April 15 (UPI) — Democratic lawmakers say El Salvador must return a Maryland man wrongly deported by the Trump administration or they will visit the central American nation this week to seek answers.
“I’ve been clear,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said Monday on X. “If President Bukele doesn’t want to meet here in D.C., then I intend to go to El Salvador this week to check on Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s condition and discuss his release.”
Abrego Garcia is currently being held in El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center.
The U.S. Justice Department claimed that Abrego Garcia, who has not been charged with a crime and has held protected immigrant status since 2019, is a member of the MS-13 gang in a claim attorneys say the government failed to provide evidence on.
Abrego Garcia, 29, is married to an American citizen. He arrived illegally at the age of 16 to work but in 2019 was granted residency.
The U.S. government has acknowledged he was deported due to an “administrative error” while the case swiftly went through the American judicial system with the court’s siding with Abrego Garcia.
On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” the father of three’s return home to Maryland but stopped short of ordering it.
Van Hollen, 66, stated Abrego Garcia was “illegally abducted” by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and deported by the administration and called for his immediate return.
On Monday, the Maryland Democrat sent a letter to Salvadoran Ambassador Milena Mayorga to request a meeting with President Nayib Bukele, 43, to discuss the issue while he was in the United States.
“However, they did not detail steps that have been taken to facilitate his return, as mandated by the Supreme Court,” Van Hollen wrote in his letter on the administration’s non-compliance of the high court’s order.
Bukele, in Washington to meet with President Donald Trump, said Monday he would not return Abrego Garcia, claiming he did not have the power.
“How can I return him to the United States?” He told reporters in the Oval Office. “Like if I smuggle him into the United States? Of course I’m not going to do it.”
Van Hollen’s social media post was shared by fellow Democratic lawmakers who voiced interest in joining Van Hollen in El Salvador.
“We need answers now,” wrote Rep. Yassamin Ansari, D-Ariz., joined by Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., who called Abrego Garcia’s deportation a “kidnapping and illegal detention.”
Meanwhile, on Monday White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told reporters that Abrego Garcia “has no lawful right to be here” and the United States “can’t extradite citizens of foreign countries to our country over the objection of those countries.”
“He was issued a final order of removal from this country, and so it’s up to El Salvador and to the government and the people of El Salvador what the fate of their own citizens is,” Miller, 39, claimed.
Von Hollen added after the White House meeting that he believes the Salvadoran leader will “reconsider when he understands the full story” of Abrego Garcia’s “illegal detention.”
“I don’t think (Bukele) wants to essentially be the president who’s kidnapped the United States citizen,” Van Hollen said.
