Posted on 04/16/25
| News Source: Pikesville Patch
Greenbelt, MD - April 16, 2025 — Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen said El Salvador officials denied his request to visit the Beltsville man who was wrongfully deported by the Trump administration last month and detained at a notorious gang prison.
The Democratic U.S. senator traveled to El Salvador on Wednesday, hoping to check on the condition of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was removed from the United States on March 15 as part of President Donald Trump's sweeping deportation efforts.
The Trump administration later admitted the married father's deportation was an "administrative error," and both a federal judge and the Supreme Court have since ordered he be returned to the United States.
At a news conference in El Salvador, Van Hollen said he met with El Salvador Vice President Félix Ulloa and was denied a face-to-face visit with Abrego Garcia in the notorious gang prison where he is being held. Officials said Van Hollen should have provided more advance notice before visiting the country.
When Van Hollen asked if he could return to El Salvador next week, he was told no, the senator said.
“We have an unjust situation here,” Van Hollen told reporters.
Ulloa said his government could not return Abrego Garcia to the United States.
“Why is the government of El Salvador continuing to imprison a man where they have no evidence that he’s committed any crime and they have not been provided any evidence from the United States that he has committed any crime?" Van Hollen told reporters after the meeting. “They should just let him go.”
The deportation of Abrego Garcia, who is married to a U.S. citizen, has become a national flashpoint as President Donald Trump follows up on his campaign promises of mass deportations.
According to his attorneys, Abrego Garcia fled El Salvador when he was 16 years old to escape gang violence. He was arrested in March 2019 while soliciting work outside a Home Depot, and he was later ordered deported after a confidential informant told police he was a member of the MS-13 gang.
Abrego Garcia appealed the claim and was eventually granted “withholding from removal” status in October 2019 by an immigration judge, according to court documents.
On March 12, Abrego Garcia was pulled over by ICE officers after picking up his son from daycare. The officer told Abrego Garcia that his "status had changed" before placing him in handcuffs and detaining him, according to court documents.
Three days later, Abrego Garcia was taken to the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador, according to court documents, which activists say is rife with abuses and where inmates are packed into cells and never allowed outside.
Trump officials later described the mistake as “an administrative error” but insisted that Abrego Garcia was a member of the MS-13 in the United States.
Abrego Garcia was never charged with a crime and has denied the allegations, which include being a member of MS-13 in Long Island, New York, where he has never lived.
His wife, Jennifer Stefania Vasquez Sura, and his 5-year-old child, both of whom are U.S. citizens, filed a lawsuit on March 24 calling for his return.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis previously ordered the Trump administration to return Abrego Garcia to the country. The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously agreed that the U.S. government must “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s release.
But the White House has balked at trying to broker his return, arguing the courts can’t intrude on the president’s diplomatic powers.
Last week, Xinis ordered the United States to provide daily status updates on plans to return Abrego Garcia. The Trump administration responded Saturday that he was alive in the El Salvador prison but has only doubled down on its decision not to tell a federal court whether it has any plans to repatriate Abrego Garcia.
At a hearing held Tuesday, Xinis chided the Trump administration on its continued refusal to return Abrego Garcia, warning federal lawyers against further “gamesmanship."
“We have to give process to both sides. But we are going to move,” Xinis said before ordering sworn testimony by Trump administration officials to determine if they complied with her orders to facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia. “There will be no tolerance for gamesmanship or grandstanding.”
During his meeting with El Salvador's vice president Wednesday, Van Hollen said Ulloa echoed what Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said earlier this week during a meeting at the White House and that he cannot "smuggle" someone out of the country.
Meanwhile, Van Hollen said he maintains that Abrego Garcia was “illegally abducted from the United States and committed no crime.”
“I will keep pressing in my remaining time here and I will keep pressing beyond that,” Van Hollen said.