Sen. Chris Van Hollen confirmed Thursday night that he met with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man who the Trump administration said it mistakenly deported to El Salvador in March.
“I said my main goal of this trip was to meet with Kilmar. Tonight I had that chance. I have called his wife, Jennifer, to pass along his message of love. I look forward to providing a full update upon my return,” Van Hollen wrote in a post on X.
Images of Van Hollen’s meeting with Abrego Garcia were first posted online by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who has rebuffed calls to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S.
Bukele said in a post on X after the meeting that Abrego Garcia will remain in El Salvador’s custody “now that he’s been confirmed healthy.”
During an Oval Office meeting with President Donald Trump on Monday, Bukele argued that he didn’t “have the power to return him to the United States.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi said the same day that the U.S. would provide a plane for Abrego Garcia to travel back to the U.S. should El Salvador allow his release, framing the decision as being solely in Bukele’s hands.
Van Hollen traveled to El Salvador on Wednesday to push for the release of Abrego Garcia after the Trump administration did not demonstrate any efforts to “facilitate” his return, despite a Supreme Court ruling last week requiring just that.
The legal battle continued Thursday, when a federal appeals court rejected an effort by the administration to put that requirement on hold. In a unanimous ruling, a three-judge panel said in its decision that the administration was trying to assert “a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process.”
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Van Hollen, who represents the state where Abrego Garcia lived before he was sent to El Salvador, has called the Trump administration’s resistance to facilitating Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S. an attempt to “cover up” his wrongful deportation.
The Maryland senator has met this week with human rights groups, local embassy staff and top Salvadoran officials, including Vice President Félix Ulloa.
Prior to his meeting with Abrego Garcia, Van Hollen said on Thursday that he was denied entry to the prison in El Salvador where Abrego Garcia is being detained: a terrorism confinement center referred to as CECOT.
Van Hollen said he attempted to enter the facility alongside Chris Newman, the lawyer representing Abrego Garcia’s wife and mother, to “check on the health and wellbeing of Kilmar” but was promptly denied entry.
“We were stopped by soldiers at a checkpoint about 3 kilometers from the CECOT prison,” Van Hollen told reporters. “We were told by the soldiers that they’d been ordered not to allow us to proceed any further than that point.”
During a meeting with El Salvador’s vice president Wednesday, Van Hollen said his requests to speak with Abrego Garcia, in person, virtually or by phone, were denied.
The vice president also denied a request from Van Hollen that day to facilitate a phone call between Abrego Garcia and his wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, who says she has not spoken to him since he was transferred to the Central American facility.
Sura said Thursday night that Van Hollen’s meeting gave her hope.
“My children and my prayers have been answered. The efforts of my family and community in fighting for justice are being heard, because I now know that my husband is alive. God is listening, and the community is standing strong,” she said in a statement.
Several Maryland officials wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Thursday demanding “verifiable proof that Kilmar Abrego Garcia is alive, healthy and safe.”
“It has now been over a month since Mr. Abrego Garcia was illegally deported by federal authorities in direct violation of a court order, and during that time, his family has received no meaningful confirmation of his health,” the officials wrote.
Abrego Garcia first entered the U.S. in 2011 and was later protected from deportation by a 2019 court order barring him from being sent back to El Salvador.
Frank Thorp V and Gary Grumbach contributed.
