Tuesday, 13 May 2025

Democrat Senator Denied By El Salvador Authorities From Visiting Alleged MS-13 Member Deported From United States

100 Percent Fed Up
Hits: 18

El Salvador denied a request from Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) to see or speak with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the alleged MS-13 member deported from the United States.

“I just landed in San Salvador a little while ago, and I look forward to meeting with the team at the U.S. embassy to discuss the release of Mr. Abrego Garcia. I also hope to meet with Salvadoran officials and with Kilmar himself. He was illegally abducted and needs to come home,” Van Hollen wrote Wednesday.

WATCH:

CBS News reports:

Abrego Garcia’s case has sparked a series of court proceedings, during which a federal judge ordered the government to return him to the U.S. from the El Salvador supermax prison, CECOT.

The Trump administration raised the case to the Supreme Court, which also ordered the administration to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return.

Van Hollen traveled to El Salvador to check on Abrego Garcia’s well-being and to meet with Salvadoran government leaders after promising Abrego Garcia’s family that he would try to aid in his release.

Sen. Van Hollen said he hoped to meet with El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele. Instead, he met with Vice President Félix Ulloa on Wednesday. During that meeting, Van Hollen said that Ulloa indicated he would need a little more time to arrange an in-person prison meeting between Abrego Garcia and the senator.

WATCH:

Full text:

Maryland Senator @ChrisVanHollen says his request made to the VP of El Salvador to visit Kilmar Abrego Garcia was denied.

The senator said he was told by the Vice President “you need to make earlier provisions to visit CECOT.”

Van Hollen says he wasn’t able to meet with Abrego Garcia or have a phone conversation with him.

The Vice President told him if the American Embassy were to ask “maybe that could happen.” —Van Hollen says he will make the request to the embassy.

The senator is now calling on @nayibbukele to let Abrego Garcia “walk out” of the prison and come back to the U.S. saying he was abducted.

The Trump administration maintains that Abrego Garcia is a member of MS-13. President Bukele says he is not going to release Abrego Garcia to smuggle him into the U.S.

“A sitting Maryland Senator spent taxpayer dollars on a trip to a foreign nation over an illegal alien who was rightfully deported. But he didn’t say a word about women in his own state murdered by illegals. Shameful—Democrats care more about illegals than American citizens,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) commented.

From The Guardian:

Van Hollen said he offered to come back next week to meet with Ábrego García, but Ulloa “said he couldn’t promise that either”. The vice-president also said he could not arrange for Ábrego García’s family to speak to him by phone. When the senator asked if he could do so, Ulloa told him that the US embassy must make that request, Van Hollen said.

“We have an unjust situation here. The Trump administration is lying about Ábrego García,” said Van Hollen, who said his constituent had been wrongly named as a member of the MS-13 criminal gang. The Trump administration has admitted that an “administrative error” led to the deportation of Ábrego García to his native country, despite an immigration judge granting him protected status in 2019.

Van Hollen said that he had asked Ulloa if he would consider releasing Ábrego García, to which the vice-president replied by reiterating Bukele’s comments from earlier this week that he would not “smuggle” the deportee back into the United States.

The senator’s visit came as Democrats have seized on the deportation and the Trump administration’s refusal to take any steps to return him, in apparent defiance of the supreme court, to argue that the president is plunging the United States into a constitutional crisis by defying the courts.

The White House has attacked Van Hollen for his visit to the country, releasing a statement on Wednesday that touted the arrests of suspected undocumented immigrant criminals and saying: “Where was his concern for Maryland constituents put at risk by the many other illegal immigrants allowed to roam free until now?”

In an appearance on Fox News, Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, said: “Rather than taking care of the constituents in his state, the victims of illegal crime in his state, he’s going to run to El Salvador to protect an MS-13 terrorist. It’s just disgusting.”


Source link

Search