Senator Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., Is in El Salvador to obtain answers about the unfair deportation of a Maryland migrant by the Trump administration, he said in a video before boarding a flight on Wednesday.
Van Hollen said that he had been planning the trip during the last days and that he hopes to meet Kilmar Abrego García in person and see his condition.
Abrego García, who, according to the reports, fled the political persecution of El Salvador and was deported last month by immigration and customs control of the United States after an “administrative error”, remains in the prison of CECOT despite the judicial orders requesting the United States government to “facilitate” back to the United States.
Sen. Chris van Hollen Speaks During a Press Conference in Antigua Cuscatlan, El Salvador, April 16, 2025.
Marvin Recinos/AFP via getty images
“The objective of this mission is to let the Trump administration know the Government of El Salvador that we will continue fighting to bring Abrego García home,” said Van Hollen in a video.
He published another video After landing and said he was going to meet with members of the United States Embassy in San Salvador.
Van Hollen told the journalists later in the afternoon that he could not talk to the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, but that he spoke with the vice president. The senator asked why Abrego García was held in Cecot despite not criminal charges.
“His answer was that the Trump administration is paying El Salvador, the Government of El Salvador, to keep it in Cecot,” said Van Hollen.
“I am asking President Bukele under his authority as president of El Salvador to do the right thing and allow Mr. Abrego García to leave a prison, a man accused of non -crimes, convicted without crimes and was illegally kidnapped from the United States,” said the senator.
Sen. Chris van Hollen Speaks During a Press Conference in Antigua Cuscatlan, El Salvador, April 16, 2025.
Marvin Recinos/AFP via getty images
He added that he did not talk to Abrego García or entered Cecot. The members of the Republican Congress have toured the facilities in recent weeks and have published photos from the inside on social networks.
“I don’t know about his state of health, so I wanted to meet him directly,” said Von Hollen.
The White House Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, held a press conference later in the day and criticized the senator for “potentially using taxpayers’ dollars” to fly to El Salvador in an attempt to bring Abrego García to the United States and repeated his accusations that the migrant was a MS-13 terrorist.
“It is frightening and sad that Senator Van Hollen and the Democrats are planning his trip to El Salvador today, they are unable to have some pinch of common sense or empathy for his own voters and our citizens,” he told journalists.
Attorney General Pam Bondi claimed that Abrego García is a member of the MS-13 gang and could be deported due to the executive orders of President Donald Trump on immigration. He added Wednesday morning during a press conference that Abrego García will not return to the United States.
“It shouldn’t be in our country,” Bondi said. “He was deported. They needed an additional step in paperwork, but now MS-13 is characterized as they should be like an FTO, as a foreign terrorist organization. Therefore, it will not return to our country.
“President Bukele said he wasn’t sending him back,” he added. “That is the end of the story.”
The Department of Justice has not made that accusation in judicial documents and admitted that deportation was a mistake, and Bondi refused to answer a journalist’s question about why the Department of Justice has not presented direct evidence of this. Abrego García’s family and lawyers have been fighting deportation for weeks in court.
Jennifer Vasquez Sura, wife of Kilmar Abrego García, speaks during a press conference on the day of a hearing in the case related to Kilmar Abrego García outside the United States District Court in Greenbelt, Maryland, April 15, 2025.
Katopodis/getty images
Van Hollen reiterated that any of these accusations was not made in the Court and that charges related to accusations have been issued.
Leavitt said Abrego García wore clothes that had MS-13 symbols, but such accusations were not made in court and there has been no evidence to support this statement. A photo of arrest published by the federal government earlier in the day showed Abrego García using what seemed to be a bright yellow construction shirt.
The press secretary invited Patty Morin, Rachel Morin’s mother, a mother of five children of Maryland who was killed by an immigrant who lacked legal status in 2023, to speak at the press conference. Victor Antonio Martinez-Hernández, 24, originally from El Salvador and accused of killing a woman in her country of origin, was convicted of first degree murder, rape in first degree, sexual crime in third degree and kidnapping on Monday.
“Having a Maryland senator who did not even recognize or barely recognized my daughter and the brutal death she endured, leaving her five children without a mother and now a grandfather without a grandmother so she can use my taxpayers’ money to fly to El Salvador to bring back someone that not a US citizen, why does that person have more than me for my daughter, for my grandparents?” She said.
The senator issued a statement after Martínez-Hernadz’s conviction saying: “This verdict brings a measure of justice that they deserve. I am grateful to the agents of the law that put their murderer in custody and for our legal process to deliver this justice.”
The Supreme Court unanimously ruled last week that Abrego García, 29, who had no criminal record in the United States, was illegally deported. However, Bondi has affirmed that the Government of El Salvador is not renouncing it.
The senator said “he would continue to press” to ensure the release of Abrego García.
Alexander Mallin of ABC News contributed to this report.
