Democrat's Stunt to Retrieve Man from El Salvador Ends with Embarrassing Dud (2025)

A Democratic senator’s effort to swoop into El Salvador and free an alleged MS-13 gang member and accused wife beater, who has become a liberal cause, crashed and burned when El Salvador refused to follow the script.

Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland was turned away from his bid to visit Kilmar Abrego Garcia at El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, according to the New York Post.

“They should just let him go,” Van Hollen said after a meeting with El Salvadoran Vice President Félix Ulloa.

“I promised [Abrego Garcia’s family] that I would do everything I could to get him out.”

“I won’t stop trying,” he continued.

“This is an unsustainable and unjust moment. So it cannot continue this way.”

Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador — along with members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang — when President Donald Trump flexed his powers under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport threats to America’s safety.

The administration has resisted calls to bring him back to the U.S., saying that while there may have been an administrative mixup in the deportation, it is one fewer illegal immigrant gang member in America who would be deported another way.

Van Hollen said, he sought multiple avenues in which to contact Abrego Garcia, according to Axios.

He said Ulloa told him that he could not simply enter the prison to chat with Abrego Garcia, and that the only way to arrange a phone call is to work with the U.S. embassy in El Salvador.

“The criminal illegal immigrant is already home — he’s a Salvadoran citizen,” the Trump administration said in a statement, the Post noted. “… [W]here was his [Van Hollen’s] concern for Maryland constituents put at risk by the many other illegal immigrants allowed to roam free until now?”

“It’s appalling and sad that Sen. Van Hollen and the Democrats applauding his trip to El Salvador today are incapable of having any shred of common sense or empathy for their own constituents and our citizens,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.

On Wednesday, officials released documentation from the Prince George’s County, Maryland, Police Department that linked Abrego Garcia to MS-13 gang members, according to Fox News.

The department’s Gang Unit MS-13 Intelligence Squad interviewed Abrego Garcia and contacted a “past proven and reliable source” who identified him as an MS-13 member.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said all the huffing and puffing from the left, which has adopted Abrego Garcia as a cause, will not change what takes place, according to Fox News.

“He is not coming back to our country,” Bondi said.

Bondi said that Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele “said he was not sending him back. That’s the end of the story. If he wanted to send him back, we would give him a plane ride back. There was no situation, ever, where he was going to stay in this country. None.”

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