Washington — Sen. Chris Van Hollen said Sunday that El Salvador “tried really hard” to prevent him from seeing Kilmar Abrego Garcia, before the government reversed course late last week.
“I think they realized that that was not a good look at the end of the day,” Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, said on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.”
Abrego Garcia is a 29-year-old Salvadoran national who lived in Maryland who was sent last month to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison as part of a White House effort, although the administration later admitted in court that Abrego Garcia was mistakenly among those deported. The case has come to the fore in recent weeks amid simmering tensions between the federal judiciary and the Trump administration’s sweeping crackdown on illegal immigration.
Van Hollen traveled to El Salvador last week, where he met with Abrego Garcia on Thursday after he said his attempts were repeatedly turned down by the Salvadoran government.
Van Hollen noted that he held press conferences in El Salvador, where he made the point that the government was “violating international law by not allowing anyone to reach him,” adding that “they realized that was a bad look.”
After Van Hollen was allowed to meet with Abrego Garcia, El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele was the first to announce the meeting, writing in a post on X that Abrego Garcia was “now sipping margaritas with Sen. Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador,” alongside photos that showed the two men sitting at a table with drinks that resemble margaritas. The president later wrote, “I love chess.”
Van Hollen said of the Salvadoran government, “they go to great lengths to deceive people,” outlining how drinks were brought to the table as photos were taken during his meeting with Abrego Garcia, adding that “no one touched them.”
“The reality is, if you look at the photos when I first sat down and the ones at the end, you can see that that was all staged,” Van Hollen said. “They’re trying to create the impression that, you know, this is a guy in paradise, when in fact he’s been in one of the most notorious prisons in the world.”
Abrego Garcia came to the U.S. unlawfully in 2011 and was arrested in 2019. When he was released from immigration custody, an immigration judge granted him withholding of removal — a legal status that forbids the government from deporting him back to his home country of El Salvador.
Van Hollen said Sunday that Abrego Garcia has since been transferred from CECOT to a facility in Santa Ana. Trump administration officials have since acknowledged that Abrego Garcia’s removal to El Salvador was an “administrative error.”
Still, a fierce legal battle has ensued around efforts to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S. The administration was ordered earlier this month to “facilitate and effectuate” Abrego Garcia’s return from El Salvador, before the Supreme Court ruled that the judge’s decision properly required the government to “facilitate” his release, while the scope should be clarified. On Thursday, a federal appeals court rejected a request from the Trump administration to pause the district judge’s order, writing that the government’s assertions in the case should be “shocking” to all Americans.
Meanwhile, the White House and Bukele have made clear that they don’t intend to bring Abrego Garcia back, despite the orders, while Trump administration officials have repeatedly claimed that he is a member of the gang MS-13. Van Hollen stressed that the administration hasn’t presented evidence to link Abrego Garcia to MS-13 or other terrorist activity, while urging officials to “put up or shut up in court.”
“Go to court, stop tweeting, and put up or shut up in front of the judges,” Van Hollen added.
The Maryland Democrat said he did not travel to El Salvador to litigate the details of Abrego Garcia’s case, but rather “to make sure that he was still alive and check on his health.” But he argued that the case is also much bigger than one man.
“This is not a case about just one man whose constitutional rights are being ignored and disrespected, because when you trample on the constitutional rights of one man — as the courts have all said is happening in this case — you threaten the constitutional rights of every American,” Van Hollen said.
