'Is he OK?': Maryland Sen. Van Hollen turned away from visiting Abrego Garcia in El Salvador prison

Jeff Barker and Carson Swick, The Baltimore Sun on Apr 17, 2025

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Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen was turned away by armed guards at a military checkpoint on Thursday as he sought to visit a notorious El Salvador prison to check on the condition of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a constituent who hasn’t been heard from since he was mistakenly deported last month.

The roadblock capped a two-day visit in which the second-term Democrat was unable to see Abrego Garcia or secure his release. The trip drew significant media attention on the Prince George’s County man as the senator and others sought to pressure the Trump administration to bring him home. Van Hollen planned to leave El Salvador in the evening and return to Washington early Friday.

“We just tried to go visit him in prison just to check on his condition. Is he doing OK?” Van Hollen said in a video showing him and Chris Newman, attorney for Abrego Garcia’s wife and mother, on a road, conversing with a guard in full military gear.

Van Hollen said he was stopped about 1.86 miles from the CECOT prison, which Republican House members had recently been permitted to visit.

“Today’s purpose was just to see what his health condition is, and these soldiers were ordered to prevent us from going any farther from this spot,” Van Hollen said on the video posted on X. “As you can see, they’re letting other cars go by, but they stopped us because they’re under orders not to allow us to proceed.”

The episode marked the latest clash between Democrats and the Republican Trump administration over Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old Prince George’s County sheet metal apprentice and El Salvadoran national who was deported to El Salvador due to what a Trump administration attorney called an “administrative error.”

Abrego Garcia’s case has become a platform for a national debate over the scope of President Donald Trump’s authority. Trump’s administration has publicly called Abrego Garcia an MS-13 gang member, human trafficker and illegal alien.

Congressional Democrats say Abrego Garcia, who had been in the United States legally since 2019, was denied due process and that Trump is defying federal court orders to bring him home and telling “lies” about Abrego Garcia that cast him as a gang member or terrorist.

“We have a longtime common goal between the United States and El Salvador to crack down on transnational gangs like MS-13. I have been fighting against MS-13 for probably longer than Donald Trump even heard about MS-13,” Van Hollen said during a news conference Thursday. “And they’re trying to make this case about Kilmar all about MS-13, when in fact the judge in the case has said they have not provided substantial or any significant evidence to back up their claim.”

Van Hollen added that while he is the first member of Congress to visit El Salvador on Abrego Garcia’s behalf, he will not be the last.

The senator said he was told by El Salvador’s vice president, Félix Ulloa, during his visit, which began Wednesday, that he would not “smuggle” Abrego Garcia back to the United States or arrange for Van Hollen to meet with the Maryland man.

“Nobody has had any communication with him since he was illegally abducted from Maryland,” Van Hollen said Thursday.

The Trump administration says it lacks jurisdiction to bring Abrego Garcia home, and El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele has told the White House he won’t help.

Van Hollen made the trip even though Bukele is not currently in El Salvador. The senator has said he hopes to draw attention to what he says is an abuse of power by Trump.

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