Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele took a jab at Sen. Chris Van Hollen on social media Thursday night. He mocked the Democrat's meeting with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was deported last month by the Trump administration in what officials called an “administrative error.”
Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident who fled El Salvador as a teen, ended up in the country's most infamous prison. Van Hollen had traveled to check on his well-being. “I said my main goal of this trip was to meet with Kilmar,” Van Hollen said.
The senator was initially blocked from seeing him. But a day later, Bukele posted photos showing Van Hollen and Abrego Garcia together, smiling by a table near the water.
“Kilmar Abrego Garcia, miraculously risen from the ‘death camps’ & ‘torture’, now sipping margaritas with Sen. Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador,” Bukele wrote on X. In a follow-up post, he added, “Now that he’s been confirmed healthy, he gets the honor of staying in El Salvador’s custody.”
Democrats have raised alarms over the deportation and lack of due process. Van Hollen’s trip followed the Trump administration’s refusal to comply with a Supreme Court order to return Abrego Garcia.
White House officials said they couldn’t make El Salvador send him back. “That’s up to El Salvador if they want to return him. That’s not up to us,” Attorney General Pam Bondi told reporters.
Bukele doubled down on his refusal to release Abrego Garcia. “How could I return him to the United States? I smuggle him to the United States? Of course I’m not going to do it,” he said. “I don’t have the power to return him to the United States.”
President Trump and his team say Abrego Garcia is connected to MS-13. Despite the family’s denial and earlier White House admissions of error, the administration stands by the deportation.