It has been more than a month since Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland husband and father, was wrongfully deported to a notorious El Salvador prison despite his legal protected status. Though the Supreme Court upheld a U.S. district judge’s ruling that ordered the Trump administration to take steps to return him, the Trump administration has been defiant that it will do no such thing, appearing to relish a judicial crisis. As the legal battle wages on — with an appeals court issuing a strong rebuke of the administration on Thursday — Maryland senator Chris Van Hollen visited El Salvador, where he was able to meet with Abrego Garcia after initially being denied access to him. Since then, Trump and his allies have repeatedly attacked the senator and expanded their efforts to demonize Abrego Garcia. Below, the latest developments.
Van Hollen on Newsom’s ‘distraction’ claim: ‘Americans are tired of elected officials or politicians who are all finger to the wind’
Last week, the California governor suggested the Abrego Garcia case was a “distraction of the day” amid other more egregious affronts by Trump. Senator Van Hollen was asked about the comment on Sunday’s Meet the Press:
Ed Kilgore notes how Democrats don’t seem totally aligned on fighting to free and return Abrego Garcia, and argues that “in politics, silence is almost never golden”:
Anything less than full-throated opposition to the administration’s joyful embrace of Gestapo tactics and un-American policies in deportation cases will undoubtedly dishearten constituents who already fear their elected officials are unprincipled cynics who won’t lift a finger to fight Trump without first convening a focus group of tuned-out swing voters. Politicians don’t have to emulate Senator Chris Van Hollen’s decision to fly down to El Salvador and meet with his imprisoned constituent to recognize that his willingness to do so was impressive and authentic.
Read the rest here.
Overnight Friday, the court temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deporting Venezuelans under the Alien Enemies Act, which has given many people hope that SCOTUS is finally pushing back, as Vox’s Ian Millhiser explains:
Thus far, the Supreme Court has been extraordinarily tolerant of Trump’s efforts to evade judicial review through hypertechnical procedural arguments. Though the J.G.G. decision required the Trump administration to give these Venezuelan immigrants a hearing, for example, it also guaranteed that many — likely most — of those hearings would take place in Texas, which has some of the most right-wing federal judges in the country.
Though it is just one order, Saturday’s post-midnight order suggests that the Court may no longer tolerate procedural shenanigans intended to evade meaningful judicial review. If the ACLU’s application is accurate, the Trump administration appears to have believed that it could comply with the Court’s decision in J.G.G. by giving men who are about to be deported a last-minute notice that many of them cannot even understand. Whether most of the justices choose to tolerate this kind of malicious half-compliance with their decisions will likely become clear in the coming days. The Court’s A.A.R.P. order suggests that they will not.
Steve Vladeck’s analysis is worth reading, as well.
The Washington Post dug into the evidence — a gang sheet filled out by a Maryland police detective in 2019 — the administration put forward support their allegation that Abrego Garcia is an MS-13 member:
The detective who filled out the gang sheet — Ivan Mendez — was suspended from the Prince George’s County Police Department days after detaining Abrego García because he’d been accused of tipping off a sex worker he had hired about an ongoing investigation into a brothel she ran. He was later criminally indicted and fired after pleading guilty to misconduct in office, one of several members of the gang unit who were criminally prosecuted. Mendez did not respond to messages seeking comment.
The gang unit in Prince George’s County, whose residents are majority Black and Latino, stopped using the Gang Field Interview Sheet as a source of intelligence gathering about three years ago, amid a civil lawsuit that alleged young men of color were disproportionately represented in it.
And in January, federal officials in the Washington region decommissioned GangNET, a database of alleged gang members that those field sheets fed into, because participation drastically tapered as its credibility came into question.
Welcome to the MAGA-era GOP:
Friday evening on Truth Social, the president shared an image of himself holding a up a photo the knuckles of Abrego Garcia’s left hand with “MS-13” tattooed on them. “This is the hand of the man that the Democrats feel should be brought back to the United States, because he is such ‘a fine and innocent person,” Trump wrote. But it’s an altered photo, as Gizmodo’s Matt Novak quickly noted on Bluesky:
Trump just posted a photo of himself holding up a piece of paper claiming to show tattoos on Kilmar Abrego Garcia that are related to MS-13. The paper he’s holding up has been digitally altered to add the characters MS-13.
The image is based on right-wing social media speculation that Abrego Garcia’s tattoos stand for “MS-13” — but it’s just speculation not backed up by anything.
Van Hollen addressed Rachel Morin, a Maryland mother who was murdered by an undocumented immigrant, whose case has been elevated by Republicans in response to the focus on Abrego Garcia.
“My response is that my heart goes out to the family of Rachel Morin. As I said at the time, my heart breaks for them. That should not happen to any family in America and I’m very glad that a court of law convicted her killer and is going to punish her killer in a court of law,” he said.
The senator continued, “The reason we have courts of law are to punish the guilty, but also to make sure that those who have not committed crimes are not found guilty and arbitrarily detained. In other words, everybody has due process. So, the effort by the Trump administration to try to conflate these two issues goes to the heart of what I was just talking about: their effort to change the subject.”
Van Hollen took a moment to address the discrepancies between photos of the meetings shared by his office and the El Salvadoran government, suggesting that local officials staged a photo with fancier drinks to change the impression of the picture.
“When I first sat down with Kilmar, we just had glasses of water on the table, I think maybe some coffee. As we were talking, one of the government people came over and deposited two other glasses on the table with ice and salt or sugar. They looked like margaritas,” he said. “Neither of us touched the drinks that were in front of us.”
During his meeting with Van Hollen, Abrego Garcia recounted his arrest, saying he was out with his five-year-old son and was initially taken to Baltimore where he was denied an opportunity for a phone call.
