SAN SALVADOR: US lawmaker Glenn Ivey said Monday that authorities in El Salvador had prevented him from visiting Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man deported from the United States by the Trump administration due to an administrative error.
US President Donald Trump has delivered on campaign promises by launching a sweeping crackdown on migrants to the United States since coming to power in January.
Rights groups have alleged that Trump’s government is committing rights abuses and denying undocumented migrants due process, claims that courts have, in part, upheld in cases that are ongoing.
Abrego Garcia’s case is one of the most prominent to have come to light. US authorities admit that he was deported to a notorious El Salvadoran prison for violent criminals due to an error, but have refused to comply with court orders to return him to the United States.
Ivey is the sixth US Democratic lawmaker to visit El Salvador in an effort to secure the return of Abrego Garcia, 29, who is being held in a penal facility in Santa Ana, 70 kilometers from the Salvadoran capital, after being deported in March.
“We were not able to meet with Kilmar, for sure,” Ivey told a press conference in San Salvador. “We went out to the Santa Ana prison today and got there, and we spoke to the people at the gate.
They wouldn’t open the gate and let us in.”
Ivey said he was told to obtain a permit for a visit, but he had already spoken to senior officials in order to arrange the meeting.
He said he had spoken to Salvadoran Ambassador to the United States Milena Mayorga and that he intended to speak to Abrego Garcia “to make sure that he’s okay, to discuss his legal rights and the like.”
The US lawmaker said he had met leaders of human rights groups, but was unable to meet officials from the government of President Nayib Bukele, a key Trump ally who has also refused to facilitate returning Abrego Garcia to the United States.
Chris Newman, an attorney for Abrego Garcia’s family, said this was his third visit to El Salvador to try and secure the release of his client.
“We want access to Mr. Abrego Garcia so he can receive legal services,” he said.
El Salvador has received 288 migrants deported from the United States, including 252 Venezuelans, who are being held in a maximum security prison.
The Trump administration says — without proof — that Abrego Garcia is a violent criminal who is a member of the MS-13 gang, which has been declared a “terrorist” organization by Washington.
Trump’s government has used an obscure wartime law to summarily deport alleged gang members, a process some US courts have halted and that one, in Texas, has deemed “unlawful.”
