San Salvador (AP) – Maryland senator, Chris Van Hollen, said he was denied entry into El Salvador prison where Kilmar Abrego Garcia is kept.
Van Hollen, a Democrat, is in El Salvador to put pressure for the release of Abrego Garcia after being sent by the Trump administration In March despite an order from the immigration court preventing his expulsion. He said in a video published on X that his car was arrested when he tried to enter the prison on Thursday to check the well-being of Abrego Garcia.
In this photo provided by the presidential press office of El Salvador, a prison guard transfers deportees from the United States, alleged members of Venezuelan gangs, towards the Tecoleca terrorism confinement center, El Salvador, March 16, 2025. (El Salvador Pressing Pressure Bureau via AP, on March 16, 2025.
“Today’s goal was right to see what his state of health is,” said Van Hollen in the video. He said that his car had been arrested by soldiers about 3 kilometers from the prison, even though they let other cars continue.
“They stopped us because they are under the order not to allow us to proceed,” said Van Hollen.
President Donald Trump and President Salvadoran Nayib Bukele said this week that they have no foundation to send it back, even if the Supreme Court of the United States called for administration to facilitate his return. Trump officials said that Garcia, a Salvadoral citizen who lived in Maryland, has links with the MS-13 gang, but his lawyers say that the government has provided no evidence of this and that Garcia has never been accused of a crime linked to such an activity.
Van Hollen told journalists on Wednesday that he had met Vice-President Salvadoran Félix Ulloa who said his government could not return Abrego Garcia to the United States.
“Why does the government of El Salvador continue to imprison a man where they have no evidence that he has committed a crime and that they have received no evidence from the United States that he has committed a crime?” Van Hollen said after the meeting. “They should let him go.”
Van Hollen’s journey has become a flash point in the United States, the Trump administration criticized it strongly, while the Democrats have rallied around Abrego Garcia.
“We have an unfair situation here,” said Van Hollen, a member of the Senate Committee for Foreign Relations at the press conference. “The Trump administration on Abrego Garcia. US courts have examined the facts.”
Trump officials reiterated on Wednesday that it would not have returned to the United States. The press secretary of the White House, Karoline Leavitt, held a press briefing with the mother of a woman from Maryland, Rachel Morin, who was killed by a fugitive from El Salvador in 2023.
“It is appalling and sad that Senator Van Hollen and the Democrats applaud his trip to El Salvador today are unable to have a shirt in common sense or empathy for their own voters and our citizens,” Leavitt said during the briefing.
AP Audio: Maryland senator, Van Hollen, meets the vice-president of El Salvador in Push for the Liberation of Abrego Garcia
The AP correspondent, Ben Thomas, reports that El Salvador rejects the efforts of an American senator to release or even see a man wrongly expelled from the United States
The Republicans focused on the victims of the crime committed by people in the United States illegally by arguing for the repression of the promised immigration of Trump and mass deportations.
Democrats, on the other hand, seized the case to emphasize what they say to be Trump’s disrespect for the courts and, as basic voters, encouraged them to combat Trump’s policies. Sen. New Jersey Cory BookerDN.J., also plans a trip to Salvador, just like some Democrats in the Chamber.
While Van Hollen was denied entry, several republicans of the house visited the 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. He did not mention Abrego Garcia, but said that the establishment “houses the most brutal criminals in the country”.
Jennifer Vasquez Sura, Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s wife Maryland, who was wrongly expelled from El Salvador, speaks during a press conference at Casa’s Multicultural Center in Hyattsville, Md., April 4, 2025. (AP photo / Jose Luis Magana, file)
“I now go even more determined to support President Trump’s efforts to secure our homeland,” wrote Moore social networks.
The Missouri republican representative, Jason Smith, president of the House and Means committee, also visited the prison. He posted on X that “thanks to President Trump”, the establishment “now includes illegal immigrants who have burst into our country and have committed violent acts against the Americans”.
The fight against Abrego Garcia has also played in disputed courts, with repeated refusal of the government to tell a judge what he plans to do, if necessary, to repatriate him. The Trump administration described its expulsion an error, but also argued, essentially, that its conclusion on the affiliation of Abrego Garcia makes it ineligible for the protection against the courts.
Since March, El Salvador has accepted from the United States more than 200 Venezuelan immigrants – that Trump administration officials accused of gang activity and violent crimes – and placed them inside the country Maximum security gang prison Just outside San Salvador. This prison is part of the wider bukele effort to suppress On the powerful street gangs of the countryWho put 84,000 people behind bars and made Bukele extremely popular at home.
Human rights groups have previously accused The Bukele government has submitted those imprisoned to “the systematic use of torture and other ill -treatment”. Officials deny reprehensible acts.
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Jalonick reported to Washington.
