Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen on Friday discussed his talk with Kilmar Abrego Garcia after his El Salvador visit.<\/b>
\nDemocratic Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen’s visit to El Salvador has renewed interest in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a resident of the state who was mistakenly deported to the country.
The senator traveled to El Salvador this week to press for Abrego Garcia’s release and personally met with him in a hotel restaurant in San Salvador.
During a press conference at Dulles International Airport upon his return on Friday, Van Hollen criticized the deportation and outlined conditions Garcia faced.
\u00ab\u00a0This is about safeguarding the constitutional rights of everyone living in the United States\u00a0\u00bb, he said.
Abrego Garcia was arrested in 2019 and accused of being a member of the MS-13 gang, which the Trump administration has designated a foreign terrorist organization.
Abrego Garcia denied being a member of the gang but two judges, in separate rulings, concluded that he was an MS-13 member, based on confidential information provided to the court. Nonetheless he was shielded from deportation to his homeland because he said that he would be targeted by MS-13’s gangland rivals.
Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador after being arrested last month in what Trump Administration lawyers said was an \u00ab\u00a0administrative error\u00a0\u00bb.
His family denies any ties to gangs and Abrego Garcia has no criminal record in the United States, although his wife previously accused him of domestic violence and obtained a restraining order against him. She says they have since reconciled.
Van Hollen is the senior senator from Maryland, serving since 2017. The Democrat has had a focus on human rights and immigration issues and has emerged as a critic of enforcement abuses.
Van Hollen previously served in the House of Representatives and sits on Senate committees that oversee foreign affairs and homeland security.
His visit to El Salvador this week was part of an effort to address what he called an \u00ab\u00a0illegal scheme\u00a0\u00bb in which he say the president of El Salvador is complicit.
Van Hollen said that Abrego Garcia recounted being unable to contact anyone during his initial detention. He was arrested in Baltimore, says he was denied a phone call and transferred to Texas, then deported on a flight with blacked-out windows with other individuals. They did not know their destination.
It is unclear if or when the Trump Administration will agree on any terms to return Abrego Garcia to the United States.<\/p>\n