Washington (AP) – The dispute on the unjustified expulsion And the imprisonment of Kilmar Abrego Garcia “does not only concern a man”, but also the contempt of Donald Trump of the American judicial system, said Senator Chris Van Hollen on Friday when he returned from a three -day trip to El Salvador Salvador To put pressure for the release of the detained man.
Speaking to journalists just after landing in the United States, Van Hollen offered few answers on what will then come in the case of Abrego Garcia. But the Maryland Democrat said that he and others will continue to express themselves after the Trump administration has challenged the legal orders to facilitate his return to the United States and insisted that he would remain in Salvador – even if the officials recognized an “error” to expel him.
In this photo published by the Press Bureau of Senator Van Hollen, Hollen, on the right, speaks with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a citizen Salvadoran who lived in Maryland and expelled in Salvador by the Trump administration, in a restaurant of the hotel in San Salvador, El Salvador, Thursday April 17, 2025. (Press Office Van Hollen, via AP).
“It is a question of protecting the constitutional rights of all those who live in the United States,” said Van Hollen at Washington International Airport Dulles at a press conference with supporters of Abrego Garcia behind him. “It is very clear that the president, the Trump administration, disagrees with flagrance, obvious, defying the ordinance of the Supreme Court.”
Standing next to him, Abrego Garcia’s wife Jennifer wiped tears while the senator shared her husband’s comments on the disappearance of his family.
Senator Chris Van Hollen, D-MD., Expresses himself at a press conference when he arrived after meeting Kilmar Abrego Garcia in Salvador, at Washington International Airport Dulles, in Chantilly, Virginie, Friday April 18, 2025. (AP photo / Jose Luis Magana)
A large part of uncertainty remains on the future of Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran citizen who lived in Maryland, after Van Hollen was presented Thursday with a carefully staged opportunity to meet him in Salvador. The Maryland senator said that Greo Garcia reported that he had been transferred from a notorious Salvadoran mega-prison, Cecot, to a detention center with better conditions
The status of Abrego Garcia after the departure of Van Hollen was not known, and nothing indicated that the trip of Van Hollen pushed him closer to the Liberation.
The case has become a focal point in the debate on national immigration. Democrats insist that President Donald Trump goes beyond his executive authority and lack of respect for the courts; The Republicans criticize the Democrats for defending a man that Trump and the White House officials claim to be a member of the Gang MS-13, despite the fact that he was not accused of gang-related crimes.
Jennifer Vasquez Sura eliminates a tear of her face while Senator Chris Van Hollen, D-MD., Expresses himself at a press conference when she arrived at her meeting with her husband, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, in Salvador, in Washington Dulles Airport, in Chantilly, Va., Friday, April 18.
Van Hollen said that Greo Garcia told him that he had shared a cell with 25 prisoners and was afraid of many colleagues detained in Cecot before being transferred to another center of Santa Ana, El Salvador. He said that Greo Garcia said he was well treated – but noted that they were surrounded by government guards at the time.
Democrats grow, the Republicans do not move
The fight against Abrego Garcia is The last point of partisan flash While Democrats have trouble unraveling and pushing during the first months of Trump’s second administration.
More Democratic legislators said they would fly to El Salvador to put pressure on the release of Abrego Garcia, but partisan pressure has not given any results. President Donald Trump and the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, only kept him outside the United States. This position remained even after the United States Supreme Court called the administration to facilitate his return.
The White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Greo Garcia “would never live in the United States of America again.”
Bukele published images of Van Hollen with Abrego Garcia on Thursday and said that the prisoner “obtains the honor of staying under the guard of El Salvador”. Van Hollen said that a Salvadoran government official had placed other drinks on the table with salt or sugar on the edge to reveal that they were drinking margaritas. Van Hollen said that neither him nor Abrego Garcia drank glasses which, in the photo, Bukele published were lined with cherries.
After having denied that he knew a lot about Abrego Garcia, Trump said on Friday that he knew that Abrego Garcia’s prison file was “incredibly bad” and called him an “illegal extraterrestrial” and a “foreign terrorist”.
President Donald Trump has a document with notes on Kilmar Abrego Garcia while he speaks with journalists during an oath for Dr. Mehmet Oz to be a director of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, in the Oval Blanche office, on Friday April 18, 2025, in Washington. (AP photo / Alex Brandon)
The president also responded on Friday with an article on social networks saying that Van Hollen “looked like a fool yesterday in Salvador by asking me the attention”.
More members of the congress visit the prison or try
Several republicans of the house visited Notorious gang prison in support of the Trump administration efforts. Representative Riley Moore, a Republican from Virginie-Western, displayed on Tuesday evening that he had visited the prison where Abrego Garcia was detained. “I now go even more determined to support President Trump’s efforts to secure our homeland,” Moore wrote on social networks.
US Immigration and Customs Applicants have recognized in a legal file earlier this month that Abrego Garcia’s expulsion was ” administrative error. “Government recognition generated an immediate tumult of immigration defenders, but the White House officials remained with the allegation that he is a member of a gang.
The fight also played in the disputed judicial files, with repeated refusal of the government to tell a judge what he plans to do, if necessary, to repatriate him.
The panel of three judges of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in the United States refused on Thursday to suspend the judge’s decision to order the testimony under oath by the officials of the Trump administration and declared that the judicial power would be injured by the “constant intimate of its illegitimacy” while the executive branch “will lose a lot of the public perception of its denunciation”.
Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, appointed by President Ronald Reagan, a Republican, wrote that he and his two colleagues “hanging on hope that it is not naive to believe our good brothers in the executive power perceived the rule of law as vital for the American ethos.”
Since March, El Salvador has accepted from the United States more than 200 Venezuelan immigrants that Trump administration officials have accused gang and violent crimes activities. Bukele’s government has placed them inside the country Maximum security gang prison, Just outside San Salvador.
___
Gomez Licon reported in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
