El Salvador blocks US senator from visiting wrongly deported Salvadoran man

Van Hollen says no evidence presented to show Abrego Garcia was gang member

US Senator Chris Van Hollen speaks to the media during a visit to El Salvador to advocate for the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man deported without due process by the administration of US President Donald Trump as an alleged MS-13 gang member and sent to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), in San Salvador, El Salvador, April 16, 2025. REUTERS

Democratic US Senator Chris Van Hollen said on Wednesday authorities in El Salvador had denied him access to Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran man mistakenly deported and being held in a notorious prison in the country.

Van Hollen arrived in El Salvador on Wednesday to meet with senior officials and advocate for Abrego Garcia's release, but was told by El Salvador's Vice President Felix Ulloa 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 El Salvador was not releasing Abrego Garcia because the United States was paying to keep him incarcerated.

"Why should the government of the United States pay the government of El Salvador to lock up a man who was illegally abducted from the United States and committed no crime?" said Van Hollen, a senator from Maryland, where Abrego Garcia lived.

The government of El Salvador did not respond to a request for comment on Van Hollen's visit.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the Democratic senator was potentially using taxpayer dollars to "demand the release of [a] deported illegal alien MS-13 terrorist."

"It's appalling and sad that Senator Van Hollen and the Democrats applauding his trip to El Salvador today are incapable of having any shred of common sense or empathy for their own constituents and our citizens," she told reporters.

The US Supreme Court has directed the Trump administration to facilitate Abrego Garcia's return, after Washington acknowledged he was deported due to an administrative error.

In a meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House on Monday, El Salvador's president, Nayib Bukele, said he had no plans to return Abrego Garcia. The US Department of Homeland Security has separately said it does not have the authority to bring the man back to the United States.

Abrego Garcia, 29, left El Salvador at age 16 to escape gang-related violence, his lawyers said. He was granted a protective order in 2019 to continue living in the US and has never been charged with or convicted of any crime.

His lawyers have also denied the Justice Department's allegation he is a member of the criminal gang MS-13.

Along with Abrego Garcia, the Trump administration has deported hundreds of people, mostly Venezuelans, whom it says are gang members, to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 without presenting evidence and without a trial.

Neither government has released the names of the men incarcerated, and the men have not had access to lawyers or any contact with the outside world since arriving at the prison, lawyers have said.