Van Hollen said Abrego Garcia was then transported to Texas where he was later placed on a plane with other detainees in shackles and handcuffs and flown to El Salvador to be held at CECOT.
“He said, he was not afraid of the other prisoners in his immediate cell, but that he was traumatized by being at CECOT and fearful of many of the prisoners in other cell blocks who called out to him and taunted him in various ways,” the senator said.
Notably, Van Hollen said that Abrego Garcia had been transferred to a new facility in Santa Ana which he said had “better conditions” but limited access to information.
Van Hollen said his “principal mission” was to meet with Abrego Garcia, a goal he was able to achieve after multiple failed attempts. “I was getting ready to catch a plane back to U.S. and all of a sudden, I got word that I would be allowed to meet with Kilmar Abruego Garcia. They brought him to the hotel where I was staying,” the senator said.
Van Hollen then described the call he made to Abrego Garcia’s wife.
“Last night, at about 6:40 p.m. El Salvador time, 8:45 p.m. here on the East Coast, I called Jennifer to tell her that I had met with Kilmar. And I told her what he said to me which was, first and foremost, that he missed her and his family,” he said, telling that he could see a tear rolling down Abrego Garcia’s cheek.
Van Hollen has officially returned to the United States after spending several days in El Salvador in pursuit of information about his constituent Abrego Garcia. The senator, joined by members of Abrego Garcia’s family, addressed reporters at Dulles Airport in Washington, D.C., making it clear that he believes there’s still more to be done.
“It’s good to be home. Now, we need to end the legal abduction of Kilmar Abrego Garcia and bring him home too,” he said, to applause.
The federal government has consistently insisted that Abrego Garcia should’ve never been allowed to stay in the United States. But border czar Tom Homan couldn’t give a direct reason as to why the administration didn’t contest Abrego Garcia’s “withholding of removal” status in 2019 during Trump’s first term.
“Well, the conditions of the country are different now than they were back then. Maybe the conditions of the country was one that the withholding made sense,” he said in a CNN interview, noting he wasn’t aware of the case as the time.
But Homan said he believes the government properly handled Abrego Garcia’s case.
“I don’t think they violated a court order. I think we did the right thing. I think it’s been litigated by DoJ and I’ll let them fight it out in court or not fight it out in court. But I think we did the right thing,” he said.
Trump used part of an unrelated Oval Office press conference to keep the knocks against Van Hollen going, calling the Maryland senator “a fake.”
“He’s a fake. I know them all, they’re all fakes and they have no interest in that prisoner,” he said. “That prisoner’s record is unbelievably bad.”
While Van Hollen’s successful visit with Abrego Garcia is prompting praise within his own party, Republicans have, unsurprisingly, criticized the move.
Representative Riley Moore of West Virginia tried to paint Van Hollen as a hypocrite for meeting with Abrego Garcia and not with the family of Rachel Morin, a mother who was killed by an undocumented immigrant from El Salvador. Morin’s mother recently spoke at a White House press briefing.
“I want to call for Senator Chris Van Hollen to meet with the family of Rachel Morin, the murdered woman in Maryland, the mother of five children. He has not met with her at all, but he’s meeting with an MS-13 gang member down in El Salvador,” he said on Fox News.
Senator John Cornyn of Texas also denounced Van Hollen’s trip as a “political stunt”:
In an interview with ABC’s Good Morning America, Jennifer Vasquez Sura said it was “very overwhelming” finally seeing her husband, Abrego Garcia, in a photo after more than a month.
“The most important thing for me, my children, his mom, his brother, his sibling, was to see him alive, and we saw him alive,” she said.
Vasquez Sura said they’ve been together for seven years, describing Abrego Garcia as a “loving husband and amazing father.”
“We were just young parents trying to live the American Dream,” she said.
The White House followed up the El Salvadoran government’s mocking tweets about Van Hollen’s visit with Abrego Garcia with one of their own, sharing an edited version of a New York Times front page with the taunt “he’s NOT coming back” — despite the multiple court orders ordering that the Trump administration take steps to administer Abrego Garcia’s return.
The administration’s edit of the Times story notably crosses out the word “wrongly” though the government’s own lawyers have admitted in court that Abrego Garcia was sent to El Salvador in error.
For Intelligencer, Elie Honig, a former federal prosecutor, laid out three potential resolutions for the Abrego Garcia legal saga. In one scenario, Honig says the standoff between the federal government and the court system could balloon into a true constitutional crisis:
But it seems entirely unlikely that even ratcheted-up orders from the courts will move the Trump administration toward full compliance. They’re barely observing the current order to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return, and there’s every reason to believe the administration would simply refuse if ordered to take some specific, affirmative step in its handling of foreign affairs.
In this scenario, we’d arrive at a stalemate. I’m generally among the last to invoke the specter of a constitutional crisis, but if the courts — especially the Supreme Court — were to explicitly order the executive branch to take some specific action, and the administration flatly refused, then we wouldn’t know what happens next. That would plunge us into a genuine crisis in which the executive branch unilaterally elevates itself above the law, and the judiciary is left without meaningful recourse.
Read the rest here.
Vice-President Vance continued to debate the legality of Abrego Garcia’s deportation on social media:
Jennifer Vasquez Sura, the wife of Abrego Garcia, welcomed the news of her husband’s first public appearance since being detained over a month ago.
“My children and my prayers have been answered,” Vasquez said in a statement, per ABC News. “The efforts of my family and community in fighting for justice are being heard, because I now know that my husband is alive. God is listening, and the community is standing strong.”
She continued, “We still have so many questions, hopes, and fears. I will continue praying and fighting for Kilmar’s return home.”
On Friday, Trump denounced Van Hollen on social media after the Maryland senator was finally able to meet with Abrego Garcia.
“Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland looked like a fool yesterday standing in El Salvador begging for attention from the Fake News Media, or anyone. GRANDSTANDER!!!” he wrote on TruthSocial.
At midnight, the White House X account posted a photo of Trump meeting with Patty Morin, whose daughter Rachel Morin was murdered by an undocumented migrant from El Salvador in 2023, side by side with the the photo of Van Hollen and Abrego Garcia.
Patty Morin spoke at a special briefing in the White House press room on Wednesday. The Trump administration has highlighted Morin’s tragic story to undermine the uproar over the Abrego Garcia case, though the wrongly deported man had nothing to do with Morin’s murder.
“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 the briefing.
On Thursday evening Senator Van Hollen shared a photo of himself meeting with Abrego Garcia.
The meeting took place at a hotel in San Salvador. Hours earlier, Senator Van Hollen had been denied entry to CECOT, the prison where Abrego Garcia is being held. ABC News reported that the meeting was set up by El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele.
Bukele posted photos on Twitter with a taunting message about Abergo Garcia “sipping margaritas” with the senator:
According to the New York Times, Bukele’s team placed drinks in front of Abrego Garcia:
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.
As Politico notes, there was “more than a little stage-managing” by Bukele’s team:
Abrego Garcia was dressed in a plaid button-down shirt and civilian clothes, not in CECOT’s sterile white prisoner uniforms. His shorn head was covered by an immaculate Kansas City Chiefs ballcap. Rather than meeting in front of the hellish backdrop of the brutal prison — which has been made available for photo ops by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, among others — Van Hollen and Abrego Garcia are instead shown sitting at what appears to be a café table, their places set with cherry-rimmed glasses, as if the two were leisurely sipping Shirley Temples. This is how Bukele (and likely the White House) wanted this interaction to appear.
Bukele posted two more trollish messages about the meeting:
This last message was retweeted by Trump staffers Dan Scavino and Steven Cheung.
The appeals court closed its ruling with a warning about the Trump administration’s attempts to war with the judicial branch, calling it a “losing proposition all around.”
“It is, as we have noted, all too possible to see in this case an incipient crisis, but it may present an opportunity as well. We yet cling to the hope that it is not naïve to believe our good brethren in the Executive Branch perceive the rule of law as vital to the American ethos. This case presents their unique chance to vindicate that value and to summon the best that is within us while there is still time,” the judges wrote.
In their ruling, the judges also raised the specter of the executive branch’s deportation powers being abused and the potential repercussions of such a future:
The Executive possesses enormous powers to prosecute and to deport, but with powers come restraints. If today the Executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home? And what assurance shall there be that the Executive will not train its broad discretionary powers upon its political enemies? The threat, even if not the actuality, would always be present, and the Executive’s obligation to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” would lose its meaning.
In their filing, the judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit addressed the Supreme Court’s ruling, saying its intent was clear.
“The Supreme Court’s decision does not, however, allow the government to do essentially nothing. It requires the government to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador,” they wrote. “‘Facilitate’ is an active verb. It requires that steps be taken as the Supreme Court has made perfectly clear.”
As the Trump administration has quibbled over the exact meaning of Judge Xinis’s words, the appeals court bluntly broke down its own interpretation.
“‘Facilitation’ does not permit the admittedly erroneous deportation of an individual to the one country’s prisons that the withholding order forbids and, further, to do so in disregard of a court order that the government not so subtly spurns,” the filing read.
A federal appeals court has rejected the federal government’s request for an emergency stay of U.S. District Judge Xinis’s order. In a seven-page filing, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit slammed the Trump administration’s argument, writing that the federal government is “asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process.”
“This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear,” the filing read.
The judges, who ruled unanimously, said Abrego Garcia’s alleged criminal history has no bearing on whether he’s entitled to due process.
“The government asserts that Abrego Garcia is a terrorist and a member of MS-13. Perhaps, but perhaps not. Regardless, he is still entitled to due process. If the government is confident of its position, it should be assured that position will prevail in proceedings to terminate the withholding of removal order,” they wrote.
After being denied entry to CECOT, the prison in which Abrego Garcia is being held, Van Hollen told reporters that the U.S. Embassy in El Salvador did pass along his request to see Abrego Garcia, per HuffPost.
Mark Green, the Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security committee, issued a statement Thursday saying that he will not authorize a congressional delegation (CODEL) to El Salvador after several Democratic members of the panel requested one.
“There is no excuse for Democrats to waste taxpayer dollars visiting and defending a transnational gang member and reported domestic abuser,” he wrote. “If Democrats care so much about defending this individual, they can use their own personal credit cards — not taxpayers’ money — to virtue-signal to their radical base.”
Green’s words come days after Representative Delia Ramirez of Illinois, a Democratic member of the committee, wrote a letter requesting a CODEL to the region to “conduct oversight of CECOT.”
During an Oval Office press availability with Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni, Trump was asked if he would work to bring Abrego Garcia back to the United States if the court held him in contempt. The president largely deferred to the government’s legal team.
“Well, I’m not involved in it. I’m gonna respond by saying you’ll have to speak to the lawyers, the DoJ. I’ve heard many things about him, and we’ll have to find out what the truth is,” Trump said.
However, Trump said that he was elected, in part, to address rising rates of illegal immigration and crime and made it clear that he rejects any perceived limit on that power. “I was elected to get rid of those criminals, to get them out of our country or put them away,” he said. “I don’t see how a judge can take that authority away from a president.”
NBC News reports that a new poll shows Trump’s approval rating for his general handling of immigration is holding strong among voters while dropping on other issues:
Van Hollen shared a new video from El Salvador, saying that he, as well as an attorney representing Abrego Garcia’s wife and mother, was blocked from entering the prison where Abrego Garcia is being held. The senator said that soldiers stationed outside of CECOT stopped them from visiting while letting other cars go through.
