Trump administration cites senator's El Salvador visit in Abrego Garcia case

Dan Belson, Baltimore Sun on Apr 21, 2025

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U.S. Department of State officials said in a court filing that Kilmar Abrego Garcia has been held at a Salvadoran detention facility “in a room of his own with a bed and furniture,” citing what the mistakenly deported Maryland man told Sen. Chris Van Hollen last week.

Abrego Garcia had told Van Hollen that he was transferred to the facility, Centro Industrial, in Santa Ana about eight days before meeting with the Democratic senator last Thursday, according to the filing. He had been held at El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, a megaprison where President Donald Trump’s administration has sent hundreds of people facing deportation from the United States.

The Trump administration’s admission is a reversal from what officials have been telling U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in daily status reports. Since last week, around when Abrego Garcia was transferred to the Santa Ana facility, the government has been stating that the 29-year-old was held at the megaprison, abbreviated as CECOT.

“It is my understanding based on official reporting from our Embassy in San Salvador that Abrego Garcia is currently being held in the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador,” wrote Michael G. Kozak, a senior State Department official, in an April 12 filing. “He is alive and secure in that facility.”

Kozak wrote Sunday’s status report, which states that the U.S. embassy “reported that Abrego García told Sen. Van Hollen on April 17 that he had been transferred from CECOT” to Santa Ana. He is not in a cell and is in the facility’s administrative building, Kozak wrote.

Van Hollen told reporters last week that Abrego Garcia said he was “traumatized” while held with others at the CECOT, noting he was taunted by prisoners in other cells and felt “threatened.”

It comes after Xinis ordered “expedited discovery” in the case, where the Trump administration refuses to act further on a court order to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S. after admitting he was mistakenly deported last month.

In court, the Trump administration has maintained that the court can not intervene in foreign affairs — on social media, they have cast Abrego Garcia as a dangerous gang member.

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