(SAN SALVADOR, EL SALVADOR) — The government of El Salvador on Monday rejected a request from four Democratic lawmakers to visit wrongly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
The lawmakers were trying to arrange a meeting four days after a visit from Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, where Abrego Garcia and his family live.
In an interview with MSNBC from El Salvador, Florida Rep. Maxwell Frost said Monday that he and the others were told that their visit was rejected because they are not in El Salvador “in an official capacity.”
“We’re not giving up,” Frost said. “We have more meetings scheduled.”
Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran native who has been living with his wife and children in Maryland, was deported in March to El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison — despite a 2019 court order barring his deportation to that country due to fear of persecution — after the Trump administration claimed he was a member of the criminal gang MS-13.
The Trump administration, while acknowledging that Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador in error, has said that his alleged MS-13 affiliation makes him ineligible to return to the United States. His wife and attorney have denied that he is an MS-13 member.
An official with the U.S. Department of State said Monday in a status report that Abrego Garcia is in “good conditions and in an excellent state of health.”
“The Salvadoran government responded on April 21 that Mr. Abrego Garcia is being held at the Centro Industrial penitentiary facility in Santa Ana,” Michael Kozak, a senior bureau official for the State Department, reported.
Sen. Van Hollen said that Abrego Garcia told him at their meeting that he had been transferred out of CECOT “about eight days” prior.
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