WASHINGTON — Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen claimed Friday the El Salvador government set up his incongruous photo op with accused MS-13 soldier Kilmar Abrego Garcia by planting glasses of margarita cocktails in front of the pair when they met at Van Hollen’s hotel the day before.
Van Hollen (D-Md.) — who touched down at Dulles International Airport following his three-day trip to the Central American country to try to win Abrego Garcia’s release — told reporters a Salvadoran official passed them the drinks to make it seem like the deported migrant was living in luxury rather than fearing for his life in a gang prison.
“They made a little mistake,” said Van Hollen, who insisted neither he nor Abrego Garcia indulged during their chat. “If you sip out of one of those glasses, some of whatever it was, salt or sugar, would disappear.
“You would see a gap. There’s no gap. Nobody drank any margaritas for sugar water or whatever it is.”
El Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele, who has been working with the Trump administration by accepting suspected gang members to the notorious CECOT megaprison, mocked the Van Hollen visit on X.
“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 Thursday.
“This is a lesson into the lengths that President Bukele will do to deceive people about what’s going on,” Van Hollen said Friday.
Van Hollen claimed he was allowed to meet with Abrego Garcia “all of a sudden” after El Salvador Vice President Félix Ulloa turned down his initial request Wednesday. The senator then attempted to drive to CECOT himself Thursday, but was pulled over by soldiers and turned away. Hours later, he said, Abrego Garcia was brought to Van Hollen’s San Salvador hotel.
The senator also claimed Salvadoran officials requested the meeting take place in a lounge area by the hotel pool.
Democrats and liberals have rallied to Abrego Garcia’s cause after the Justice Department said in a March 31 court filing that his removal from the US was due to an “administrative error.”
The Trump administration has since disavowed that statement and argued that Abrego Garcia both had no right to be in the US and was a member in good standing of MS-13, citing information from law enforcement sources and details of a March 2019 arrest by local police in Hyattsville, Md.
“When Kilmar Abrego Garcia was originally arrested, he was wearing a sweatshirt with rolls of money covering the ears, mouth and eyes of presidents on various currency denominations,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday. “This is a known MS-13 gang symbol of ‘hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil.’”
In October 2019, an immigration judge barred Abrego Garcia’s removal while his claim for asylum — alleging that he feared gang violence — could be considered. However, he was also denied bond in two separate rulings that same year, one of which cited evidence that he was a MS-13 member.
President Trump said this week that it is up to El Salvador to determine Abrego Garcia’s fate, since he is not a US citizen.
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