“Today’s purpose was just to see what his health condition is, and the soldiers were ordered to prevent us from going any farther from this spot,” Van Hollen said.
The Wall Street Journal reports that El Salvador has plans to expand CECOT, the notorious maximum-security prison where Abrego Garcia is currently detained. Per the outlet, the goal is to double the size of the prison, allowing it to house 80,000 inmates:
One in every 57 Salvadorans in the country of 6.3 million is incarcerated — triple the rate of the U.S. and the highest in the world. Any prison expansion would likely be geared toward holding more foreign inmates. “Up to the U.S. to send enough to fill it,” someone familiar with Bukele’s plans said.
Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, accused news outlets of promoting falsehoods about Abrego Garcia, singling out Comcast in a long social-media post.
“Comcast outlets spent days misleading the American public — implying that Abrego Garcia was merely a law-abiding U.S. citizen, just a regular ‘Maryland man.’ When the truth comes out, they ignore it,” he wrote. “Comcast knows that federal law requires its licensed operations to serve the public interest. News distortion doesn’t cut it.”
While the federal government has been consistent in its criticism of the media coverage of Abrego Garcia’s case, Carr’s words come days after Trump himself railed against the network and its leadership. “Comcast, the owner of both, and it’s Chairman, Brian Roberts, are a disgrace to the integrity of Broadcasting!!!” he wrote on Truth Social.
Tammy Bruce, a State Department spokesperson, joined Fox News to denounce Van Hollen’s El Salvador trip, suggesting that Democrats considering their own visits should stick to their own districts.
“You know, there’s a lot of places in the United States that would like to see an official delegation of Democrat congressional members, like their own districts. Cities like Los Angeles and Detroit still, certainly Baltimore, the nature of what’s happening in New York, my goodness,” she said.
She continued, “These are people who have abandoned their own neighborhoods.”
The Trump administration is seeking an emergency stay of the U.S. district court’s ruling that the government “facilitate and effectuate” the return of Abrego Garcia to the United States. In the 19-page filing, the government claims the Supreme Court’s ruling rejected the court’s “unprecedented command” to “force a foreign sovereign to relinquish one of its own citizens.”
“The federal courts do not have the authority to press-gang the President or his agents into taking any particular act of diplomacy,” the filing read.
Jennifer Vasquez Sura, the wife of Abrego Garcia, sought to provide context to the unearthed temporary order of protection that she filed for in 2021. The document was released as the federal government’s latest salvo to substantiate its case against Abrego Garcia as a violent gang member whose deportation was deserved.
“After surviving domestic violence in a previous relationship, I acted out of caution after a disagreement with Kilmar by seeking a civil protective order in case things escalated,” Vasquez Sura said in a statement Wednesday, per NBC News. “Things did not escalate, and I decided not to follow through with the civil court process.”
She continued, “No one is perfect, and no marriage is perfect. That is not a justification for ICE’s action of abducting him and deporting him to a country where he was supposed to be protected from deportation.”
In an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Attorney General Bondi continued to highlight the government’s release of a years-old order of protection filed against Abrego Garcia by his now-wife. Though Jennifer Vasquez Sura has been front and center in the fight for her husband’s return, Bondi suggested that their family would be better off without him.
“America is safer because he is gone,” Bondi said Wednesday. “Maryland is safer because he is gone. And that woman that he is married to and that child he had with her, they are safer tonight because he is out of our country and sitting in El Salvador where he belongs.”
With the government poised to appeal the district court’s ruling, the Justice Department also released several documents that it considers evidence of Abrego Garcia’s alleged gang ties.
The tranche of documents includes a gang field-interview sheet detailing the 2019 arrest of a group of men including Abrego Garcia at a Home Depot in Hyattsville, Maryland. A Prince George’s County officer described Abrego Garcia as wearing a Chicago Bulls hat and “a hoodie with rolls of money covering the eyes, ears and mouth of the presidents on the separate denominations,” writing that the clothing was indicative of Hispanic gang culture.
Law enforcement claims that it contacted a confidential informant who said Abrego Garcia was a member of MS-13 and held “the rank of ‘Chequeo’ with the moniker of ‘Chele.’” The documentation notes that Abrego Garcia had no listed criminal record and that he personally claimed no gang affiliation and said he had no knowledge of gang activity.
On Wednesday, the Justice Department officially filed a notice of its intent to appeal U.S. District Judge Xinis’s April 10 ruling ordering the federal government to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s release and file updates detailing the steps they’ve taken to do so.
Though the Salvadoran government reportedly denied Van Hollen an opportunity to visit CECOT, other American politicians have had no problems arranging a trip to the notorious prison.
On Tuesday, Riley Moore, a Republican congressman from West Virginia, shared photos from his visit to the prison including snapshots of him posing in front of large cells filled with detainees.
Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem similarly visited CECOT last month, sharing photos of her trip with a stark warning. “President Trump and I have a clear message to criminal illegal aliens: LEAVE NOW. If you do not leave, we will hunt you down, arrest you, and you could end up in this El Salvadoran prison,” she wrote.
Abrego Garcia is receiving support from the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail, and Transportation Workers, or SMART, the union that represents him.
CNN spoke to Michael Coleman, the president of SMART, who insists that there is no evidence that the first-year union apprentice has any gang ties. “We’ve done our own check. We’ve talked to people who know him and we have no indication that he’s part of MS-13 at all,” he said.
He continued, “We want our brother Kilmar to come back and get his due process.”
As pressure grows for the Trump administration to take action to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States, the federal government is holding fast and is resurfacing aspects of his past to support their refusal.
