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“Facilitating his return means something more than doing nothing, and they are doing nothing,” Senator Chris Van Hollen said after his trip to El Salvador.
- April 20, 2025Updated 4:06 p.m. ET
Senator Chris Van Hollen on Sunday accused the Trump administration of “outright defying” court orders to return a wrongly deported Maryland man whom Mr. Van Hollen met with in El Salvador last week, and he urged the administration to stop releasing unfavorable records about the man.
“They are flouting the courts as we speak,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “Facilitating his return means something more than doing nothing, and they are doing nothing.”
Mr. Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, traveled to El Salvador last week to press for the release of the man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who was deported to a notorious Salvadoran prison in March in what an administration lawyer described as an “administrative error.”
A federal appeals court on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to take a more active role in bringing back Mr. Abrego Garcia, a few days after the Supreme Court ruled that the government should “facilitate” his return from El Salvador.
Instead, the White House has publicized an allegation of domestic abuse from Mr. Abrego Garcia’s wife from 2021, when she sought a protective order. Mr. Abrego Garcia’s wife said last week that the two “were able to work through this situation privately.”
The administration also cited a police filing from a Tennessee trooper who stopped Mr. Abrego Garcia on a highway in 2022 and raised suspicion of human trafficking. Federal law enforcement officials instructed the trooper not to detain him, and Mr. Abrego Garcia’s wife has said he routinely drove workers to their jobs.
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