidence from the United States that he’s committed a crime?” Van Hollen asked.
“They should just let him go.”
Democrats say that Abrego Garcia’s case is an issue of due process since the man had never been charged with a crime and was given legally protected status to stay in the United States.
Republicans, citing the confidential government informant accusing him of gang affiliation, say the illegal immigrant should never have been in the country.
