(16 Apr 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
San Salvador, El Salvador – 16 April 2025
1. Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen during a news briefing
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Chris Van Hollen, U.S. Senator:
"If you listen to President Trump and the Trump administration, you would think that the US courts have found that Mr. Abrego García is part of MS-13, but in fact, they have not found that. In fact, recently, a US federal court judge said that the Trump administration did not have evidence to support the claim that he had ever been part of MS-13."
3. Map showing San Salvador and the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Chris Van Hollen, U.S. Senator:
"I’m asking President Bukele, under his authority as president of El Salvador, to do the right thing and allow Mr. Abrego García to walk out of a prison. A man who’s charged with no crime, convicted of no crime, and who was illegally abducted from the United States."
5. U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen leaving
STORYLINE:
Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen traveled to El Salvador on Wednesday and met with the country’s vice president to push for the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man who was sent there by the Trump administration in March despite an immigration court order preventing his deportation.
Van Hollen, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said at a news conference in San Salvador after the meeting that Vice President Félix Ulloa said his government could not return Abrego Garcia to the United States and declined to allow Van Hollen to visit him in the notorious gang prison where he is being held.
The Trump administration and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said this week that they have no basis to send him back, even as the U.S. Supreme Court has called on the administration to facilitate his return. Trump officials have said that Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran citizen who was living in Maryland, has ties to the MS-13 gang, but his attorneys say the government has provided no evidence of that and Abrego Garcia has disputed that claim.
He has never been charged with any crime related to such activity.
"The Trump administration is lying about Abrego García" said Van Hollen.
Democrats have seized on the case to highlight what they say is President Donald Trump’s disrespect for the courts and as base voters have encouraged them to fight harder against Trump’s policies. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., is also considering a trip to El Salvador, as are some House Democrats.
Garcia sent a joint letter with Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., to the Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., requesting a congressional delegation to travel to El Salvador to investigate Abrego Garcia’s condition. Garcia said if the trip isn’t approved, some Democrats still plan to travel to the Central American nation.
Trump officials slammed the Democratic senator’s trip and renewed their claims that Abrego Garcia was a gang member.
Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, said on Fox News that he is “disgusted that any congressional representative is going to run to El Salvador.”
The fight over Abrego Garcia has also played out in contentious court filings, with repeated refusals from the government to tell a judge what it plans to do, if anything, to repatriate him. The Trump administration has called his deportation a mistake but also has argued, essentially, that its conclusion about Abrego Garcia’s affiliation makes him ineligible for protection from the courts.
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