4 Democrats blocked from visiting Kilmar Abrego Garcia in El Salvador – National
A cohort of U.S Democrats who travelled to El Salvador to negotiate the release of Kilmar Abrego Gracia, a man wrongly deported to the country by the Trump administration, was denied a visit by the Salvadorian government on Monday.
The trip to El Salvador made by House Democrats Yassamin Ansari, Maxine Dexter, Maxwell Frost, and Robert Garcia follows a high-profile visit from Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, Abrego Garcia’s home state, where Van Hollen was able to sit down with his constituent for one hour in a hotel after multiple attempts to meet with him were rejected.
Photos released by Van Hollen’s office offer the only evidence of Abrego Garcia’s well-being since he arrived in El Salvador over a month ago.
In this handout provided by Sen. Van Hollen’s Office, U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) meets with Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia (L) at an undisclosed location on April 17, 2025, in San Salvador, El Salvador.
Sen. Van Hollen’s Office / Getty Images
Frost, the U.S. representative for Florida’s 10th congressional district, told reporters on Monday that he and his colleagues were denied a similar visit, despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s orders to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return.
He added that he and his colleagues have “zero indication” that the Trump administration will “facilitate or wants to facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s court-ordered release.
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“This isn’t just about him,” Frost said. “The Constitution applies to all people in our country. Due process applies to all people in our country.”
Frost also says he and his colleagues in El Salvador are receiving “hundreds and hundreds of calls” from their respective constituencies, which are home to significant immigrant populations, asking them to “do something.”
Democratic US Congressman Maxwell Frost speaks during a press conference on the liberation of Salvadoran Kilmar Abrego Garcia in San Salvador on April 21, 2025.
MARVIN RECINOS/AFP via Getty Images
Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old father of three, was sent back to his home country as a result of an “administrative error,” which the U.S. government admitted to shortly after he was detained.
Nonetheless, it maintains its argument that he has ties to the MS-13 gang, which it says is grounds for his deportation. Both Abrego Garcia — who has not been charged with any crimes — and his lawyers say he has never been involved in gang activity.
The young father, whose wife and three disabled children remain in Maryland, fled to the U.S. illegally in 2011 when he was 16 to escape persecution from a local gang that was extorting his family.
After being arrested and detained in 2019 over claims he had ties to a gang in New York, where he has never lived, he was denied asylum but granted legal status in the U.S. A judge also protected him from deportation over concerns that returning to El Salvador posed a serious threat to his life.
In March, the Trump administration ignored the 2019 ruling and deported him.
Abrego Garcia was originally sent to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), a notoriously brutal Salvadorian prison, but was moved earlier this month.
Van Hollen, a member of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said at a news conference in San Salvador after the meeting that Salvadoran vice-president Félix Ulloa told him El Salvador was not releasing Abrego Garcia because the U.S. government was paying to keep him incarcerated, and would not provide evidence of criminal wrongdoing or that Abrego Garcia is a gang member.
Abrego Garcia was on one of multiple flights sent to El Salvador on March 15 by the Trump administration carrying alleged Venezuelan gang members.
On Wednesday, District Judge James Bausberg found probable cause that the Trump administration acted in contempt of court when it defied his order to turn around two of the planes.
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