El Salvador blocks US senator from visiting wrongly deported Salvadoran man

WASHINGTON - Democratic US Senator Chris Van Hollen said on April 16 that the authorities in El Salvador had denied him access to Mr Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran man mistakenly deported and being held in a notorious prison in the country.

Mr Van Hollen arrived in the Central American nation on the morning of April 16, saying he would seek to meet senior Salvadoran officials to secure Mr Abrego Garcia’s release.

But Mr Van Hollen told reporters that El Salvador’s Vice-President Felix Ulloa had told the senator he could not authorise a visit or a call with Mr Abrego Garcia.

Mr Van Hollen, who is a member of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Mr Ulloa had also told him El Salvador was not releasing Mr Abrego Garcia because the US was paying to keep him incarcerated.

“Why should the government of the United States pay the government of El Salvador to lock up a man who was illegally abducted from the United States and committed no crime?” Mr Van Hollen said.

The government of El Salvador did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Mr Van Hollen’s visit.

After Washington acknowledged Mr Abrego Garcia had been

deported due to an “administrative error”,

the US Supreme Court upheld an order by Judge Paula Xinis directing the government to “facilitate” Mr Abrego Garcia’s return.

In a meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House on April 14, El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele said he had no plans to return Mr Abrego Garcia.

Earlier on April 14, the US Department of Homeland Security had said in a court filing that it “does not have the authority to forcibly” bring Mr Abrego Garcia back.

On April 15, Judge Xinis said she would not immediately hold the government in contempt of court, but said there was no evidence the Trump administration had tried to retrieve Mr Abrego Garcia and said she would not tolerate “gamesmanship or grandstanding”.

Along with Mr Abrego Garcia, the Trump administration has

deported hundreds of people, mostly Venezuelans,

whom it says are gang members, to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 without presenting evidence and without a trial.

Neither government has released the names of the men incarcerated, and the men have not had access to lawyers or any contact with the outside world since arriving at the prison, lawyers have said.

In March, after a judge said flights carrying migrants prosecuted under the Alien Enemies Act should return to the US, Mr Bukele wrote on social media platform X that it was too late, alongside images showing men being rushed off a plane in the dark.

A federal judge on April 16 said officials in Mr Trump’s administration could face criminal prosecution for contempt of court for violating his order in March halting deportations of Venezuelan migrants under

the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime law.

Mr Abrego Garcia, 29, left El Salvador at age 16 to escape gang-related violence, his lawyers have said. He was granted a protective order in 2019 to continue living in the US.

He has never been charged with or convicted of any crime, according to Mr Abrego Garcia’s lawyers, who have denied the Justice Department’s allegation that he is a member of the criminal gang MS-13.

During his San Salvador press conference, Mr Van Hollen stressed that neither the Salvadoran government nor the Trump administration have presented any evidence that Mr Abrego Garcia was a member of the gang.

US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth was to meet El Salvador’s Minister of National Defence Rene Merino at the Pentagon on April 16. REUTERS