Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., met with deported illegal alien Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, in El Salvador Thursday evening.
“Kilmar Abrego Garcia, miraculously risen from the ‘death camps’ & ‘torture,’ now sipping margaritas with Sen. Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador,” Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele wrote on X Thursday night in a post with several photos of the two met talking with Abrego Garcia’s lawyer.
“Now that he’s been confirmed healthy, he gets the honor of staying in El Salvador’s custody,” Bukele wrote on X with a handshake emoji between a U.S. and Salvadoran flag.
“I said my main goal of this trip was to meet with Kilmar. Tonight I had that chance,” Van Hollen wrote on X, adding, “I have called his wife, Jennifer, to pass along his message of love.”
Van Hollen had suggested just before departing for El Salvador that his main goal was to free Abrego Garcia.
“The goal of this mission is to let the Trump administration, to let the government of El Salvador, know that we are going to keep fighting to bring Abrego Garcia home until he returns to his family,” the Democrat Senator said in a video shared to social media on Wednesday as he prepared to depart the United States.
Van Hollen met with Salvadoran Vice President Félix Ulloa and human rights advocates. He claims that Abrego Garcia was “illegally abducted” from the U.S. and sent to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center.
Abrego Garcia was living in Maryland until the Trump administration deported him on March 15. The Trump administration initially said he was removed due to an “administrative error,” but has since pushed back against that claim.
“A [Department of Justice] lawyer, who has since been relieved of duty, a saboteur, a Democrat, put into a filing incorrectly that this was a mistaken removal. It was not,” Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy, said on Fox News on Monday.
Police reports and court documents reveal that Abrego Garcia was associated with MS-13, a violent criminal gang, and entered the U.S. illegally in 2012. The Department of Homeland Security also claims he has been involved in human trafficking activity.
In 2021, Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, filed domestic violence allegations against her husband, claiming, “I am afraid to be close to him.”
After Abrego Garcia’s deportation, the District Court for the District of Maryland directed the Trump administration to “facilitate and effectuate the return of [Abrego Garcia] to the United States” on grounds that he was improperly deported.
This week, Judge Paula Xinis told lawyers for the Justice Department that she was ordering expedited discovery to “determine whether you are fighting the court order, my court orders, whether you intend to abide by the court orders.”
The Supreme Court agreed last week that the Trump administration has an obligation to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s release from prison in El Salvador, but this requires the government of El Salvador to release Abrego Garcia from prison, which it does not appear interested in doing right now.
Bukele met with President Donald Trump at the White House Monday and said he has no plans to release Abrego Garcia from prison.
