A conservative government oversight non-profit organization has filed an ethics complaint against Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) for “assisting a foreign terrorist organization” with his trip to El Salvador to meet with deported alleged MS-13 gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

In a letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune, the American Accountability Foundation has demanded that “he instruct the secretary of the Senate not to foot the bill for Van Hollen’s trip” and called for the Senate Ethics Committee to open “an immediate investigation.”

Van Hollen was granted his request to meet with Abrego Garcia, 29, Thursday night, after being denied access multiple times. Garcia is being held in El Salvador’s notorious megaprison, the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT).

“I said my main goal of this trip was to meet with Kilmar,” Van Hollen said in a post on X. “Tonight I had that chance. I have called his wife, Jennifer, to pass along his message of love. I look forward to providing a full update upon my return.”

Garcia crossed the border into the United States illegally in 2011 and when he was arrested in 2019, claimed he had to flee El Salvador as a teenager to escape gang violence.

Both the original immigration judge and the Board of Immigration Appeals in 2019 found there was sufficient evidence that Garcia was a member of MS-13 and, as such, a danger to the public.

An immigration judge subsequently barred Garcia from being returned to El Salvador, saying it was “more likely than not that he would be persecuted” there. But now, because President Trump designated MS-13 a foreign terrorist organization, the judge’s ruling is no longer applicable, according to White House Homeland Security advisor Stephen Miller.

In a 9 to 0 decision last week, the Supreme Court instructed the Trump administration to take steps to “facilitate” the return Abrego Garcia, but because the District Court was vague on what steps Trump officials should take, it vacated a district court judge’s order to bring him back to the United States.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said Wednesday that Garcia will not be allowed back into the U.S. unless El Salvador decides to send him here.

“He is an illegal alien who has been living illegally in our country from El Salvador,” Bondi told reporters. “He is not coming back to our country.”

Despite the mounting evidence that  Garcia is a violent MS-13 gang member, human trafficker and wife beater, congressional Democrats have launched a media blitz to have him returned to the United States.

Van Hollen announced on Tuesday that he was traveling to El Salvador to visit the El Salvadoran gangbanger on Wednesday, and several other Democrat lawmakers expressed interest in visiting him as well.

Because El Salvador President Nayib Bukele was out of the country when the senator arrived, he met with Vice President Félix Augusto Antonio Ulloa Garay instead and was given the brush-off.

“I asked the vice president if I could meet with Mr. Abrego Garcia, and he said, ‘Well, you need to make earlier provisions to go visit CECOT,’” Van Hollen complained.

The Democrat said he told Ulloa that he was not interested in taking a tour of CECOT but that he just wanted to meet with Abrego Garcia.

“He said he was not able to make that happen,” Van Hollen said.

Ulloa also denied the senator’s request for the prison to facilitate a phone call between Garcia and his family.

“I asked him if I came back next week whether I’d be able to see Mr. Abrego Garcia. He said he couldn’t promise that either,” Van Hollen told reporters.

The intrepid senator kept pressing and was finally granted a meeting with Abrego Garcia Thursday evening. Van Hollen posted a photo of himself sitting at a table with Garcia drinking water and coffee.

Other photos shared by Bukele showed water glasses with seasoned rims and cherry garnishes, and Sen. Van Hollen shaking hands with Garcia.

“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 posted on X.

In a subsequent post, Bukele wrote, “Now that he’s been confirmed healthy, he gets the honor of staying in El Salvador’s custody.”

Bukele later posted on X, “I love chess.”

As this drama was unfolding in El Salvador, President Trump hosted Patty Morin, the mother of Maryland woman Rachel Morin, who was brutally murdered in Maryland by an illegal alien MS-13 gang member  in 2023, at the White House.

Morin joined the White House press briefing, where she blasted Van Hollen for traveling to El Salvador in an attempt to retrieve the deported criminal.

Patty Morin graphically described the 2023 murder of her 37-year-old daughter by Victor Martinez-Hernandez, a Salvadoran illegal immigrant and MS-13 member who was convicted Monday of the crime, before expressing her frustration with her home state senator.

“I just don’t understand this,”  Morin told reporters on Wednesday.  “A senator from Maryland who didn’t even acknowledge—or barely acknowledged—my daughter and the brutal death that she endured, leaving her five children without a mother” chose to “use my tax money to fly to El Salvador to bring back a person … who isn’t even an American citizen.”

“We are not the same,” the White House posted on X.