Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., revealed new details about his meeting this week with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, including that he had been traumatized by his imprisonment in El Salvador.
Van Hollen met with Abrego Garcia — a Mland man who the Trump administration says was mistakenly deported last month — on Thursday after his previous efforts to meet with him were denied by Salvadoran officials.
The Mland senator held a news conference at Washington Dulles International Airport on Friday upon his return from El Salvador, where he told reporters that he met with Abrego Garcia for more than 30 minutes and informed him of the national attention on his case, which the senator said Abrego Garcia was unaware of.
“His conversation with me was the first communication he’d had with anybody outside of prison since he was abducted,” Van Hollen said. “He said he felt very sad about being in a prison because he had not committed any crimes.”
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Van Hollen told reporters that Abrego Garcia has “experienced trauma,” and framed his deportation as an “illegal abduction.”
Van Hollen said Abrego Garcia told him he was “OK” and had been able to see a doctor for a “blood pressure condition.”
The senator said Abrego Garcia told him he was no longer being housed at CECOT, a terrorism confinement center, and had been transferred more than week ago to another detention center in Santa Ana, El Salvador, “where the conditions are better.”
“But he said despite the better conditions, he still has no access to any news from the outside world and no ability to communicate with anybody in the outside world,” Van Hollen said.
Abrego Garcia told Van Hollen that thinking of members of his family “gave him the strength to persevere,” the senator said, adding that the Mland man spoke several times about his 5-year-old son, who has autism and was in the car with him when he was detained, the senator said.
Van Hollen was joined at his news conference by Abrego Garcia’s wife, mother and brother, who he said had been “desperate to learn” if Abrego Garcia was still alive.
Images of Van Hollen’s meeting with Abrego Garcia on Thursday were first shared by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who appeared to downplay concerns about Abrego Garcia’s confinement in a social media post asserting he was “sipping margaritas with Sen. Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador!”
Van Hollen on Friday denied that any alcoholic beverages were consumed during the meeting, and suggested Bukele’s post was an attempt to “set up” Abrego Garcia and him.
The senator said Bukele’s aides brought two glasses that “looked like margaritas” to the table where he and Abrego Garcia were meeting, and insisted on having the encounter filmed on video cameras.
“They actually wanted to have the meeting by the side of the pool,” Van Hollen said. “I mean, this is a guy who’s been in secret. This is a guy who’s been detained. They want to create this appearance that life was just lovely for Kilmar, which of course is a big lie.”
Representatives for the El Salvador Embassy in Washington, D.C., did not immediately return a request for comment on Friday evening.
Van Hollen told reporters he believes Bukele’s decision to allow him to meet with Abrego Garcia after previously denying his requests was due to public pressure.
“They were feeling the pressure because while I was in El Salvador, we had two major press conferences that included the local press who reported on this,” Van Hollen said.
Bukele said Thursday after Van Hollen’s meeting that Abrego Garcia will remain in El Salvador’s custody “now that he’s been confirmed healthy.”
Van Hollen’s support for Abrego Garcia has drawn the ire of the White House, which has framed the senator’s advocacy as being at direct odds with President Donald Trump’s plans to swiftly remove those whom he characterizes as violent undocumented immigrants from the country.
In a Truth Social post Friday morning, Trump said Van Hollen “looked like a fool yesterday standing in El Salvador,” calling him a “grandstander.”
The White House maintained in a social media post Friday that Abrego Garcia would not be allowed to re-enter the country. White House press secret Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday that should Abrego Garcia manage to return to the United States, he will immediately be deported.
The Trump administration has asserted that Abrego Garcia is a member of MS-13, despite the Salvadoran native having no criminal record in the United States or El Salvador.
Attorney General Pam Bondi on Wednesday shared records that she said back the government’s position, including a document from 2019 in which Mland law enforcement officers characterize Abrego Garcia as a member of the gang due to his wardrobe and proximity to other accused gang members.
According to the documents shared by Bondi on Thursday, Abrego Garcia illegally entered the United States near McAllen, Texas “on or about March 25, 2012.”
Abrego Garcia was provided protection from deportation to El Salvador following his 2019 detention, after an immigration judge determined he had demonstrated a “well-founded fear of future persecution” from local gangs.
The court granted Abrego Garcia a withholding of removal, which barred him from being sent back to the country where he would face persecution, as long as he checked in with authorities annually, which Abrego Garcia attested to doing in court filings.
Van Hollen has maintained that the central issue in the case is not the administration’s assertion that Abrego Garcia is a member of MS-13, but rather it’s decision to deport the immigrant, who was lawfully in the country at the time of his removal, without a hearing.
“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 on Friday. “It’s also important that people understand this case is not just about one man. It’s about protecting the constitutional rights of everybody who resides in the United States.”
“If you deny the constitutional rights of one man, you threaten the constitutional rights and due process for everyone else in America,” he added.
The Mland senator has called Trump’s resistance to facilitating Abrego Garcia’s return, despite a Supreme Court order directing the government to do so, an attempt to “cover up” the mistaken deportation.
Van Hollen has been among the most outspoken congressional advocates for Abrego Garcia and was the first, and only, member of Congress to meet with him following his deportation.
While Van Hollen has hinted at more trips to El Salvador by congressional Democrats, the party has been divided about how best to respond to Abrego Garcia’s case. Some high-profile Democrats have opted to keep the focus on the economic backlash to Trump’s sweeping tariffs, which polling suggests is much more of a political liability to the president than his ongoing efforts to deport immigrants.