On social media, the Department of Homeland Security shared a copy of a purported temporary order of protection filed by Abrego Garcia’s now-wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, against him years prior. Vasquez Sura has played a prominent role in advocating for his release.
As Van Hollen wrapped up his press conference, he said he will “keep pressing” the issue of Abrego Garcia’s release in his remaining time in El Salvador and for as long as needed.
“I’m asking President Bukele under his authority as president of El Salvador to do the right thing and allow Abrego Garcia to walk out of a prison. A man who’s charged with no crime, convicted of no crime, and who was illegally abducted from the United States,” he said.
A reporter asked Van Hollen if he was concerned about whether Abrego Garcia was still alive.
“I don’t know about his health status. That’s exactly why I wanted to meet with him directly. That’s why I wanted to talk to him on the phone. That’s why I want to arrange a phone call with his wife. I mean, this is a notorious prison,” he said.
Van Hollen said he asked Ulloa if he could meet with Abrego Garcia, but that the leader said he needed to “make earlier provisions” to visit the prison. The senator then emphasized that he wasn’t looking to tour CECOT, but that he simply wanted to see Abrego Garcia.
“He said he was not able to make that happen,” Van Hollen told reporters.
The senator said the vice-president said he couldn’t promise a visit if Van Hollen returned next week or even a phone or video call between Abrego Garcia and his family.
“He said he could not arrange that. He said, ‘Maybe if the American embassy were to ask. Maybe that could happen,’” Van Hollen said. “So, I will certainly ask the American embassy to ask the government of El Salvador to connect us by phone.”
Van Hollen said that he met with Félix Ulloa, the vice-president of El Salvador, and asked why the government was holding Abrego Garcia if it lacks evidence that Abrego Garcia committed a crime. “His answer was that the Trump administration is paying El Salvador, the government of El Salvador, to keep him at CECOT,” he said.
When Van Hollen pressed Ulloa on why they can’t release Abrego Garcia today, he said the vice-president echoed President Bukele’s Oval Office remarks about not being able to “smuggle” him back into the United States.
Van Hollen held a press conference in El Salvador, telling reporters that the federal government is lying about Abrego Garcia being a gang member.
“I want to emphasize that President Trump and our attorney general, Pam Bondi, and the vice-president of the United States are lying. And they say that Abrego Garcia has been charged with a crime or was part of MS-13. That is a lie,” he said, per NBC News.
Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland has officially landed in El Salvador’s capital city. In a video shared to social media, Van Hollen said he intends to meet with U.S. Embassy staff and hopes to meet with officials from the El Salvadoran government.
Ahead of his trip to El Salvador, Senator Chris Van Hollen spoke to Intelligencer’s Benjamin Hart about his impending journey to find Abrego Garcia and what’s at stake:
I think we are in a constitutional crisis. I think we’ve been in a gray area for some time, but I think this outright defiance of a court order, including a 9-0 decision by the Supreme Court, takes us into uncharted territory. Because prior to this, the administration was slow-walking some court orders. They were trying to revisit court orders. But in this case, I know they claim they’re in technical compliance, but it just doesn’t meet the lab test.
Read the rest here.
Congressional Republicans are now fielding questions and boos over Abrego Garcia’s detention in their districts. Senator Chuck Grassley was jeered at a town hall in Iowa on Tuesday as his constituents pressed him on whether the government should work to return Abrego Garcia back to the United States.
“El Salvador is an independent country. The president of that country is not subject to our U.S. Supreme Court,” Grassley said.
In Georgia, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene held a town hall that was inundated with protesters who interrupted and heckled her from the moment the controversial congresswoman started speaking. Police removed numerous demonstrators bodily from the room, resulting in three arrests and two people hit by stun guns.
During one moment, a protester rose from his seat and chanted, “Free Kilmar,” as he left the room. Greene responded in typical fashion.
Maryland senator Chris Van Hollen was set to leave Wednesday morning for his planned trip to El Salvador to check on the well-being of Abrego Garcia, one of his constituents.
In a video shared to social media, Van Hollen said the goal of his trip was to show the Trump administration and the Salvadoran government that he is going to “keep fighting to bring Abrego Garcia home.”
During an unrelated press conference on Thursday, U.S. attorney general Pam Bondi stated bluntly that Abrego Garcia would not be returning to the United States.
“He is not coming back to our country. President Bukele said he was not sending him back. That’s the end of the story,” she told reporters. “If he wanted to send him back, we would give him a plane ride back. There was no situation ever where he was going to stay in this country.”
Bondi continued, “He’s from El Salvador, he’s in El Salvador, and that’s where the president plans on keeping him.”
Though asked by a reporter, Bondi did not provide specific evidence of the government’s claims that Abrego Garcia is a member of MS-13, but said she’d “gladly” share transcripts of court hearings from 2019.
Judge Xinis said she is setting an April 23 deadline for Trump administration affiants to sit for depositions regarding the steps the government has taken to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release. The judge made it clear that the federal government should be prepared to provide her requested information quickly in order for her to make her ruling.
“Cancel vacation,” she said, per the New York Times. “Cancel other appointments. I’m usually pretty good about this in my courtroom, but not this time.”
Lawfare reports that Drew Ensign, the deputy assistant attorney general, said a submitted transcript of the Oval Office meeting between Trump and Bukele included the Salvadoran position on the issue as well as Attorney General Pam Bondi saying the administration would facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return.
However, Judge Xinis said she does not consider a press conference to be a reasonable response to her inquiries and told both sides to prepare for “two weeks of intensive discovery.”
“We’re going to do this by the federal rules of civil procedure. So no press release is going to move the court the same way that sworn, under oath testimony from persons with knowledge,” she said, per Politico.
