Sen. Chris Van Hollen travels to El Salvador to demand return of deported MS-13 suspect

Sen. Chris Van Hollen made a pilgrimage to El Salvador Wednesday to demand the country release Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom the U.S. deported last month, saying he was “illegally abducted” from Maryland and must be sent back.

Mr. Van Hollen said he had hoped to meet with Mr. Abrego Garcia, who’s being held in a terrorist prison, but that didn’t happen. Instead he met with El Salvador’s vice president and made his plea, which he asked be passed on to President Nayib Bukele.

“I’m asking President Bukele, under his authority as president of El Salvador, to do the right thing and allow Mr. Abrego Garcia to walk out of a prison — a man who is charged with no crime, convicted of no crime, and was illegally abducted from the United States,” Mr. Van Hollen said.

He also challenged the arrangement President Trump worked out with El Salvador to hold hundreds of Venezuelan gang suspects deported from the U.S. in El Salvador’s Terrorist Confinement Center, or CECOT. He said he believes members of Congress might try to block that funding.

Mr. Van Hollen is one of a host of Democrats who have elevated Mr. Abrego Garcia to martyr status in the fight over Mr. Trump’s immigration policies.

Mr. Abrego Garcia was deported on March 15 as part of three planeloads of migrants sent to CECOT. Most were Venezuelans whom the U.S. says are part of Tren de Aragua, a notorious gang. But some were Salvadorans the U.S. says were members of MS-13.

That includes Mr. Abrego Garcia, who was found to be a member of the gang by an immigration judge in 2019. The judge based that on a confidential source for the Prince George’s County police department, which identified Mr. Abrego Garcia by his gang name and rank.

Homeland Security and White House officials have also said Mr. Abrego Garcia was involved in “human trafficking,” though they haven’t offered public evidence.

A federal judge overseeing a challenge to Mr. Abrego Garcia’s deportation has also questioned the MS-13 finding, saying the government didn’t present its evidence for those gang ties in her courtroom.

Mr. Van Hollen said that means the Trump administration “is lying.”

“President Trump and our attorney general, Pam Bondi, and the vice president of the United States, are lying when they say that Abrego Garcia has been charged with a crime or is part of MS-13. That is a lie,” the senator said.

He said Mr. Abrego Garcia was “legally in the United States” and had “protective status.”

It’s not clear what that status would be.

Mr. Abrego Garcia came to the U.S. illegally and had a standing deportation order against him.  But a judge granted him what’s know as withholding of removal to El Salvador in particular, because he faced the chance of torture.

The Trump administration initially said Mr. Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador in error.

But more recently the Trump team says the deportation was not illegal because, as an MS-13 member, Mr. Abrego Garcia can no longer qualify for withholding of removal. The administration also said it has assurances he wouldn’t be tortured in El Salvador, obviating the withholding order.

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis has rejected those assertions and ordered the government to try to bring back Mr. Abrego Garcia. She called his March 12 arrest “unconstitutional” and his March 15 deportation “unlawful.”

Mr. Bondi on Wednesday said it’s beyond America’s control.

She said El Salvador now has custody of Mr. Abrego Garcia, who is a Salvadoran citizen, and it’s their decision whether to release him.

Mr. Bukele, in a meeting with Mr. Trump in the Oval Office this week, rejected that idea.

And Ms. Bondi said Wednesday that Mr. Abrego Garcia is “not coming back.”

“He’s from El Salvador, he’s in El Salvador, and that’s where the president plans on keeping him,” she said.

Mr. Van Hollen said he asked the Salvadoran government to facilitate communication between Mr. Abrego Garcia and his family back in Maryland.

He said El Salvador’s vice president wasn’t sure that could happen.