Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen says Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was wrongly deported, told him he has been moved from the notorious Salvadoran prison known as CECOT to a detention center with better conditions. Van Hollen says the Salvadoran man told him in a meeting Thursday that he had shared a cell with 25 prisoners and was fearful of many of them. The senator who visited El Salvador told reporters the case is more than just about Abrego Garcia.
"It’s about protecting the constitutional rights of everybody who resides in the United States," Van Hollen said. Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer, wiped away tears as Van Hollen spoke of the man’s comments about wanting to speak with his wife.
Van Hollen flew home from El Salvador on Friday, April 18, after meeting with Abrego Garcia. It’s unclear what will happen next in the case. More Democrats have said they will fly to El Salvador to push for his release, but the partisan pressure hasn’t yielded any results.
President Donald Trump and El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele have dug in on keeping Abrego Garcia out of the United States, even as officials in Trump's Republican administration have called his deportation a mistake and the US Supreme Court has called on the administration to facilitate his return .
Bukele posted images of Van Hollen’s meeting with Abrego Garcia on Thursday and said that the prisoner in the country’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, "gets the honor of staying in El Salvador’s custody." White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has said he will "never live in the United States of America again."
The fight over Abrego Garcia is the latest partisan flashpoint as Democrats have struggled to break through and push back during the opening few months of Trump's second time in office.
Democrats say the fight isn’t just about one man’s immigration status but about Trump’s defiance of the courts that have repeatedly weighed in on the case. A federal appeals court said Thursday in a blistering order that the Trump administration’s claim that it can’t do anything to free Abrego Garcia from the prison in El Salvador and return him to the United States "should be shocking."
But Republicans appear to have only become more determined to keep Abrego Garcia out of the country. They have sharply criticized Van Hollen’s trip and claimed that Abrego Garcia has ties to the MS-13 gang. His attorneys say the government has provided no evidence of gang involvement and he has never been charged with any crime related to such activity.
Democrats "have time and again prioritized politics over the safety and security of Americans," Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas said in a statement Friday. "It is utterly divorced from reality."
Van Hollen has said he won’t stop fighting for the release of the Salvadoran citizen who was living in Maryland. "This is about bringing home a man they ADMIT should’ve never been abducted," Van Hollen posted on X.
The Democratic senator posted a photo of his meeting with Abrego Garcia on Thursday evening but did not provide an update on his status. He said he had called Abrego Garcia's wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, "to pass on a message of love" and would provide a full update upon his return. It’s unclear how the meeting was arranged, where they met or what will happen to Abrego Garcia. Vasquez Sura said in a statement released by an advocacy group that "we still have so many questions, hopes, and fears."
After days of denying that he knew much about Abrego Garcia, Trump on Friday said he knew Abrego Garcia was “unbelievably bad” and called him an "illegal alien" and a "foreign terrorist."
The president also responded Friday with a social media post saying Van Hollen "looked like a fool yesterday standing in El Salvador begging for attention."