Senator Chris Van Hollen said on Thursday night that he had met in San Salvador with Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man whose wrongful deportation to El Salvador last month has become a flashpoint in the immigration debate and fueled a standoff between the Trump administration and the courts.
Mr. Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat and a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, shared a photo of the two men speaking on Thursday evening, hours after the senator had been denied entry to the prison where Mr. Abrego Garcia was being held.
The unexpected meeting took place at a hotel in San Salvador, according to photos shared by the senator’s office late Thursday. In the images, Mr. Abrego Garcia was dressed in plainclothes and sat for a conversation with Mr. Van Hollen. El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, said on social media that Mr. Abrego Garcia would remain in his country’s custody.
The photos shared by Mr. Van Hollen and others posted by Mr. Bukele were the first public glimpses of Mr. Abrego Garcia since his deportation in March, which the Trump administration admitted in court was an error. The Supreme Court has ordered the administration to “facilitate” his return, but a federal judge overseeing the case has scolded the government for doing “nothing” to comply.
“Our purpose today was very straightforward,” Mr. Van Hollen said in an interview on Thursday, before the meeting with Mr. Abrego Garcia. “It was simply to be able to go see if Kilmar Abrego Garcia is doing OK. I mean, nobody has heard anything about his condition since he was illegally abducted from the United States. He is totally beyond reach.”
Mr. Van Hollen had initially been stopped by the Salvadoran military officials when he tried to visit Mr. Abrego Garcia, and described the encounter as a blockade intended to thwart his visit to the prison. Human rights advocates have documented overcrowding in El Salvador’s prisons and reports of torture.
“This was a very sort of simple humanitarian request,” Mr. Van Hollen said soon after the stop.
The photos of Mr. Van Hollen’s meeting with Mr. Abrego Garcia conveyed a very different atmosphere from scenes of the crowded prison, with the two sitting together at a table in a dining area near lush greenery and greeting each other on the polished floor of the hotel lobby.
Mr. Bukele, in a social media post, even crowed that “Kilmar Abrego Garcia, miraculously risen from the ‘death camps’ & ‘torture,’” was “now sipping margaritas with Sen. Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador!” But according to a person familiar with the situation, a Bukele aide placed the two glasses with cherries and salted rims on the table in front of Mr. Van Hollen and Mr. Abrego Garcia in the middle of their meeting in an attempt to stage the photo.
In his post, Mr. Van Hollen said he had called Mr. Abrego Garcia’s wife, who has publicly pleaded for his return, after the meeting “to pass along his message of love.”
Mr. Van Hollen’s visit underscored a broader Democratic effort to spotlight the case of Mr. Abrego Garcia, placing his detention at the center of their efforts to challenge the Trump administration’s approach. News of Mr. Van Hollen’s meeting Thursday evening had not deterred other Democratic lawmakers who had said they, too, intended to travel to the country to advocate for his release.
“This is an example of the much bigger challenge, no doubt about it,” Mr. Van Hollen said of the case of Mr. Abrego Garcia, who had been living in Maryland under an immigration judge’s order that granted him protections from deportation. “Because my view is when you start picking on the most vulnerable people, and you push and push and push, and you get away with it, then you take the next bite.”
In exchange for El Salvador’s detention of the deported immigrants, Mr. Bukele has said he is being paid $6 million by the U.S. government.
In social media post on Thursday after Mr. Van Hollen’s visit with Mr. Abrego Garcia, Mr. Bukele said that “now that he’s been confirmed healthy, he gets the honor of staying in El Salvador’s custody.”
A spokeswoman for the presidency of El Salvador, Wendy Ramos, did not respond to requests for comment.
At the White House on Thursday afternoon, when asked by a reporter whether he would move to return Mr. Abrego Garcia to the United States, Mr. Trump said, “Well, I’m not involved.”
“You’ll have to speak to the lawyers, the D.O.J.,” he said, referring to the Justice Department.
Beyond seeking assurances of Mr. Abrego Garcia’s safety, Mr. Van Hollen’s trip has brought additional attention to the case. Mr. Abrego Garcia’s deportation and imprisonment have become the most prominent example for both advocates and critics of the Trump administration’s stance on immigration.
For many Democrats, Mr. Van Hollen’s stand represented a defense of human rights and legal access. For conservatives, it was a misguided gesture of sympathy for a man who, as the White House has repeatedly noted, had entered the U.S. illegally.
“It’s appalling and sad that Senator Van Hollen and the Democrats applauding his trip to El Salvador today are incapable of having any shred of common sense or empathy for their own constituents,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said at a briefing on Wednesday afternoon.
She was joined in the briefing room by Patty Morin, the mother of Rachel Morin, a Maryland resident who was brutally murdered in 2023 by an immigrant from El Salvador. The administration has pointed to Ms. Morin’s death as an example to justify its stance on immigration, though statistics show immigrants are less likely than U.S.-born citizens to commit crimes.
Mr. Van Hollen acknowledged Ms. Morin’s tragic death and reaffirmed his commitment to combating gang violence, which he said was a rare point of agreement with Salvadoran officials during his meetings this week. But he rejected the equivalence implied by Trump officials.
“My argument here all along in this is that he just requires due process,” Mr. Van Hollen said of Mr. Abrego Garcia. “My argument is not that I claim to know all the facts here. My whole argument is we have a court where the whole purpose of having a hearing was for people to present their evidence.”
