Maryland Sen. Van Hollen says he was denied entry to the El Salvador prison holding Abrego Garcia

SAN SALVADOR (AP) — Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen says he was denied entry into the El Salvador prison where Kilmar Abrego Garcia is being held.

Van Hollen, a Democrat, is in El Salvador to push for Abrego Garcia’s release after he was sent there by the Trump administration in March despite an immigration court order preventing his deportation. He said in a video posted on X that his car was stopped when he tried to enter the prison on Thursday to check on Abrego Garcia’s well-being.

“Today’s purpose was just to see what his health condition is,” Van Hollen said in the video. He said his car was stopped by soldiers about 3 kilometers from the prison, even as they let other cars go on.

“They stopped us because they are under orders not to allow us to proceed,” Van Hollen said.

U.S. President Donald Trump and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said this week that they have no basis to send him back, even as the U.S. Supreme Court has called on the administration to facilitate his return. Trump officials have said that Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran citizen who was living in Maryland, has ties to the MS-13 gang, but his attorneys say the government has provided no evidence of that and Abrego Garcia has never been charged with any crime related to such activity.

Van Hollen told reporters Wednesday that he met with Salvadoran Vice President Félix Ulloa who said his government could not return Abrego Garcia to the United States.

“Why is the government of El Salvador continuing to imprison a man where they have no evidence that he’s committed any crime and they have not been provided any evidence from the United States that he has committed any crime?” Van Hollen said after the meeting. “They should just let him go.”

Van Hollen’s trip has become a flashpoint in the U.S. The Trump administration sharply criticized it, while Democrats have rallied around Abrego Garcia.

“We have an unjust situation here,” said Van Hollen, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said at the news conference. “The Trump administration is lying about Abrego Garcia. The American courts have looked at the facts.”

Trump officials reiterated Wednesday that he would not be returned to the United States. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt held a press briefing with the mother of a Maryland woman, Rachel Morin, who was killed by a fugitive from El Salvador in 2023.

“It’s appalling and sad that Sen. 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 and our citizens,” Leavitt said at the briefing.

Republicans have focused on the victims of crime committed by people in the U.S. illegally in arguing for Trump’s promised immigration crackdown and mass deportations.

Democrats, meanwhile, have seized on the case to highlight what they say is Trump’s disrespect for the courts and as base voters have encouraged them to fight harder against Trump’s policies. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., is also considering a trip to El Salvador, as are some House Democrats.

While Van Hollen was denied entry, several House Republicans have visited the notorious gang prison in support of the Trump administration’s efforts. Rep. Riley Moore, a West Virginia Republican, posted Tuesday evening that he’d visited the prison where Abrego Garcia is being held. He did not mention Abrego Garcia but said the facility “houses the country’s most brutal criminals.”

“I leave now even more determined to support President Trump’s efforts to secure our homeland,” Moore wrote on social media.

Missouri Republican Rep. Jason Smith, chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, also visited the prison. He posted on X that “thanks to President Trump” the facility “now includes illegal immigrants who broke into our country and committed violent acts against Americans.”

The fight over Abrego Garcia has also played out in contentious court filings, with repeated refusals from the government to tell a judge what it plans to do, if anything, to repatriate him. The Trump administration has called his deportation a mistake but also has argued, essentially, that its conclusion about Abrego Garcia’s affiliation makes him ineligible for protection from the courts.

Since March, El Salvador has accepted from the U.S. more than 200 Venezuelan immigrants — whom Trump administration officials have accused of gang activity and violent crimes — and placed them inside the country’s maximum-security gang prison just outside of San Salvador. That prison is part of Bukele’s broader effort to crack down on the country’s powerful street gangs, which has put 84,000 people behind bars and made Bukele extremely popular at home.

Human rights groups have previously accused Bukele’s government of subjecting those jailed to “systematic use of torture and other mistreatment.” Officials there deny wrongdoing.

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Jalonick reported from Washington.