Democrat Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland is headed to El Salvador Wednesday in an attempt to visit Kilmar Ábrego García, one of his constituents, who is being held in a prison there despite the fact that the Supreme Court has ruled he was legally in the US, wrongly deported, and should be returned home. "We were in the gray zone before this. But if the Trump administration continues to thumb its nose at the federal courts in this case we're in, we're clearly in constitutional crisis territory," Van Hollen tells the Guardian.
It's not clear how far he'll get; he says El Salvador has not responded to his request that he be allowed to access the prison, which is notorious for human rights abuses. He also requested to meet with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele while Bukele was in Washington DC, but received no response on that request either. "What they have not overtly done previously is outright defy a court order," Van Hollen says of the Trump administration. "They've slow-walked court orders, they've tried to parse their words based on technicalities, they've not outright defied a court order. In my view, this now clearly crosses that line."
On Tuesday, during a hearing in the case, a federal judge rebuked the administration for its failure to comply with court orders, the New York Times reports. "To date nothing has been done. Nothing," she said. But a lawyer for the Justice Department focused on SCOTUS' use of the word "facilitate" to describe what the administration is being ordered to do. "If Abrego Garcia presents himself at a port of entry, we will facilitate his entry to the United States," he said. Bukele, however, says he is powerless to return Abrego Garcia to the US. (More Kilmar Abrego Garcia stories.)
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