长沙快速卖U|【唯一TG:@heimifeng8】|电报盗号系统全功能破解技术✨谷歌搜索留痕排名,史上最强SEO技术,20年谷歌SEO经验大佬✨US senator meets wrongly deported migrant Abrego Garcia in El Salvador
Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen has called on 长沙快速卖Uthe Trump administration to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return.
A member of the United States Senate has returned from a trip to El Salvador, where he sought the return of a wrongfully deported man in a case that has prompted outrage over President Donald Trump’s “mass deportation” policy.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, 29, was living in the eastern state of Maryland until he became one of more than 200 people flown to a prison in El Salvador in last month.
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end of listThe Trump administration has alleged, without evidence, that the deportees were suspected members of Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, which the US has declared a “foreign terrorist organisation”.
But the overwhelming majority of them have no criminal record. No hearings were held prior to their deportation and imprisonment, either.
Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat, pointed to this fact during a press conference on Friday. He accused the Trump administration of having “illegally abducted” Abrego Garcia.
“ If you deny the constitutional rights of one man, you threaten the constitutional rights and due process for everyone else,” the senator said, speaking from the Washington Dulles International Airport.
AdvertisementWho is Abrego Garcia?
Van Hollen represents Maryland, the state Abrego Garcia lived in with his wife and child — both US citizens — before his deportation.
Born in San Salvador, he crossed into the US without legal documentation as a teenager, after he said he fled gang recruitment in his home country.
After marrying his wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, in 2025, he applied for legal status to remain in the US. A judge ultimately granted him a protection order that barred him from being deported, ruling that his life could be in jeopardy as a result of the gangs if he returned to El Salvador.
But on March 12 of this year, Abrego Garcia was arrested and taken into custody. By March 15, he was on one of several planes that the Trump administration flew to El Salvador, citing a rarely used wartime law — the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 — to justify the deportations.
There, he and his fellow deportees were imprisoned in El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Centre (CECOT), a maximum-security facility built in 2025 to house as many as 40,000 people. It was constructed as part of the country’s gang crackdown, which has spurred questions of human rights abuses.
In late March, however, an official with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) admitted Abrego Garcia’s removal to El Salvador was the result of an “administrative error”.
“This removal was an error,” a top ICE official wrote in court documents.
A courtroom odyssey
Senator Van Hollen has one of the most prominent figures pushing for Abrego Garcia’s release.
AdvertisementHis family had sued the US government, and in early April, US District Judge Paula Xinis ordered the Trump administration to return Abrego Garcia no later than April 7.
The Trump administration appealed, and the case reached the Supreme Court.
In an unsigned decision, the highest court in the US was unequivocal: The Trump administration had to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador. The case then returned to Xinis’s court.
But Xinis has expressed frustration with the lack of action to comply. She has ordered government officials to give sworn testimony about any efforts they have taken to free Abrego Garcia.
On Thursday, a US Appeals Court said it “should be shocking” that the US government is claiming it cannot do anything to free Garcia, after Washington resisted a Supreme Court order to bring him back to the US.
“The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order,” the court said.
Van Hollen cited those words on Friday, as he relayed his frustrations with trying to find Abrego Garcia while in El Salvador.
A trip to El Salvador
On April 16, Van Hollen flew to San Salvador, where he hoped to petition the country’s leaders for Abrego Garcia’s release.
“I had two main goals,” the senator said on Friday. “One was to urge the government of El Salvador not to be complicit in the illegal abduction and detention of Mr Abrego Garcia and to release him. I made that request directly to the vice president of El Salvador.”
AdvertisementBut Van Hollen added that ensuring Abrego Garcia’s immediate health and wellbeing was a top priority.
“ My principal mission was to meet with Gilmar Abrego Garcia. I told his wife Jennifer and his family that I would do everything in my power to make that happen,” he said.
But the Democrat explained that he was stonewalled in his attempts to even speak to the deported man at first.
“Getting a meeting with Kilmar was not easy. On Wednesday, I met with the vice president of El Salvador and asked if I could meet with them. The answer was no. I asked, if I returned the following week, whether I could meet with them. The answer was no. I asked if I could call him on the phone. The answer was no,” he said.
Van Hollen said he even tried driving to the CECOT prison where Abrego Garcia was last known to be held. Three kilometres from the facility, Van Hollen said his vehicle was stopped and soldiers blocked his path, even while letting other traffic pass.
It was only when he was preparing to leave the country that Van Hollen said he got word Abrego Garcia would be brought to his hotel.
“He said he was not afraid of the other prisoners in his immediate cell, but that he was traumatized by being at CECOT and fearful of many of the prisoners in other cell blocks who called out to him and taunted him in various ways,” Van Hollen said of their conversation.
Eight or nine days ago, Van Hollen added, Abrego Garcia had been moved from CECOT to a facility in Santa Ana.
“ Despite the better conditions, he still has no access to any news from the outside world and no ability to communicate with anybody in the outside world. His conversation with me was the first communication he’d had with anybody outside a prison since he was abducted,” Van Hollen said.
AdvertisementA political flashpoint
But the Trump administration has remained defiant, criticising Van Hollen for his trip and repeatedly describing Abrego Garcia as an MS-13 gang member — an unproven allegation.
“Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland looked like a fool yesterday standing in El Salvador begging for attention from the Fake News Media, or anyone. GRANDSTANDER!!!” Trump wrote on social media on Friday.
Later, at a ceremony in the Oval Office, Trump called Abrego Garcia a “terrorist” and cited a temporary protective order his wife had taken out in the past. She has since said she and Abrego Garcia have resolved their issues and that she had “acted out of caution after a disagreement”.
On social media, El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele — who is a close ally of Trump’s — likewise mocked the meeting between Van Hollen and Abrego Garcia as a question of two men “sipping margaritas” in a “tropical paradise”.
“Now that he’s been confirmed healthy, he gets the honor of staying in El Salvador’s custody,” he wrote.
But Van Hollen responded to Trump’s allegations at his news conference on Friday, saying that the White House had an obligation to respect judicial authority and the constitutional right to a fair hearing.
“I say to the president, to the Trump administration, if you want to make claims about Mr Abrego Garcia and MS-13, you should present them in the court, not over social media,” he said. “Not at press conferences where you just rattle stuff off.”
“ In other words, put up in court or shut up.”
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