Van Hollen makes personal appeal to Trump to return deported immigrant

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) is stopped at a military checkpoint about a mile away from the notorious Salvadorian prison known as CECOT in El Salvador, on Thursday, April 17, 2025. Van Hollen traveled to El Salvador earlier this month to press for the release of a Maryland resident deported to El Salvador, Kilmar Armando Abrego García. (Daniele Volpe/The New York Times)

By Robert Jimison

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., made a personal request Tuesday to President Donald Trump to return a Salvadoran national and Maryland resident who was mistakenly deported last month and remains imprisoned in El Salvador, accusing Trump of “gross violations of the Constitution and due process rights” in Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s case.

In the lengthy letter, Van Hollen scolded Trump for willfully ignoring a Supreme Court decision instructing his administration to “facilitate” the man’s return.

Justice Department lawyers said not long after Abrego Garcia’s removal that his deportation had been an “administrative error.” Van Hollen traveled to El Salvador last week and was allowed to meet briefly with Abrego Garcia after the government arranged for him to be temporarily released from a Salvadoran detention center.

Van Hollen gave Trump a detailed recounting of his meeting with Vice President Félix Ulloa of El Salvador, noting that their conversations made clear that his country had “no independent legal basis” to imprison Abrego Garcia and had done so only because of a financial deal with the Trump administration to hold any deportee it sends.

“The Trump administration’s whole argument is this sham claim that El Salvador is a sovereign country and it’s up to them whether or not Abrego Garcia gets released,” Van Hollen said in an interview. “But the government of El Salvador says exactly the opposite.”

In the letter, Van Hollen wrote that he believed that Salvadoran officials would release Abrego Garcia if the Trump administration requested it.

“Obviously, your administration could say El Salvador was no longer contractually obligated to imprison Mr. Abrego Garcia. Then El Salvador can release him, and Attorney General Bondi can, as promised, send the plane,” Van Hollen wrote, referencing remarks Pam Bondi made during an Oval Office meeting between Trump and President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador earlier this month.

But Bondi later told reporters that Abrego Garcia would not be returned, asserting that Salvadoran officials were unwilling to release him.

“He is not coming back to our country,” she said during a news conference at the Justice Department. “President Bukele said he was not sending him back. That’s the end of the story.”

Van Hollen argued that the implications of Abrego Garcia’s plight extend far beyond one individual.

“While Mr. Abrego Garcia is at the center of this case, its consequences impact the due process rights of everyone who lives in America,” he wrote. “If your administration can strip away the constitutional rights of one man in defiance of court orders, it can do it to all of us.”