Abrego Garcia Out of CECOT — But Remains Behind Bars

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.”

The Trump administration has since 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.

The Santa Ana prison is located about 85 miles northwest of CECOT, where Abrego Garcia was initially brought.

“He was put in a cell with 25 other prisoners at CECOT,” Van Hollen said, recalling his conversation with the deported man the previous evening.

“He said he was not afraid of the other prisoners in his immediate cell, but that he was traumatized by being at CECOT and fearful of many of the prisoners in other cell blocks who called out to him and taunted him in various ways.”

Van Hollen added that Abrego Garcia told him that “his conversation with me was the first communication he’d had with anybody outside of prison.

“He said he felt very said about being in a prison because he had not committed any crimes,” the senator added. “When I asked him what was the one thing he would ask for in addition to his freedom, he said he wanted to talk to his wife, Jennifer.”

The Trump administration has been ordered by a Maryland federal judge to “take all available steps to facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return to the US, a ruling which was upheld by an appeals court earlier this week and which the Justice Department is expected to appeal to the Supreme Court.

The president and his allies are arguing that the judge’s order is unconstitutional and violates the separation of powers by ordering the executive branch to conduct diplomacy with a foreign nation over returning one of its own citizens.