Democratic U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen said on Wednesday authorities in El Salvador had denied him access to Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran man mistakenly deported and being held in a notorious prison in the country.
Van Hollen arrived in the Central American nation on Wednesday to meet with senior officials and advocate for Abrego Garcia’s release, but says he was told by El Salvador’s Vice President Felix Ulloa that he could not authorize a visit or a call with Abrego Garcia.
Van Hollen, who is a member of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Ulloa had also told him El Salvador was not releasing Abrego Garcia because the United States was paying to keep him incarcerated.
“Why should the government of the United States pay the government of El Salvador to lock up a man who was illegally abducted from the United States and committed no crime?” said Van Hollen, a senator from Maryland, where Abrego Garcia lived.
The government of El Salvador did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Van Hollen’s visit.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the Democratic senator was potentially using taxpayer dollars to “demand the release of deported illegal alien MS-13 terrorist.”
“It’s appalling and sad that Senator 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,” she told reporters.
Abrego Garcia, 29, left El Salvador at age 16 to escape gang-related violence, his lawyers said. He was granted a protective order in 2019 to continue living in the U.S.
He has never been charged with or convicted of any crime, according to his lawyers, who have denied the U.S. Justice Department’s allegation that he is a member of the criminal gang MS-13.
U.S. government claims no authority to bring man back
The U.S. Supreme Court has directed the Trump administration to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return, after Washington acknowledged he was deported due to an administrative error.
In a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House on Monday, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele said he had no plans to return Abrego Garcia. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has separately said it does not have the authority to bring the man back to the United States.
Along with Abrego Garcia, the Trump administration has deported hundreds of people, mostly Venezuelans, whom it says are gang members, to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 without presenting evidence and without a trial.
Neither government has released the names of the men incarcerated, and the men have not had access to lawyers or any contact with the outside world since arriving at the prison, lawyers have said.
In March, after a judge said flights carrying migrants prosecuted under the Alien Enemies Act should return to the United States, Bukele wrote on X that it was too late, alongside images showing men being rushed off a plane in the dark.
A federal judge on Wednesday said officials in Trump’s administration could face criminal prosecution for contempt of court for violating his order last month halting deportations of Venezuelan migrants under the Alien Enemies Act.
