Sen. Chris Van Hollen told reporters Friday that Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia said he’s been traumatized from his experiences in El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison and another Salvadoran detention center.
“Getting a meeting with Kilmar was not easy,” Van Hollen said after returning from El Salvador, where he met with Abrego Garcia on Thursday. “He’s obviously in a terrible situation, as I said, he’s experienced trauma. He said he’s sad every day.”
Van Hollen told reporters that after initially being told he couldn’t meet with Abrego Garcia, he received word Thursday that a meeting would be arranged, with Abrego Garcia brought to his hotel.
What followed was a meeting that Van Hollen said was designed by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s administration to push a narrative that prisoners like Abrego Garcia are being treated well — including by placing what looked like margaritas on the table.
“This is a guy who’s been detained. They want to create this appearance that life was just lovely for Kilmar,” Van Hollen told reporters. “If you look at the video he sent out right afterwards with the fake margaritas, you could see that all of that was the setup.”
Van Hollen also said Salvadoran officials tried to arrange the meeting by a pool, which he felt was meant to make light of Abrego Garcia’s situation. “Kilmar Abrego Garcia, miraculously risen from the “death camps” & “torture”, now sipping margaritas with Sen. Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador!” a post from Bukele reads, with a drink emoji.
Van Hollen has led Democratic advocacy for Abrego Garcia, who was wrongfully deported by the Trump administration last month. He had been legally living in Maryland with his family after a judge ruled that he could not be sent back to El Salvador because he was likely to be targeted by gangs.
Now he is being held in prison in El Salvador. The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the Trump administration had to facilitate his return to the United States. However, the administration has shown no intention of doing so in spite of the risk of being held in contempt of court. The president and vice president of El Salvador likewise said they couldn’t return Abrego Garcia.
For weeks, Abrego Garcia’s family and advocates were unsure whether he was even alive, although the Trump administration attested he was. Van Hollen’s meeting, which he and Bukele posted photos of, were the first sightings of Abrego Garcia since his wife first spotted him in a photo from the prison.
Van Hollen said Abrego Garcia told him that he and other migrants deported to El Salvador “didn’t know for sure where they were going.”
“They landed in El Salvador and he was taken to CECOT prison,” Van Hollen said. “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.”
Van Hollen said Abrego Garcia asked to call his family and update them of his whereabouts, and was denied that opportunity. He also said the men were not told where they were being sent, why they were being sent there or for how long. They have not been able to contact anyone since then, either.
“Nine days ago from today, he was moved to another detention center in Santa Ana, where the conditions are better,” Van Hollen said. “He said despite the better conditions, he still has no access to any news from the outside world and no ability to communicate with anybody in the outside world. His conversation with me was the first communication he had with anybody outside of prison since he was abducted.”
Although the deportation drew national attention and criticism, the Trump administration has not changed its position and continues to assert that Abrego Garcia is a member of the gang MS-13.
“He’s NOT coming back,” the White House posted to X on Friday morning.
Some Republicans have also criticized advocates for Abrego Garcia’s return by pointing to a case in Maryland where a woman was raped and killed by an unauthorized immigrant. Van Hollen said that’s being used to distract from the issues of due process and court defiance in Abrego Garcia’s case.
He said it’s part of a similar effort by the Salvadoran government, which Van Hollen said has been trying to push a narrative.
Van Hollen said Friday that he’d continue pushing until Abrego Garcia is returned, but that his release back to the U.S. has not been secured at this time. He hinted that El Salvador may be violating international agreements by not allowing prisoners access to lawyers, and that could be a pressure point for leverage.
“There are others coming,” Van Hollen said of Democrats planning on visiting Abrego Garcia in the future. “El Salvador is making a big mistake.”
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Casey Murray is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.