SAN SALVADOR — Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen traveled to El Salvador on Wednesday and met with the country’s vice president to push for the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man who was sent there by the Trump administration in March despite an immigration court order preventing his deportation.
Van Hollen said at a news conference in San Salvador that Vice President Félix Ulloa said his government could not return Abrego Garcia to the United States and declined to allow Van Hollen to visit him in the notorious gang prison where he is being held.
“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.”
Van Hollen’s trip became a flashpoint in the U.S. The Trump administration sharply criticized it, while Democrats have rallied around Abrego Garcia.
President Donald Trump and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said this week that they have no basis to send him back, even as the U.S. Supreme Court has called on the administration to facilitate his return.
Trump officials have said that Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran citizen who was living in Maryland, has ties to the MS-13 gang, but his attorneys say the government has provided no evidence of that and Abrego Garcia has never been charged with any crime related to such activity.
“We have an unjust situation here,” said Van Hollen, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “The Trump administration is lying about Abrego Garcia. The American courts have looked at the facts.”
Trump officials reiterated Wednesday that he would not be returned to the United States. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt held a press briefing with the mother of a Maryland woman, Rachel Morin, who was killed by a fugitive from El Salvador in 2023.
“It’s appalling and sad that Sen. Van Hollen and the Democrats applauding his trip to El Salvador today are incapable of having any shred of common sense or empathy for their own constituents and our citizens,” Leavitt said at the briefing.
Republicans have focused on the victims of crime committed by people in the U.S. illegally in arguing for Trump’s promised immigration crackdown and mass deportations.
Democrats, meanwhile, have seized on the case to highlight what they say is Trump’s disrespect for the courts and as base voters have encouraged them to fight harder against Trump’s policies. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., is also considering a trip to El Salvador, as are some House Democrats.
“This is a constitutional crisis,” said Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., one of the Democrats who is considering a trip. “This is not just about a deportation policy. This is about defying the Constitution and the Supreme Court.”
Garcia sent a joint letter with Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., to House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., requesting a congressional delegation to travel to El Salvador to investigate Abrego Garcia’s condition. Garcia said if the trip isn’t approved, some Democrats still plan to travel to the Central American nation.
