US lawmakers in El Salvador urge release of wrongly deported citizen

A delegation of Democratic lawmakers visited El Salvador on Monday in a new push to secure the release of a wrongly deported US resident at the center of a mounting political row.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia was sent back to his country and remains imprisoned there despite the US Supreme Court ordering President Donald Trump’s administration to facilitate his return to the United States.

“There is no reason for me to believe that our administration, the Trump administration, is doing anything to facilitate his safe return home, and that is simply unacceptable,” congresswoman Yassamin Ansari told reporters after meeting US embassy officials.

“It isn’t just about Kilmar. It is the fact that our government is relentlessly going after any immigrant that’s trying to come to the United States or is in the United States without any regard for due process,” the Arizona representative said.

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Ansari was accompanied by fellow US House Democrats Robert Garcia, Maxwell Frost and Maxine Dexter.

Frost said there was “zero indication” that the Trump administration was trying to bring Abrego Garcia back.

“But we’ve got to be clear – this isn’t just about him. This is also about every single person in the United States. The constitution applies to all people in our country. Due process applies to all people in our country,” the Florida representative added.

Frost said that Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s administration had denied a request for the group of US lawmakers to meet with the deported man.

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The visit comes days after Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the state where Abrego Garcia has lived for years with his wife and child, arrived in the Central American country.

Van Hollen eventually managed to meet with Abrego Garcia after multiple efforts.

Trump’s administration has paid El Salvador millions of dollars to lock up nearly 300 migrants it says are criminals and gang members – including Abrego Garcia.

The 29-year-old was detained in Maryland last month and expelled to El Salvador along with 238 Venezuelans and 22 fellow Salvadorans who were deported shortly after Trump invoked a rarely used wartime authority.

El Salvador’s President Bukele has vowed not to return Abrego Garcia to the United States, but on Sunday proposed to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to exchange his countrymen for “political prisoners” in Venezuela.

Maduro responded on Monday in his weekly address by calling Bukele a “systematic and serial violator of human rights” and demanding the Venezuelans’ “unconditional release.”

The Trump administration admitted that Abrego Garcia was deported due to an “administrative error,” and the Supreme Court ruled that the government must “facilitate” his return.

But Trump has since doubled down, insisting Abrego Garcia is in fact a gang member.

Bukele, who was hosted at the White House last week, said he did not have the power to return Abrego Garcia.

The migrant’s supporters note he had protected legal status and no criminal conviction in the United States.

“My parents fled an authoritarian regime in Iran where people were ‘disappeared’ – I refuse to sit back and watch it happen here,” Ansari said in a statement.

“What happened to Kilmar Abrego Garcia is not just one family’s nightmare – it is a constitutional crisis that should outrage every single one of us,” said Dexter, a congresswoman from Oregon.

Abrego Garcia told Van Hollen that he was initially imprisoned at the Terrorism Confinement Center, a mega-prison for gang members, but was later transferred to a jail in the western department of Santa Ana.