DULLES, Va. — Handcuffed, shackled and unable to see out the plane windows or know where they were headed, Kilmar Abrego García and others were flown to El Salvador. Authorities placed him in a cell with around 25 others at CECOT, the country’s most notorious prison.
Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen shared those details and others after returning from El Salvador Friday, hours after President Donald Trump publicly called him a “a fake” for visiting. The senator spoke alongside the members of the Maryland Legislative Latino Caucus and Abrego García’s family — including his wife, brother and mother — at Washington Dulles International Airport shortly after his flight landed.
“As the federal courts have said, we need to bring Mr. Abrego Garcia home to protect his constitutional rights to due process,” Van Hollen said. “This is a case about upholding the constitutional rights for Mr. Abrego García and every American.”
After arriving in El Salvador on Wednesday, Van Hollen said he initially was denied his requests of the Salvadoran government to meet Abrego García to confirm his well-being. It wasn’t until Van Hollen was about to fly back to the United States that he received word that he was allowed to meet with Abrego García in the hotel where the senator was staying in San Salvador.
“Well, I think the reason they relented, it’s pretty clear they were feeling the pressure,” Van Hollen said. “I think that they decided that it was not a good look to continue to detain Abrego García without anybody having access to him. There’s no other explanation for the fact that they said no.”
Part of that pressure, Van Hollen said, may have been prompted by his mention of a possible violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights during one of two press conferences he held in El Salvador with local media. The covenant, created by the United Nations in 1966, requires governments to allow detainees access to a lawyer or legal counsel.
“It could have been a factor, because they are in blatant violation of that requirement, that international law requirement, not only in this case, but actually in all of these cases,” he said as the caucus behind him clapped in agreement.
During the meeting, which made Abrego García one of very few prisoners to make it out of CECOT, he told the senator he was “traumatized” after spending weeks in the mega-prison, but since has been transferred to a prison in Santa Ana, which Van Hollen said is “pretty far outside” San Salvador.
“He was not afraid of the other prisoners in his immediate cells, but that he was traumatized by being at CECOT,” Van Hollen said. “(He was) fearful of many of the prisoners in other cell blocks who called out to him and taunted him in various ways.”
Over coffee, water and margaritas, which Van Hollen said neither he nor Abrego García drank, the two discussed Abrego García’s time in the country. El Salvador President Nayib Bukele previously mocked them on X for being in “tropical paradise.” Van Hollen said the Salvadoran government staged the “margarita-gate,” noting that two government officials came over and placed two glasses with salt or sugar on the rim in front of them.
“And if you look at the one they put in front of Kilmar, it actually had a little less liquid than the one in front of me, to try to make it look, I assume, like he drank out of it,” Van Hollen said. “If you sip out of one of those glasses, some of whatever it was, salt or sugar would disappear. You would see a gap. There’s no gap. Nobody drank any margaritas or sugar water or whatever it was.”
Although Van Hollen got the answers he was searching for about Abrego García’s health and well-being, the Trump administration has given no indication it will bring him back home.
Van Hollen said he understands the administration has an agreement to pay El Salvador $15 million to detain prisoners.
“I don’t know whether there is an agreement that specifically spells out the terms and conditions here. I am aware that there was some document that memorialized the payments,” Van Hollen said, calling the payments unauthorized because they didn’t go through the congressional appropriations process.
At the White House hours earlier, Trump insisted that Abrego García was a criminal. Reading from a piece of paper, the president said: “He’s an illegal alien, MS-13 gang member, and foreign terrorist.”
The administration is under pressure from the courts to return Abrego García.
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit on Thursday rejected the Trump administration’s effort to stop a lower court’s order that government officials must be questioned about the deportation of Abrego García. The three-judge panel wrote that the government’s position “should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.”
In a call-out to El Salvador, Van Hollen ridiculed the government and President Nayib Bukele for branding the country as a place for mega-prisons where people are being “illegally abducted.” He noted that the country had once focused its branding on technology and Bitcoin but was now gaining a new reputation.
Just as the press conference began, it ended with chants from the caucus: “Sí se puede, sí se puede,” as supporters held bright orange signs reading, “Thank you Senator Van Hollen.”
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