Inside the Cecot prison of El Salvador, where Abrego Garcia was detained

When Senator Chris Van Hollen, Maryland Democrat, tried to visit Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia Thursday in a notorious prison in El Salvador, the legislator was withdrawn by soldiers. The authorities rather delivered Mr. Abrego Garcia to the Hotel du Senator in San Salvador.

There, Van Hollen and Mr. Abrego Garcia, who had been wrongly expelled from Maryland and who are at the center of a controversial legal battle between the Trump administration and the American courts, was seated at a restaurant table to speak.

El Salvador’s warned of public relations, Nayib Bukele immediately published photos of the meeting on X and wrote that Mr. Abrego Garcia “now sipped the Margaritas in the Tropical Paradise of El Salvador!” Van Hollen said they didn’t have cocktails.

Here is what we know about the prison where Mr. Abrego Garcia had been detained since March, the center of confinement of terrorism, before being transferred to a separate detention center in Santa Ana, El Salvador, according to Van Hollen at a press conference on Friday.

The Terrorism Confainment Center, or Cecot, which is about an hour outside San Salvador, the capital, opened its doors in 2023. It was originally supposed to be a low -security rehabilitation site (partly built with American funds), but was transformed into Mr. Bukele’s gangs.