Senator: El Salvador Won’t Let Maryland Man Go Because US Paying To Hold Him
Van Hollen meets with Salvadoran vice president in mission to free Abrego Garcia
The government of El Salvador has no evidence that a Maryland man illegally imprisoned there has committed any crime, but Salvadoran officials won’t release him because the US government is paying to keep him there.
That’s what Democratic Sen Chris Van Hollen said he was told by the Salvadoran Vice President Félix Ulloa in a meeting during Van Hollen’s visit to El Salvador to try to secure the release of his constituent, Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
Van Hollen also revealed during a press briefing in El Salvador that he asked to meet with Abrego Garcia to check on him and his condition, but Ulloa refused.
A citizen of El Salvador, Abrego Garcia was in the United States legally when he was snatched by federal agents near his home in the Washington DC suburbs and sent without a hearing to an indefinite detention at CECOT, El Salvador’s notorious prison which has been called a “black hole of human rights.”
The Trump administration is taking no action to bring Abrego Garcia back to the United States despite an order to do so by the US Supreme Court.
With no other action taken by the US government, Van Hollen took it upon himself to travel this week to the capital of El Salvador, San Salvador, where he had hoped to meet with that nation’s leader, President Nayib Bukele.
Bukele, who met days ago with Trump at the White House, is out of the country, Van Hollen said.
“I want to emphasize that President Trump, and our attorney general, Pam Bondi, and the vice president of the United States are lying when they say that Abrego Garcia with a crime or is part of [the gang] MS-13,” he said.
Ulloa admitted that Salvadoran authorities have no evidence against Abrego Garcia, who is married to a US citizen and has several children with her.
“So I asked the vice president: If Abrego Garcia has not committed a crime, and US courts have found he was illegally taken from the United States, and the government of El Salvador has no evidence that he was part of MS-13, why is El Salvador continuing to hold him in CECOT?” Van Hollen said. “And the answer was that the Trump administration is paying the government of El Salvador to keep him at CECOT.”
Van Hollen said that he also met with staff at the US embassy in San Salvador, and — despite the order from the US Supreme Court — “they’ve received no direction from the Trump administration to facilitate his release.”
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