Purported MS-13 member Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose deportation from Maryland to El Salvador has become a cause celebre among liberals and Democrats, is no longer being housed in the Central American country’s notorious CECOT megaprison, Sen. Chris Van Hollen told reporters Friday.
“He told me, and this was yesterday, that eight days ago — so I guess nine days ago from today — he was moved to another detention center in Santa Ana, where the conditions are better,” the Maryland Democrat told reporters at Dulles Airport in northern Virginia upon his return from a three-day trip to El Salvador highlighted by a meeting with Abrego Garcia.
According to Van Hollen, Abrego Garcia told him that “despite the better conditions, he still has no access to any news from the outside world and no ability to communicate with anybody in the outside world.”
Abrego Garcia was removed from the US with 260 other suspected gang members on March 15. He and his family have insisted that he is not a member of the notorious MS-13 gang, and have seized on an initial Justice Department statement that his deportation was due to an “administrative error.” (edited)
The Trump administration has disavowed that statement, saying that Abrego Garcia had no right to be in the US and was confirmed to have been a member of MS-13 by rock-solid law enforcement sources.
Despite Abrego Garcia’s claims that “conditions are better” in the Santa Ana prison, Human Rights Watch declared last month that it had documented cases of ill-treatment there as well, including “torture, ill-treatment, incommunicado detention, severe violations of due process and inhumane conditions, such as lack of access to adequate healthcare and food.”
The post Alleged MS-13 member Kilmar Abrego Garcia no longer in notorious CECOT megaprison, senator says appeared first on New York Post.
