A Democratic senator visited El Salvador in hopes of meeting a deported illegal migrant placed into the country’s mega-prison, but the government denied him entry into the facility.
Maryland Democrat Sen. Chris Van Hollen landed in the country’s capital city of San Salvador Wednesday and met with Vice President Félix Ulloa, according to a press conference the lawmaker gave afterwards. Van Hollen was there to highlight the plight of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national illegally living in the U.S. before he was deported back to his home country in March.
Abrego Garcia is currently being held in the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), a mega-prison facility built by President Nayib Bukele’s administration and intended to house the country’s rampant gang population.
“I asked the vice-president if I could meet with Mr. Abrego Garcia,” Van Hollen stated during the press conference. “And he said, ‘well, you need to make earlier provisions to go visit CECOT.’”
“I said, I’m not interested at this moment in taking a tour of CECOT, I just want to meet with Mr Abrego Garcia,” he continued. “He said he was not able to make that happen.”
After unlawfully crossing into the U.S. in 2011, Abrego Garcia eventually settled in Maryland and married a U.S. citizen. In 2019, he was arrested by the Prince George’s County Police Department and credibly accused by an informant of having MS-13 gang member ties. An immigration judge handed him a deportation order, but he was later successful in obtaining a withholding of removal — which barred his deportation to El Salvador and allowed him to work in the U.S.
Abrego Garcia remained in the U.S. until immigration agents arrested him on March 15. Later that month, he informed his wife that he would be transferred to CECOT.
While the Trump White House has acknowledged that his deportation was the result of an administrative error — the withholding of removal order prohibited his repatriation back to El Salvador — the administration has maintained that he is an unlawful migrant and MS-13 member who is not welcome back into the U.S. Bukele on Monday confirmed he would not be sending Abrego Garcia to the U.S.
Van Hollen has repeatedly referred to Abrego Garcia’s arrest as an “abduction” and has called his deportation to El Salvador illegal. The senator’s staff told the Daily Caller News Foundation that he misspoke Tuesday when referring to Abrego Garcia as a U.S. citizen.
During his Wednesday press conference in El Salvador, Van Hollen appeared to suggest that Abrego Garcia was living legally in the U.S. at the time of this arrest.
“In fact, Mr. Abrego Garcia is legally in the United States,” the senator said to reporters. “In fact, an immigration judge found, years ago, that it would put his life in danger if he was returned to El Salvador, and so he was given protected status and a work permit.”
While withholding of removal does provide conditional protection from repatriation to a migrant’s home country and can provide work benefits, multiple immigration experts who spoke with the DCNF said it does not give legal status.
“By definition, [Abrego Garcia] is an alien under a final order of removal, whose removal has been withheld to a specific country — allegedly El Salvador but possibly Guatemala,” said Art Arthur, a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies. “He is not a ‘legal immigrant.’”
Matt O’Brien — investigations director at the Immigration Reform Law Institute and a former immigration judge — said that a withholding of removal simply means the U.S. cannot deport a foreign national back to the country listed on their withholding order, unless conditions in the country change, the country gives the U.S. assurances they would be protected or they become barred from withholding. Withholding is still a final, non-appealable order of removal, O’Brien noted.
While Van Hollen has met with Abrego Garcia’s wife, mother and brother, another one of the senator’s constituents said he never reached out after her daughter was killed by an illegal migrant.
Patty Morin, the mother of Rachel Morin, confirmed in an interview that Van Hollen has never contacted her or any member of the Morin family since her daughter was brutally murdered by an illegal migrant from El Salvador. Rachel’s killer, Victor Antonio Martinez-Hernandez, was found guilty of her rape and murder on Tuesday.
“[Van Hollen] did not call our family, he did not give condolences,” Morin said Tuesday night on Fox News. “There was no action [by the] Democratic Party in any way.”
“In Maryland, none of the Senators did anything to help search for the murderer of my daughter,” Patty said.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this headline indicated that Sen. Van Hollen’s trip had ended on Wednesday. We regret the error.
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