Tuesday’s hearing has finally gotten underway in the federal courthouse in Greenbelt, Maryland. Abrego Garcia’s attorneys reiterated their belief that there’s no evidence that the government has taken any steps toward securing their client’s return.
Judge Xinis said that each day that Abrego Garcia remains in jailed in El Salvador is “a day of further irreparable harm” and signaled that she will seek additional information from the government.
“We have to give process to both sides. But we’re going to move. There will be no tolerance for gamesmanship or grandstanding,” she said, per Politico.
In its latest status update, the federal government provided no additional information on Abrego Garcia. However, the Justice Department indicated that if he appeared at a port of entry, Abrego Garcia would be taken into U.S. custody and the government would “either remove him to a third country or terminate his withholding of removal” and remove him to El Salvador, citing his alleged gang ties.
Jennifer Vasquez Sura, the wife of Abrego Garcia, gave a public statement ahead of Tuesday’s hearing, noting that today marks 34 days since his deportation.
“Kilmar, if you can hear me, stay strong. God hasn’t forgotten about you. Our children are asking when will you come home and I pray for the day that I tell them the time and date that you’ll return,” she said.
Vasquez Sura said she is pleading with the American and El Salvadoran governments to “stop playing political games” with Abrego Garcia’s life.
“This administration has already taken so much from my children, from Kilmar’s mother, brother, sisters, and me,” she said.
Protesters have assembled outside the federal courthouse in Greenbelt, Maryland, ahead of Judge Xinis’s hearing in the Abrego Garcia case.
In a briefing with reporters, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt doubled-down on the administration’s position on Abrego Garcia, saying that his deportation to El Salvador was “always going to be the end result.”
“There is never going to be a world in which this is an individual who’s going to live a peaceful life in Maryland because he is a foreign terrorist and MS-13 gang member,” she said.
Leavitt also accused Abrego Garcia of participating in human trafficking but provided no specific evidence of that and her other claims.
In an interview with CNN, Representative Ritchie Torres of New York said he plans to introduce legislation called the Repatriation of Expelled Sovereign Citizens and Unjustly Exiled (RESCUE) Act that would punish foreign governments that refuse to comply with orders to return someone that’s been wrongfully deported.
“If there is a foreign leader like the president of El Salvador who refuses to comply with an order from a federal court to release someone who has been wrongfully deported, there should be geopolitical consequences and those consequences should be swift and severe,” Torres said. “It should include the suspension of relations with the United States and the termination of foreign assistance.”
Chris Van Hollen, the Maryland senator, told CNN Tuesday that his request for a meeting with El Salvadoran president Bukele has gone unanswered.
“I’ve not heard back from the president of El Salvador and, as I said in that letter, if I don’t hear from him and Abrego Garcia is not quickly returned, I do intend to go to El Salvador this week to show solidarity with his family,” Van Hollen said.
In a new filing ahead of Tuesday’s hearing, Abrego Garcia’s attorneys argued that the federal government is in violation of the Supreme Court’s order because it has made no meaningful attempts to secure his release.
“To give any meaning to the Supreme Court’s order, the Government should at least be required to request the release of Abrego Garcia. To date, the Government has not done so,” the lawyers wrote.
They also challenged the government’s assertion that it lacks authority in this matter, citing its ongoing contract with El Salvador to transport its prisoners there. The attorney argue that the United States can “exercise those same contractual rights to request their release.”
Vice-President J.D. Vance promoted Trump’s combative Oval Office exchange with a CNN reporter, claiming the media is distorting the conversation about Abrego Garcia. “The entire American media and left-wing industrial complex has decided the most important issue today is that the Trump admin deported an MS-13 gang member (and illegal alien),” he wrote on X.
And in a response to musician Mikel Jollett, Vance suggested that any attempt to retrieve Abrego Garcia would be unlawful:
Several House Democrats have expressed support for Maryland senator Chris Van Hollen’s promise to travel to El Salvador to seek answers about Abrego Garcia’s condition and his detention. Representative Maxwell Frost of Florida said he was open to joining Van Hollen on his travel and organize others in his chamber to participate.
Yassamin Ansari, a freshman congresswoman from Arizona, and Representative Robert Garcia of California have also said they would join the group.
On Monday, the federal government filed its latest status update on Abrego Garcia far past the set 5 p.m. deadline, providing scarce new information about the detained Maryland father. The document states that the government lacks authority to “forcibly extract an alien from the domestic custody of a foreign sovereign nation.” It also references El Salvadoran president Bukele’s Oval Office comments from earlier that day where he suggested that it was “preposterous” to suggest he could facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States.
On social media, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer denounced President Bukele’s comments on Abrego Garcia.
“President Bukele’s comment today is pure nonsense,” he said. “The law is clear, due process was grossly violated, and the Supreme Court has clearly spoken that the Trump administration must facilitate and effectuate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. He should be returned to the U.S. immediately.”
Tom Homan, President Trump’s border czar, told Fox News Monday afternoon that he agrees with Attorney General Bondi’s assertion that it’s up to El Salvador to release Abrego Garcia.
“He’s an El Salvadoran national, born in El Salvador. He’s in El Salvador’s custody. So, El Salvador would have to agree to release him and it doesn’t sound like they’re going to,” Homan said. “And if we did get him back in the United States, he’s going to be detained.”
Representative Glenn Ivey took to social media, writing that he was “astonished” that the Trump administration is refusing to take responsibility for what is happening to Abrego Garcia.
“An immigration judge granted him protected status from being deported, this Administration deported him anyway, and the Supreme Court said take steps to get him back. No amount of spin can change this. No more excuses. Bring Kilmar back now,” he wrote on X.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, challenged the assertion from Bukele that he’s unable to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S.:
Benjamin Osorio, an attorney for Abrego Garcia, told ABC News that the courts might have to take further action to spur the federal government into motion in order to free his client from El Salvador.
