Democratic Maryland Senator Van Hollen was refused a requested meeting with a recently deported illegal alien that the Trump administration claims is connected to a violent gang.
Despite declaring on X during the first day of his trip to El Salvador that he intended to see the deportee and secure his release, Van Hollen could not meet or speak on the phone with Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
In protest of the Trump administration’s decision to deport Abrego Garcia, some Senate Democrats, such as Van Hollen, have allegedly planned trips to El Salvador to lobby for Abrego Garcia’s return home. They argue that there is a lack of evidence that Abrego Garcia was a member of the violent gang MS-13, which has been used as part of the justification for his deportation.
“President Trump and our attorney general, Pam Bondi, and the vice president of the United States are lying when they say that Abrego García has been charged with a crime or is part of MS-13,” Van Hollen told reporters in El Salvador on Wednesday. “That is a lie.”
Van Hollen wanted to meet with El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, but met with Vice President Félix Ulloa on Wednesday instead. When Van Hollen asked the officials to arrange a meeting with him and Abrego Garcia, Ulloa told him that it would be unlikely. Van Hollen was also refused the opportunity to talk with the prisoner on the phone and was directed to the U.S. Embassy to coordinate possible communication.
“We have an unjust situation here,” Van Hollen said during the press conference. “The Trump administration is lying about Abrego Garcia. The American courts have looked at the facts.”
Abrego Garcia was removed from the United States along with alleged Tren de Aragua (TdA) gang members from Venezuela, who were deported to a Salvadoran prison last month. The administration invoked the Alien Enemy Act as justification to deport the Venezuelans. In Garcia’s case, the government claimed that he was a member of MS-13 — another international criminal enterprise that the administration has designated as a foreign terrorist organization.
Critics of Abrego Garcia’s removal argue that his case should be processed in the U.S. because a judge had ruled that, in connection with 2019 proceedings over his time-barred asylum claim, he couldn’t be sent to El Salvador. The Trump administration sent him to El Salvador anyway, to the most notorious prison in the Western Hemisphere, the so-called Terrorist Confinement Center, or CECOT. Van Hollen reiterated Wednesday that Abrego Garcia was legally residing in the U.S because “an immigration judge found years ago that it would put his life in danger if he was returned to El Salvador.”
In the litigation over the matter, a district court ordered the administration to “effectuate” the return of Abrego Garcia. The administration objected that this directive interfered with its power to conduct foreign policy. The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the district court can order the Trump administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States, while clarifying that its use of “effectuate” is not meant to intrude unnecessarily on the president’s foreign affairs power.
It was recently uncovered that Abrego Garcia was accused in the past of beating his wife years before his deportation. Jennifer Vasquez Sura, the wife of Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national, petitioned for an order of protection against him in May 2021, according to Maryland court documents first reported by journalist Andy Ngo. She also filed for an order in 2020. Vasquez Sura claimed he punched, scratched, grabbed, and bruised her, according to court documents. The two domestic violence cases she filed against him contradict the rosy picture some media outlets have painted of Abrego Garcia as a Maryland family man. However, she’s now petitioning for his swift return to the United States from the El Salvador facility.
The U.S. government is paying El Salvador $6 million to hold detainees for a year, after which the administration will make a determination. Bukele and Ulloa have maintained that they cannot “smuggle” Abrego Garcia back into the U.S.