Washington – Senator Chris Van Hollen will fly to El Salvador on Wednesday to boost the release of Kilmar Abrego García after the man by mistake was not returned in the middle of the week, one of the senator’s conditions to embark on the trip.
Van Hollen said in a video publication from the airport that he was about to board a flight to the capital of the country, adding that his goal was to show the Trump administration and the Government of El Salvador “that we will continue fighting to take Abrego García home until he returns to his family.”
Van Hollen, D-Md., Represents the state where Abrego García lived.
“I hope to meet with government representatives,” said Van Hollen in the video, which was published in X. “I hope to have the opportunity to see Kilmar and see what his condition is.”
Van Hollen said previously that he would travel to El Salvador if Maryland’s man was not released in the middle of the week, and other Democratic legislators had expressed his willingness to join, although Van Hollen’s video did not appear.
The senator is making the trip in his official capacity, and his team has a scheduled meeting with a high -level government official, according to a spokesman for Van Hollen.
The Department of Justice has said that he deported Abrego García to El Salvador, and a judge ordered him to “facilitate” his return, a measure that the Supreme Court later reaffirmed.
In a series of judicial hearings, the Trump administration has not seemed to make movements to work towards the liberation of Maryland’s man to the United States, and on Monday, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele said during an Oval office meeting with President Donald Trump that he would not send Abrego Garcia to the United States, saying that “the question is impossible.”
Democrats have criticized officials for refusing to work for the release of Abrego García, painting the issue as a matter of the rule of law after judicial decisions on the case.
“This is due process. This is the rule of law,” said Van Hollen in the video he took at the airport. “What thugs do is start choosing the most vulnerable. But if we get rid of the rule of law and due process in the United States, it is a short path from there to tyranny.”
NBC News communicated with the White House to comment on Van Hollen’s trip.
The White House has affirmed that Abrego García is a member of the gang, that his lawyers have denied. Abrego García has never been criminally accused in the United States or El Salvador, according to judicial records.
The United States District Judge, Paula Xinis, who presides over the case of Abrego García, has questioned the previous determination of an immigration judge, saying that the “‘evidence’ against Abrego García consisted of nothing more than the hat and sweatshirt of his Chicago Bulls, and a vague, a vague, a student of a confidential informant who claimed that he belonged to MS-13 From New York, in New York, a place that has not been the place of New York.
The White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a press conference on Tuesday that the administration is complying with judicial orders, and she criticized “Democratic and Media outrage” for the deportation of Abrego García.
“Based on the sensationalism of many of the people in this room, you would think that we deported a candidate for the father of the year,” he said.
Abrego García emigrated to the United States in 2011 and is a legal resident that has been protected by a 2019 court order that could not be sent back to El Salvador.
