El Salvador blocks US senator from visiting wrongly deported man

PHOTO CAPTION: Salvadoran prison guards escort alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and the MS-13 gang recently deported by the U.S. government to be imprisoned in the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) prison, in Tecoluca, El Salvador April 12, 2025. Secretaria de Prensa de la Presidencia/Handout via REUTERS

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (Reuters) -Democratic U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen said on Wednesday authorities in El Salvador had denied him access to Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran man mistakenly deported and being held in a notorious prison in the country.

Van Hollen arrived in the Central American nation on Wednesday morning saying he would seek to meet with senior Salvadoran officials to secure Abrego Garcia's release.

But Van Hollen told reporters El Salvador's Vice President Felix Ulloa had told the senator he could not authorize a visit or a call with Abrego Garcia.

Van Hollen, who is a member of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Ulloa had also told him El Salvador was not releasing Abrego Garcia because the United States was paying to keep him incarcerated. 

"Why should the government of the United States pay the government of El Salvador to lock up a man who was illegally abducted from the United States and committed no crime?" Van Hollen said.   

The government of El Salvador did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Van Hollen's visit.

After Washington acknowledged Abrego Garcia had been deported due to an "administrative error," the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an order by Judge Paula Xinis directing the government to "facilitate" Abrego Garcia's return.

In a meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House on Monday, El Salvador's president, Nayib Bukele, said he had no plans to return Abrego Garcia. Earlier on Monday, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said in a court filing that it "does not have authority to forcibly" bring Abrego Garcia back. 

On Tuesday, Xinis said she would not immediately hold the government in contempt of court, but said there was no evidence the Trump administration had tried to retrieve Abrego Garcia and said she would not tolerate "gamesmanship or grandstanding."

Along with Abrego Garcia, the Trump administration has deported hundreds of people, mostly Venezuelans, whom it says are gang members, to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 without presenting evidence and without a trial. 

Neither government has released the names of the men incarcerated, and the men have not had access to lawyers or any contact with the outside world since arriving at the prison, lawyers have said.

In March, after a judge said flights carrying migrants prosecuted under the Alien Enemies Act should return to the United States, Bukele wrote on X that it was too late, alongside images showing men being rushed off a plane in the dark.

A federal judge on Wednesday said officials in Trump's administration could face criminal prosecution for contempt of court for violating his order last month halting deportations of Venezuelan migrants under the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime law.

Abrego Garcia, 29, left El Salvador at age 16 to escape gang-related violence, his lawyers have said. He was granted a protective order in 2019 to continue living in the United States. He has never been charged with or convicted of any crime, according to Abrego Garcia's lawyers, who have denied the Justice Department's allegation that he is a member of the criminal gang MS-13.

During his San Salvador press conference, Van Hollen stressed that neither the Salvadoran government nor the Trump administration have presented any evidence that Abrego Garcia was a member of the gang. 

U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was to meet on Wednesday with El Salvador's minister of national defense, Rene Merino, at the Pentagon.

 (Reporting by Nelson Renteria in San Salvador and Diego Ore in Mexico City; additional reporting by Idrees Ali in Washington; Writing by Sarah Kinosian; Editing by Leslie Adler and Deepa Babington)