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VAN HOLLEN SAYS WRONGLY DEPORTED MAN DOING ‘OK,’ TRANSFERRED TO
NEW PRISON  
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Shauneen Miranda
April 19, 2025
Maryland Matters
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_ While Abrego Garcia’s individual case was tragic, Van Hollen said
it had even larger implications for the strength of constitutional
rights to due process. “The president, the Trump administration, are
defying, the order from the Supreme Court." _

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), right, meets with Kilmar Abrego
Garcia, the Maryland resident who was erroneously deported to El
Salvador by ICE agents last month, (photo courtesy Sen. Van Hollen).

 

The Maryland context

From Maryland Matters

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said repeatedly during his trip to El
Salvador this week that while he may have been the first member of
Congress to go there to press the case of deported Maryland resident
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, he would not be the last. Sure enough, Rep.
Glenn Ivey (D-4th), whose district includes Abrego Garcia's home of
Beltsville, said he will travel to El Salvador
[[link removed]] next month to
"do a welfare check on my constituent." Ivey also led a dozen House
Democrats who wrote to President Donald Trump on Friday, urging him
to comply
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week's Supreme Court order and "get Mr. Abrego Garcia back to his
family in the Unted Sates as quickly as possible,"

_This story was updated at 6:01 p.m. Eastern._

Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Maryland resident the Trump
administration erroneously deported to his native El Salvador,
appeared to be in good health and had been moved from a notorious
mega-prison to another detention center, as his case tests the limits
of executive power to override due process rights in the United
States, Sen. Chris Van Hollen told reporters Friday.

Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, met Thursday with Abrego Garcia and
briefed reporters on the visit after landing Friday afternoon at
Dulles International Airport outside Washington, D.C.

The meeting with Van Hollen was Abrego Garcia’s first contact
outside of the U.S. and El Salvador immigration and legal systems
since he was deported in March, the senator said.

“His conversation with me was the first communication he’d had
with anybody outside a prison since he was abducted,” Van Hollen
said Friday. 

[U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen speaks at a press conference at Dulles
International Airport on Friday, April 18, 2025. (Image via Van Hollen
YouTube channel livestream)]

U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen speaks at a press conference at Dulles
International Airport on Friday, April 18, 2025. (Image via Van Hollen
YouTube channel livestream).

Accompanied by Abrego Garcia’s wife, mother and brother at Dulles,
Van Hollen said he’d been preparing to catch his plane out of El
Salvador Thursday evening when he got word from the U.S. embassy that
he would be able to meet with Abrego Garcia.

The meeting came at the end of Van Hollen’s second day in the
country
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where he faced difficulties
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an in-person meeting or phone call with the Salvadoran citizen. The
second-term senator traveled to the Central American country this week
to urge the Salvadoran government to release Abrego Garcia and to meet
with him.

Abrego Garcia told Van Hollen he’d been taken to a detention center
in Baltimore, Van Hollen said Friday. From there, he was transported
to Texas and then flown to El Salvador, where he was detained at the
notorious mega-prison Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or
CECOT
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Abrego Garcia was moved on April 9 from CECOT to another El Salvador
detention center, Van Hollen reported. The conditions at the new
prison were better, but Abrego Garcia was still denied access to the
outside world, including communication with his family or lawyers,
which is a violation of international law, Van Hollen said.

The meeting occurred under close supervision from Salvadoran
officials, Van Hollen said, but Abrego Garcia appeared in adequate
health.

“On a very cursory examination, he appeared OK,” Van Hollen said.

Van Hollen on Thursday shared a picture on social media
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meeting with Abrego Garcia, who appeared in civilian clothes.

Constitutional conflict

While he said Abrego Garcia’s individual case was tragic, Van Hollen
said it had even larger implications for the strength of
constitutional rights to due process.

“This should not be an issue for Republicans or Democrats,” he
said. “This is an issue for every American who cares about our
Constitution, who cares about personal liberty, who cares about due
process and who cares about what makes America so different, which is
adherence to all of those things. This is an American issue.”

Noting that the administration has ignored federal courts at every
level — including a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last week that
President Donald Trump’s administration must “facilitate” Abrego
Garcia’s return to the United States — Van Hollen said officials
at the U.S. embassy in El Salvador told him they had not received any
instruction from the administration to seek his release.

“It’s very clear that the president, the Trump administration, are
blatantly, flagrantly disagreeing with, defying, the order from the
Supreme Court,” he said.

White House says ‘he’s NOT coming back’

The Trump administration, which has admitted in court that Abrego
Garcia’s deportation stemmed from an “administrative error,”
continued Friday to be steadfast in refusing to return him.

The Trump administration has criticized Van Hollen’s advocacy for
Abrego Garcia, and the White House targeted the senator on social
media Friday.

“Oh, and by the way, @ChrisVanHollen — he’s NOT coming back,”
a post on X
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official White House account read. The post included an illustration
of a New York Times headline on the meeting, with two sections crossed
out and replaced with administration claims about Abrego Garcia. 

The administration has claimed there are logistical reasons it cannot
repatriate Abrego Garcia, but some — including a Reagan-appointed
federal appeals court judge on Thursday
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have said the executive branch is defying the Supreme Court order.

Payments to El Salvador

Van Hollen said the Trump administration has promised to pay El
Salvador up to $15 million to detain the prisoners, but noted that
Democrats in the U.S. Senate are not “totally powerless” to stop
those payments.

“Appropriations need to go through the Congress, and that $15
million, you can be sure we’re going to be looking for where it is
because that wasn’t authorized in previous appropriations,” he
said.

He said that while Democrats are in the minority in both houses of
Congress, they could block any Senate funding bill that included
payments for detention in El Salvador.

“You can be sure that I won’t support the use of one penny of
taxpayer dollars to keep Abrego Garcia illegally detained in El
Salvador,” he said. 

 

_Shauneen Miranda is a reporter for States Newsroom’s Washington
bureau. An alumna of the University of Maryland, she previously
covered breaking news for Axios._

 

_Maryland Matters is a trusted nonprofit and nonpartisan news site. We
are not the arm of a profit-seeking corporation. Nor do we have a
paywall — we want to keep our work open to as many people as
possible. So we rely on the generosity of individuals and foundations
to fund our work._

_Years ago, healthy competition for news out of Annapolis and across
the state produced robust coverage. But the media landscape has
changed. Newspapers have closed. Suburban bureaus have shut down.
Reporting staffs have shrunk. Coverage of state and local news has all
but disappeared. Maryland Matters seeks to fill the void with original
reporting and commentary._

* due process
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* constitutional rights
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* immigrant rights
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* Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia
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* Chris Van Hollen
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