The American Senator Democrat Chris Van Hollen said on Wednesday that the Salvador authorities refused him access to Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadora expelled and detained in a notorious prison in the country.
Van Hollen arrived in the nation of Central America on Wednesday morning saying that he would seek to meet senior Salvado officials to obtain the release of Abrego Garcia.
But Van Hollen told journalists that the vice-president of Salvador, Felix Ulloa, told Senator that he could not authorize a visit or a call with Abrego Garcia.
Van Hollen, who is a member of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Ulloa also told him that El Salvador did not publish Abrego Garcia because the United States paid to keep him imprisoned.
“Why should the United States government pay for the government of El Salvador to enclose a man who was illegally removed from the United States and did not commit any crime?” Van Hollen said.
The Salvador government did not immediately respond to a request for comments on Van Hollen’s visit.
“Administrative error” in the United States
After Washington acknowledged that Greo Garcia had been expelled due to an “administrative error”, the United States Supreme Court confirmed an order of judge Paula Xinis ordering the government to “facilitate” the return of Abrego Garcia.
At a meeting with American president Donald Trump at the White House on Monday, the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, said that he did not intend to return Abrego Garcia. Earlier on Monday, the US Ministry of Internal Security declared in a legal file that it “did not have the power to bring Abrego Garcia back.
Xinis said on Tuesday that she would not immediately keep the government in court, but said there was no evidence that the Trump administration had tried to recover Abrego Garcia and said that it would not tolerate “the game or the size”.
With Abrego Garcia, the Trump administration expelled hundreds of people, mainly Venezuelans, who, according to them, are gang members, in Salvador under the law on extraterrestrial enemies of 1798 without presenting evidence and without trials.
Neither government has released the names of incarcerated men, and men have not had access to lawyers or any contact with the outside world since arriving in prison, lawyers said.
In March, after a judge said that the flights carrying migrants continued under the law on extraterrestrial enemies should return to the United States, Bukele wrote on X that it was too late, alongside images showing that men rushed from an airplane in the dark.
Possible outlet accusation for US officials: judge
A federal judge said on Wednesday that Trump administration leaders could face criminal proceedings for the court to have violated his order last month, interrupting the deportations of Venezuelan migrants under the law on extraterrestrial enemies, a law in wartime.
Abrego Garcia, 29, left El Salvador at the age of 16 to escape violence related to gangs, said his lawyers. He obtained a protection order in 2019 to continue living in the United States. He has never been accused or found guilty of crime, according to lawyers for Abrego Garcia, who denied the allegation of the United States Ministry of Justice that he is a member of the MS-13 Criminal Gang.
During his press conference, Van Hollen stressed that neither the Salvadoral government nor the Trump administration had presented any evidence that Grego Garcia was a member of the gang.
The US Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, was to meet on Wednesday with the Minister of National Defense of El Salvador, René Merino, in Pentagon.
