Sen. Chris Van Hollen met with the vice president of El Salvador after flying there on Wednesday, but he was not allowed to see Kilmar Abrego Garcia—the purpose of his trip. The US Supreme Court has ruled that Abrego Garcia was in the US legally and should not have been sent to a foreign prison by the Trump administration. In San Salvador, the New York TImes reports, Van Hollen told reporters he was calling upon President Nayib Bukele "to do the right thing and allow Mr. Abrego Garcia to walk out of a prison—a man who's charged with no crime, convicted of no crime and who was illegally abducted from the United States."
The senator said he met with US Embassy officials and the nation's vice president, Félix Ulloa, who would not agree to release Abrego García. Nor would Ulloa allow Van Hollen to meet with the detainee or speak to him on the phone, per the Washington Post, telling the senator he needed more time. Van Hollen also told reporters: "President Trump and our attorney general, Pam Bondi, and the vice president of the United States are lying when they say that Abrego García has been charged with a crime or is part of MS-13. That is a lie."
The vice president also would not commit to letting Abrego Garcia's family speak to him, Van Hollen said. Ulloa said such a request would have to come from the embassy—which is to say, the Trump administration. Also on Wednesday, Democratic Rep. Yassamin Ansari said she, too, will go to El Salvador, per the AP. "My parents fled an authoritarian regime in Iran where people 'disappeared'—I refuse to sit back and watch it happen here, too," she wrote in a statement. (More Kilmar Abrego Garcia stories.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
