Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) has said that El Salvador’s vice president claims that the country is only holding American resident Kilmar Abrego García because it has a contractual obligation to the U.S., which is paying to keep him and others imprisoned.
The senator, who spoke with Salvadoran Vice President Félix Ulloa in an on-the-record interview during a trip to El Salvador earlier this month, shared more details of their meeting in a letter sent to the White House this week. Van Hollen reported that Ulloa repeatedly said the El Salvador government has no role in determining whether or not Abrego García committed a crime.
“I mean, if the person that you send is not a criminal, is not whatever, I mean it is up to you, that’s what I’m saying… The ball is in your court,” Ulloa said, Van Hollen recalled. “We have a deal with the U.S. government. They send people. We host them. They pay. And that’s it.”
Ulloa further said that the El Salvador government has not reviewed Abrego García’s file and washes their hands of any responsibility to ensure that the people imprisoned in the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) or elsewhere have committed the crimes they’re accused of.
“My conversation with Vice President Ulloa clearly demonstrates that the Government of El Salvador has no independent legal basis for imprisoning Mr. Abrego Garcia; that, as they readily concede, the only reason for keeping him in prison is that they entered into an agreement with your Administration to be paid by the United States,” Van Hollen said.
“This also reveals that your Administration could easily facilitate his release by letting El Salvador know that — given his wrongful detention — they are not contractually bound to continue imprisoning Mr. Abrego Garcia,” he went on.
Indeed, President Donald Trump admitted in an interview with ABC on Tuesday that he could get Abrego García back with a simple phone call if he wanted to.
“You could get him back. There’s a phone on this desk,” ABC’s Terry Moran said.
“I could,” Trump responded.
But, still standing in seeming defiance of the Supreme Court, Trump instead repeated his administration’s claim that Abrego García is a member of the MS-13 gang — a claim that officials have failed to back up with any substantial evidence. In the interview, in fact, Trump claimed that Abrego García has “MS13” tattooed on his hand — citing a doctored photo of his tattoos in which the letters were clearly added in on a computer, with text boxes.
Meanwhile, it appears that officials have already made some kind of judgement about Abrego García’s innocence of the gang affiliation charges. The Maryland father has been transferred from CECOT into a facility in Santa Ana, El Salvador — a prison that “categorically excludes anyone accused of belonging to a gang,” NBC reported this week.
In his letter, Van Hollen told the administration to “put up or shut up in court” on their dubious claims against Abrego García.
“You are engaged in gross violations of the Constitution and due process rights,” the senator said. “If your Administration can strip away the constitutional rights of one man in defiance of court orders, it can do it to all of us.”
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