“At some point, if somebody gets held in contempt, you might see quicker movement there,” he said.
Osorio continued, “Whether it’s DOJ or DHS getting held in contempt and the judge taking some move there, we’ll see how that plays out. I imagine if they they stall too much, that’s what you’re going to see.”
The White House’s social media accounts continued to highlight Bukele’s visit, sharing a photo of the two leaders standing in the Oval Office:
Trump confirmed that his administration would consider deporting naturalized American citizens if they’re deemed to be “criminals.”
“If it’s a homegrown criminal, I have no problem. We’re studying the laws right now,” he said, gesturing to Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Trump once again praised his relationship with Bukele but said the United States is negotiating with other nations as well, though he did not give specifics.
A video of Bukele’s visit shared by his socials team showed Trump and the Salvadoran president discussing the idea of jailing Americans in Salvadoran facilities. “The homegrowns are next,” Trump can be heard saying to Bukele. “You’re gonna have to build five more places.”
During the Oval Office meeting, Stephen Miller continued to assert that the Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling was in the favor of the administration against the district court, finding that the lower court can’t compel the federal government’s foreign-policy decisions.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked Bukele if he plans to help return Abrego Garcia to the United States. The Salvadoran president scoffed at the idea, referring to the Maryland father as a terrorist.
“Of course I’m not going to do it. The question is preposterous. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? I don’t have the power to return him to the United States,” he said.
Bukele addressed his country’s reputation for incarceration in an Oval Office meeting with Trump, touting El Salvador’s example as one to emulate. “Sometimes they say we imprison thousands. I like to say we’ve liberated millions,” he said.
Trump appeared to approve of the line. “That’s good. That’s very good. Who gave him that line? Think I could use that?” the president quipped.
Bukele went on. “In fact, Mr. President, you have 350 million people to liberate. But to liberate 350 million people, you have to imprison some. That’s the way it works, right? You cannot just free the criminals and think that crime is going to go down magically,” he said.
Stephen Miller, a known immigration hard-liner and Homeland Security adviser to the president, claimed in an interview that Abrego Garcia was rightfully sent to El Salvador, directly contradicting the federal government’s own assertion in court.
“He was not mistakenly sent to El Salvador. He’s an illegal alien from El Salvador,” Miller said in a Fox News interview.
He continued, “This was the right person sent to the right place.”
In a Fox News interview on Monday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that Trump’s conversation with Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele will be “extremely beneficial” and signaled that more migrant flights to the nation are likely.
“El Salvador’s been a fantastic partner. When I was in El Salvador visiting with President Bukele, we talked about the fact that he would accept more flights, would accept more individuals into CECOT,” she said. “So I’m looking forward to that partnership continuing.”
Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland has officially requested a meeting with Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele, who is visiting the United States this week and is set to meet with President Trump in Washington, D.C., on Monday. In a letter to Salvadoran ambassador Milena Mayorga, Van Hollen said he wishes to speak to Bukele “to discuss the illegal detention of my constituent, Kilmar Abrego Garcia.”
“Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia never should have been abducted and illegally deported, and the courts have made clear: the Administration must bring him home, now. However, since the Trump Administration appears to be ignoring these court mandates, we need to take additional action. That’s why I’ve requested to meet with President Bukele during his trip to the United States, and — if Kilmar is not home by midweek — I plan to travel to El Salvador this week to check on his condition and discuss his release,” he said in a statement.
The federal government made it clear in court papers on Sunday that it doesn’t believe it’s legally required to work with El Salvador to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return, writing in a seven-page filing that it’s only required to “remove any domestic obstacles” that would impede his return.
“The federal courts have no authority to direct the Executive Branch to conduct foreign relations in a particular way, or engage with a foreign sovereign in a given manner,” the filing read, per CNN.
On Sunday, the administration filed another status update on Abrego Garcia, as ordered by the court. But the federal government provided no new information and simply pointed to its Saturday filing.
Evan Katz, an ICE official, writes in the document that there are “no updates for the court beyond what was provided yesterday,” per Lawfare.
In a court filing on Saturday, the administration once again indicated it has no interest in returning Abrego Garcia from the Salvadoran prison it deported him to. Per NPR, the government finally gave a court-mandated update on his status:
Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia is being held at El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, according to Michael G. Kozak, a senior official in State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, citing the United States’ embassy in San Salvador in the filing.
“He is alive and secure in that facility. He is detained pursuant to the sovereign, domestic authority of El Salvador,” Kozak also wrote.
Abrego Garcia’s attorney was not pleased:
“We are incredulous. Twenty-four more hours and still no answers as to what they’ve done so far, and what they’re planning to do going forward, to carry out the Supreme Court’s ruling.”
President Trump, in a way, echoed the administrations filing in a Truth Social post on Saturday night. Though he did not reference Abrego Garcia or his case, Trump mentioned his upcoming meeting with Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele and said everyone the U.S. deported to the country was now in their “sole custody”:
Our Nations are working closely together to eradicate terrorist organizations, and build a future of Prosperity. President Bukele has graciously accepted into his Nation’s custody some of the most violent alien enemies of the World and, in particular, the United States. These barbarians are now in the sole custody of El Salvador, a proud and sovereign Nation, and their future is up to President B and his Government.
The president was asked about Abrego Garcia case on Friday night while speaking with reporters aboard Air Force One. Trump didn’t really acknowledge anything about the specifics of the case, but he said: “If the Supreme Court said bring somebody back, I would do that. I respect the Supreme Court. … I have great respect for the Supreme Court.”
During the press briefing, attorney Sandoval-Moshenberg, confirmed he hasn’t been in contact with his client since he was deported to El Salvador.
