SAN SALVADOR (AP) — Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen traveled to El Salvador on Wednesday and met with the nation’s vice chairman to push for the discharge of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a person who was despatched there by the Trump administration in March regardless of an immigration court docket order stopping his deportation.
“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 instructed reporters after the assembly. “They should just let him go.”
Van Hollen’s journey grew to become a flashpoint within the U.S. The Trump administration sharply criticized it, whereas Democrats have rallied round Abrego Garcia.
President Donald Trump and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele stated this week that they don’t have any foundation to ship him again, even because the U.S. Supreme Court docket has known as on the administration to facilitate his return.
Trump officers have stated that Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran citizen who was dwelling in Maryland, has ties to the MS-13 gang, however his attorneys say the federal government has supplied no proof of that and Abrego Garcia has by no means been charged with any crime associated to such exercise.
“We have an unjust situation here,” stated Van Hollen, a member of the Senate International Relations Committee. “The Trump administration is lying about Abrego Garcia. The American courts have looked at the facts.”
Trump officers reiterated Wednesday that he wouldn’t be returned to the US. White Home press secretary Karoline Leavitt held a press briefing with the mom of a Maryland lady, 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 stated on the briefing.
Republicans have targeted on the victims of crime dedicated by individuals within the U.S. illegally in arguing for Trump’s promised immigration crackdown and mass deportations.
Democrats, in the meantime, have seized on the case to spotlight what they are saying is Trump’s disrespect for the courts and as base voters have inspired them to battle more durable towards Trump’s insurance policies. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., can be contemplating a visit to El Salvador, as are some Home Democrats.
“This is a constitutional crisis,” stated Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., one of many Democrats who’s contemplating a visit. “This is not just about a deportation policy. This is about defying the Constitution and the Supreme Court.”
Garcia despatched a joint letter with Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., to Home Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., requesting a congressional delegation to journey to El Salvador to analyze Abrego Garcia’s situation. Garcia stated if the journey isn’t permitted, some Democrats nonetheless plan to journey to the Central American nation.
“We need to bring attention to this case. We need to be in El Salvador. We need to work with the family. We need to work with the Salvadoran government. We need to pressure the White House to do the right thing,” Garcia stated.
Rep. Yassamin Ansari, an Arizona Democrat, wrote in a Wednesday assertion that she plans to journey to El Salvador to assist Abrego Garcia’s return.
“My parents fled an authoritarian regime in Iran where people ‘disappeared’ — I refuse to sit back and watch it happen here, too,” wrote Ansari, who’s Iranian American and the youngest lady in Congress.
Trump officers renewed their claims that Abrego Garcia was a gang member.
“We got rid of a dangerous person, an El Salvadoran national was returned to the country of El Salvador, so he is home,” Homan stated.
Some Republicans have visited the jail as properly in assist of the Trump administration’s efforts. Rep. Riley Moore, a West Virginia Republican, posted Tuesday night that he’d visited the jail the place Abrego Garcia is being held. He didn’t point out Abrego Garcia however stated the power “houses the country’s most brutal criminals.”
“I leave now even more determined to support President Trump’s efforts to secure our homeland,” Moore wrote on social media.
Republican Rep. Jason Smith of Missouri, the chairman of the Home Methods and Means Committee, additionally visited the jail. He posted on X that “thanks to President Trump” the power “now includes illegal immigrants who broke into our country and committed violent acts against Americans.”
The battle over Abrego Garcia has additionally performed out in contentious court docket filings, with repeated refusals from the federal government to inform a decide what it plans to do, if something, to repatriate him. The Trump administration has known as his deportation a mistake but additionally has argued, primarily, that its conclusion about Abrego Garcia’s affiliation makes him ineligible for defense from the courts.
Since March, El Salvador has accepted from the U.S. greater than 200 Venezuelan immigrants — whom Trump administration officers have accused of gang exercise and violent crimes — and positioned them contained in the nation’s maximum-security gang jail simply exterior of San Salvador. That jail is a part of Bukele’s broader effort to crack down on the nation’s highly effective road gangs, which has put 84,000 individuals behind bars and made Bukele extraordinarily in style at dwelling.
Human rights teams have beforehand accused Bukele’s authorities of subjecting these jailed to “systematic use of torture and other mistreatment.” Officers there deny wrongdoing.
Van Hollen stated after his assembly that Abrego Garcia was “illegally abducted from the United States and committed no crime.”
“I will keep pressing in my remaining time here and I will keep pressing beyond that,” Van Hollen stated.
