US senator lands in El Salvador seeking release of wrongly deported Salvadoran man
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (Reuters) – Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen arrived in El Salvador on Wednesday morning saying he would seek to meet with senior officials from the Central American country to secure the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man mistakenly deported and being held in a notorious prison.
“I just arrived in San Salvador a little while ago and look forward to meeting with the U.S. Embassy team to discuss Mr. Abrego Garcia’s release,” Van Hollen, of Maryland, who is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a message on his X account.
“I told his wife and family that I would do everything possible to bring him home,” he added. “And we will continue working toward that goal until we achieve it.”
The government of El Salvador did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Van Hollen’s visit.
After Washington acknowledged Abrego Garcia had been deported due to an “administrative error,” the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an order by Judge Paula Xinis directing the government to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return.
In a meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House on Monday, El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, said he had no plans to return Abrego Garcia. Earlier on Monday, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said in a court filing that it “does not have authority to forcibly” bring Abrego Garcia back.
On Tuesday, Xinis said she would not immediately hold the government in contempt of court, but said there was no evidence the Trump administration had tried to retrieve Abrego Garcia and said she would not tolerate “gamesmanship or grandstanding.”
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.
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, a wartime law.
Abrego Garcia, 29, left El Salvador at age 16 to escape gang-related violence. He was granted a protective order in 2019 to continue living in the United States. He has never been charged with or convicted of any crime, according to Abrego Garcia’s lawyers, who have denied the Justice Department’s allegation that he is a member of the criminal gang MS-13.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was to meet later on Wednesday with El Salvador’s minister of national defense, Rene Merino, at the Pentagon.
(Reporting by Nelson Renteria in San Salvador and Diego Ore in Mexico City; additional reporting by Idrees Ali in Washington; Writing by Sarah Kinosian; Editing by Leslie Adler)