“Neither we nor the family have been able to make any contact with him. One of the principal human-rights violations that occur in that facility is that inmates and detainees are held incommunicado,” he said.
Sandoval-Moshenberg declined to get into specifics about what relief his team would seek if the government doesn’t comply with the Court’s order, but he promised to respond in kind.
“If they don’t take today’s order seriously, we will respond seriously,” he said.
Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg said to reporters after the hearing that the federal government came to court lacking information on his client’s whereabouts against explicit orders. Although Sandoval-Moshenberg noted the administration’s legal team said it intends to eventually comply with the Supreme Court’s order, he said that isn’t enough.
“That’s the bare minimum. They should’ve done that already,” he said. “They’ve had plenty of time between the Supreme Court’s order early yesterday evening and now. He should be here in the United States. It’s a five-hour flight.”
The White House signaled Friday that it believes the federal government plays a limited role in returning Abrego Garcia Stateside. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked during a briefing if Trump wished El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, would bring the Maryland father home as part of his scheduled trip to the White House on Monday.
“The Supreme Court made their ruling last night very clear that it’s the administration’s responsibility to facilitate the return, not to effectuate the return,” Leavitt said.
Judge Xinis began the half-hour hearing by asking the government where Abrego Garcia currently is. ABC News has more from the exchange betwen Xinis and Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign:
“I do not have that knowledge, and therefore I cannot relate that knowledge,” Ensign said.
“I’m not asking for state secrets, I’m asking where one man who is wrongly and illegally deported, removed from this country [is],” Xinis said.
“Your Honor, I do not have the information provided to me that I can provide to you,” Ensign said again.
Judge Xinis wrapped the brief hearing by ordering the federal government to provide daily status updates on Abrego Garcia’s location and its efforts to return him to the United States. Lawfare reports that government officials insisted that the administration intends to comply with the Supreme Court’s order but that the deadlines are not “practicable.”
“We’re going to make a record of what, if anything, the government is doing or not doing,” Xinis said, per ABC News.
With the afternoon hearing underway, Politico reports that Judge Xinis asked the government for an update as to Abrego Garcia’s whereabouts, but Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign said he lacks that information
Earlier this week, Trump defended Abrego Garcia’s deportation and made it clear that returning him to the United States wasn’t a priority.
“We have judges that are out of control that say, ‘Oh bring him back, bring him back.’ We don’t want him back,” he said Tuesday.
The Justice Department said it will not comply with the courts’ request for information on Abrego Garcia, writing in a new filing that it’s limited by the truncated timeline set following the Supreme Court’s ruling. The department noted Judge Xinis has yet to clarify the meaning behind her directive to “effectuate” Abrego Garcia’s return and requested time to “brief that issue” before complying with any deadlines.
“In light of the insufficient amount of time afforded to review the Supreme Court’s Order following the dissolution of the administrative stay in this case, Defendants are not in a position where they ‘can’ share any information requested by the Court. That is the reality,” the filing read.
In a Friday morning filing, Abrego Garcia’s attorneys excoriated the federal government, saying the administration should have been making efforts to initiate their client’s return following Judge Xinis’s initial ruling from more than a week earlier. “Instead, the Government continues to delay, obfuscate, and flout court orders, while a man’s life and safety is at risk,” the filing read.
Abrego Garcia’s attorneys also denounced the government’s request for an extension, calling it “another stunning display of arrogance and cruelty.”
“It did not take that time to ponder whether to remove Garcia — which it effectuated within 72 hours of his unlawful seizure — and it does not need that time to comply with this Court’s and the Supreme Court’s rulings,” they wrote.
CBS News reports that Judge Xinis has rebuffed the Justice Department’s attempts to delay the scheduled afternoon hearing:
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision, Judge Xinis ordered the federal government to provide an update on Abrego Garcia’s whereabouts and the steps the administration has taken and will take to facilitate his return to the U.S. But the Friday 9:30 a.m. deadline came and went with no movement from the government.
Xinis later issued an extension, giving the government until 11:30 a.m. to provide the necessary information. The judge also scheduled an in-person hearing at 1 p.m.
In its opinion, the Supreme Court said it was granting the Maryland federal court its order, writing that it “properly requires the Government to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.”
But the justices said the Maryland court must clarify what it means by its directive that the federal government “effectuate” Abrego Garcia’s release with “due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.”
“For its part, the Government should be prepared to share what it can concerning the steps it has taken and the prospect of further steps,” the order read.
Since Abrego Garcia’s deportation, the Trump administration has taken the position that U.S. district court judge Paula Xinis lacks the jurisdiction to order his return from a foreign nation. The government echoed that position following the Supreme Court’s ruling.
“As the Supreme Court correctly recognized, it is the exclusive prerogative of the President to conduct foreign affairs. By directly noting the deference owed to the Executive Branch, this ruling once again illustrates that activist judges do not have the jurisdiction to seize control of the President’s authority to conduct foreign policy,” a Justice Department statement read.
Late last month, The Atlantic reported that the federal government acknowledged in court papers that its deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia was the result of an “administrative error” but that the administration lacked the ability to return him now that he is being held by El Salvador.
Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, Abrego Garcia’s attorney, told the outlet his client has no criminal record and was falsely accused of being a member of the gang MS-13 following a 2019 incident in which he and several other men were arrested outside a Maryland Home Depot.
Abrego Garcia fled gang violence in El Salvador and arrived in the U.S. in 2011 at the age of 16. In 2019, an immigration judge granted him a “withholding of removal,” a protected status. Abrego Garcia is married to Jennifer Vasquez Sura, a U.S. citizen, and they are raising three children together, including their 5-year-old son with special needs, per the Associated Press.
