A delegation of four Democrats in the Chamber arrived in Salvador to put pressure for the release of Kilmar Ábrego García, who is part of a mission to challenge the Trump administration to comply with a supreme court order to facilitate the return of the immigrant to the United States.
The Yassamin Ansari representatives of Arizona, Maxine Dexter de l’Oregon, Maxwell Frost from Florida and Robert Garcia de California approached Central America on Sunday, after a visit to the Senator of Maryland Chris Van Hollen last week. Legislators seek to meet Ábrego García, who lived in the United States for more than a decade before being swept in a March 15 operation.
“Even with all the illegal actions that we have seen in the past two months, I think it is the one that terrifies me the most with regard to the future of our democracy,” Ansari told the Associated Press in an interview.
According to an assistant from the Congress Familier with the arrangements, the delegation will meet those responsible for the United States Embassy on Tuesday morning to defend the release of Ábrego García and ask questions about other people transferred from the United States who are currently held in Salvador. Legislators will also receive classified briefings during their visit.
The case has become a flash point in the current tensions between the Trump administration and the Supreme Court, which judged that the government had the duty to help return to García. The lawyers of the Ministry of Justice argued that they did not have the power to guarantee his release from the foreign guard.
Garcia, the California representative, said that Ábrego García deserved regular procedure.
“They try to demonize him, and we are not there to defend him. He deserves regular procedure, and everyone deserves regular procedure,” said Garcia at the AP. “What he did or may have done, which must be decided by a judge.”
Ábrego García, who had protected the legal status that should have prevented his expulsion, was sent to Salvador on a plane carrying members of alleged immigrant gangs. He is currently detained in a Salvador prison after being far from the country’s confinement center (CECOC), which praised the Republican legislators, but criticism of human rights defenders for inhuman conditions.
The Trump administration admitted to the judicial files that “an administrative error” had led to the expulsion of Ábrego García in Salvador – despite the order of an immigration judge in 2019 protecting him – but the same officials say that they will not return to his American wife and his disabled child in Maryland.
The white house’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended the expulsion, saying that Ábrego García was involved in the trafficking of human beings and terrorism, and said that if he should return to the United States, “he would be immediately expelled again”.
But the controversy even aroused criticism from certain Republicans, Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana recognizing on the meeting of the Press of NBC that “the administration does not admit it. But it was a vision. “
As members of the minority party in the two chambers of the congress, the Democrats have a limited lever effect on the administration, but are still determined to maintain public pressure. Ansari said that more democratic legislators planned to visit El Salvador in the coming weeks, saying: “It is the future of our democracy and the future of the regular procedure as American citizens.”
The wife of ábrego García, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, said on Monday in a statement that the legislators’ visit “sends a powerful message”.
“We are deeply grateful to the members of the Congress and the defenders of justice now on the ground in Salvador, based on the management of Senator Van Hollen,” she said in the statement, according to NBC News.
At a press conference in El Salvador on Monday afternoon, Frost told journalists that “regular procedure applies to all people in our country”.
“We demand the release of Ábrego García,” said Frost. “We are also worried about our own voters.”
Frost added that the representatives had asked to see ábrégo García on Monday, but that the request was refused by the Salvadoral government because it was not an official trip.
Ansari added that the delegation had met the United States Embassy in Salvador on Monday morning, and that they did not hear anything who gave it the reason “to believe that the Trump administration does anything to facilitate its return in complete safety”.
“And it is simply unacceptable,” she said, noting that they had just sent a letter to the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, “demanding proof of daily life” by ábrego García, that he has access to the lawyer and that the administration sends him back to the United States.
Ansari said that “is not only a kilmar, this is the fact that our government is tirelessly after immigrants are trying to come to the United States or the United States, without any regard to regular procedure”.
“They were not found guilty of a crime, they should not be imprisoned here,” she said.
