US Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen said on Wednesday that El Salvador’s authorities denied access to Kilmar Abrago Garcia, a salvadon deported by mistake and kept in a maximum security prison in the country.
Hollen arrived in El Salvador on Wednesday to meet with high employees and defend the release of Garcia, but was informed by El Salvador’s vice president, Felix Ulloa, that he could not authorize a visit or a call with Salvadoran.
The Democrat, who is a member of the US Senate Foreign Commission said that Ulloa also told him that El Salvador had not released Garcia because the United States were paying to keep him in prison.
“Why should the US government pay the El Salvador government to arrest a man who was illegally kidnapped and did not commit any crime?” Said Van Hollen, a Senator of Maryland, where Garcia lived.
El Salvador’s government did not stand on Van Hollen’s visit to the country.
White House Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the Democratic Senator was potentially using taxpayers’ money to “demand the release of [um] illegal, deported and terrorist immigrant MS-13. ”
“It is terrible and sad that Senator Van Hollen and the Democrats are unable to have a drop of common sense or empathy for their own constituents and our citizens,” she told reporters.
The US Supreme Court instructed the Trump government to facilitate Garcia’s return after Washington acknowledged that he was deported due to an administrative error.
At a meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House on Monday, El Salvador president Nayib Bukele said he has no plans to return Garcia. The US internal security department said separately that it has no authority to bring man back to the United States.
Garcia, 29, left El Salvador at 16 to escape gang violence, his lawyers said. He received a protection order in 2019 to continue living in the US and was never accused or convicted of any crime.
His lawyers also denied the Justice Department’s allegation that he is a member of the MS-13 gang.
Together with Garcia, the Trump government deported hundreds of people, especially Venezuelans, who claim to be gang members, to El Salvador under the law of foreign enemies of 1798 without presenting evidence and without judgment.
No government disclosed the names of the arrested men, and they have not had access to lawyers or any contact with the outside world since they arrived in prison, the lawyers said.
This content was originally published in El Salvador prohibits US senator of visiting man deported by mistake on the CNN Brazil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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