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A U.S. senator was denied entry to a prison holding Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia and other deportees. The authorities arranged a meeting at a hotel instead. Here’s what to know.
Annie Correal has been covering El Salvador’s role in the Trump administration’s deportation plans.
April 18, 2025Updated 6:12 p.m. ET
When Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, tried to visit Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia on Thursday in a notorious prison in El Salvador, the lawmaker was turned back by soldiers. The authorities instead delivered Mr. Abrego Garcia to the senator’s hotel in San Salvador.
There, Mr. Van Hollen and Mr. Abrego Garcia, who had been mistakenly deported from Maryland and is at the center of a contentious legal battle between the Trump administration and U.S. courts, sat at a restaurant table to talk.
El Salvador’s public-relations-savvy president, Nayib Bukele, immediately posted photos of the meeting on X and wrote that Mr. Abrego Garcia was “now sipping margaritas in the tropical paradise of El Salvador!” Mr. Van Hollen has said they did not have cocktails.
Here’s what we know about the prison where Mr. Abrego Garcia had been held since March, the Terrorism Confinement Center, before he was moved to a separate detention center in Santa Ana, El Salvador, according to Mr. Van Hollen at a news conference on Friday.
What is the Terrorism Confinement Center?
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The Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, which lies about an hour outside of San Salvador, the capital, opened in 2023. It was originally meant to be a low-security rehabilitation site (built in part with U.S. funds), but was transformed into Mr. Bukele’s signature “megaprison” — an emblem of his crackdown on gangs.
