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      Senator says trip to El Salvador was to support Kilmar Ábrego García’s due process

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      Senator Chris Van Hollen, who travelled to El Salvador last week to meet Kilmar Ábrego García, the man at the center of a wrongful deportation dispute, said on Sunday that his trip was to support Ábrego García’s right to due process because if that was denied then everyone’s constitutional rights were threatened in the US.The White House has claimed Ábrego García was a member of the MS-13 gang though he has not been charged with any gang related crimes and the supreme court has ordered his return to the US be facilitated.But in an interview with ABC’s This Week, Van Hollen, a Maryland senator, stressed that the government had presented no evidence linking Ábrego García to MS-13 in federal court. “Mr President,” the senator said, “take your facts to court, don’t put everything out on social media.”Speaking on CNN’s State of the Union, Van Hollen said Trump’s “argument that you can’t fight gang violence and uphold people’s constitutional rights at the same time. That’s a very dangerous view. If we deny the constitutional rights of this one man, it threatens the constitutional rights of everyone in America.”Van Hollen, who returned to the US on Friday after meeting with Ábrego García, has accused administration officials of lying about Ábrego García’s case in attempt to distract from questions about whether his rights were violated when he was deported to El Salvador last month.“I’m for whatever gives him his due process rights,” Van Hollen told the outlet. “An immigration judge in 2019 said he should not be deported to El Salvador because that would put his life at risk from gang members like MS-13.“The Trump administration did not appeal that immigration judge’s order to keep him in the United States. He is here legally now, has a work permit, is a sheet metal worker, has a family, and three kids,” he said.“I am fine with whatever result happens as long as he is given his due process rights under the constitution,” Van Hollen added. The administration has said Ábrego García’s deportation was an “administrative error” and the supreme court has ordered that the government “facilitate” his return, setting up a contentious debate of what that means in practical terms.As Van Hollen made the rounds of political shows on Sunday, he expanded on the theme of a constitutional crisis. On NBC’s Meet the Press he was asked if the US was in constitutional crisis with the Trump administration.“Oh, yes, we are. They are very much flouting the courts as we speak. As the courts have said, facilitating his return means something more than doing nothing, and they are doing nothing. Yes, they’re absolutely in violation of the court’s orders as we speak,” he said.“My whole point here is that if you deprive one man of his constitutional rights, you threaten the constitutional rights of everybody,” Van Hollen said later to Fox News Sunday host, Shannon Bream. “I would hope that all of us would understand that principle – you’re a lawyer. I’m not vouching for the individual, I’m vouching for his rights.”On ABC’s This Week, Van Hollen was asked if he had walked into a trap when García was brought to his hotel for an hour-long meeting and the pair were pictured with margaritas. The senator said the drinks were placed there by a government official for the photos, and not touched, and added that the trip wasn’t a trap because his purpose had been to meet with García so he could “tell his wife and family he was okay”.“That was my goal. And I achieved that goal,” he said.But he added that “the Salvadorian authorities tried to deceive people. They tried to make it look like he was in paradise. They actually wanted to have the meeting by the hotel pool originally.”The senator also accused Tom Homan, Trump’s “border czar”, of “lying through his teeth” about Ábrego García, and strongly rejected comments by Gavin Newsom, the California governor seen as a potential candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028, who said that it was politically dangerous for Democrats to defend the wrongly deported man.“I think what Americans are tired of, is people who want to put their finger to the wind to see what’s going on,” the senator said. “I would say that anyone that’s not prepared to defend the constitutional rights of one man, when they threaten the constitutional rights of all, doesn’t deserve to lead.”After the meeting, President Nayib Bukele post the image on X, writing that García “miraculously risen from the ‘death camps’ & ‘torture’, now sipping margaritas with Senator Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador!”Van Hollen said the venue for the meeting and the subsequent picture “just goes to show the lengths that Bukele and Trump will go to try to deceive people about what this case is all about”.On Friday, the White House mocked Van Hollen by annotating a headline about his Thursday meeting with García. “Fixed it for you, New York Times,” the White House X account shared. “Oh, and by the way, Chris Van Hollen – he’s NOT coming back.”The annotated headline changes “Senator Meets With Wrongly Deported Maryland Man in El Salvador” included crossing out “Wrongly” in red ink and replacing the words “Maryland Man” with “MS-13 Illegal Alien”. They also added “Who’s Never Coming Back.”But Ábrego García’s deportation was also facing opposition from Republicans. On Sunday, Louisiana senator John Kennedy was asked on Meet The Press if Ábrego García should be returned to the US.Kennedy said that Van Hollen’s trip to El Salvador and calls for Ábrego García to be returned to the US were “utterly and gloriously wrong” and said that “most of this gauzy rhetoric is just rage bait. Unless you’re next level obtuse, you know that Mr García is never coming back to the United States, ever.”But Kennedy conceded that Ábrego García’s deportation “was a screw up”, adding that “the administration won’t admit it, but this was a screw up. Mr Garcia was not supposed to be sent to El Salvador. He was sent to El Salvador.” But he said Democrats’ response was typical.“The Democrats say, ‘Look, you know, we told you, Trump is a threat to democracy’. This is going to happen every other Thursday afternoon. I don’t see any pattern here. I mean, you know, some day pigs may fly, but I doubt it,”” he added. More

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      ‘I just ask God that he’s OK’: family of Venezuelan musician sent to El Salvador prison agonizes over his fate

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      In a recording studio in downtown Santiago, where the dad she has never met once sung, a four-month-old baby girl snuggles in her mother’s arms, noise-cancelling earmuffs shielding her tiny ears from the sound.Nahiara Rubí Suárez Sánchez is equally oblivious to the plight of her father, a Venezuelan musician who is thought to be languishing in a maximum-security prison thousands of miles away in El Salvador after being swept up in Donald Trump’s anti-migrant crusade.Arturo Suárez Trejo, 33, is one of more than 200 Venezuelan men sent to the Central American country from the US, accused by Trump’s administration – with no evidence – of being terrorists, rapists and gang members.More than a month later, Suárez’s relatives – who insist he is innocent – remain completely in the dark about his whereabouts, his wellbeing or how long he might be trapped behind bars.View image in fullscreen“Right now I have no idea what’s happening to him – I just ask God that he’s OK,” said Suárez’s 27-year-old wife, a fellow Venezuelan called Nathali Sánchez, who lives with their child in Chile’s capital. “If something happens to my husband, I will hold Donald Trump and [El Salvador’s president] Nayib Bukele responsible.”Critics have decried Trump’s decision to banish asylum seekers and immigrants to a jail in an authoritarian foreign land as part of a disturbing democratic backslide in one of the world’s largest democracies. “This is the beginning of an American policy of state terror,” the historian and author Timothy Snyder recently warned.For Suárez’s loved ones, the policy represents an emotional sucker punch that follows years of hardship after they, like nearly 8 million Venezuelans, fled economic and political turmoil in their South American homeland.“[It’s] fucked up, man,” said Denys Zambrano, a rapper known as Nyan who became one of Suárez’s best friends in Santiago after they migrated there from different parts of Venezuela.Suárez’s elder brother, Nelson, said they had left Venezuela in 2016 after joining anti-government demonstrations that were sweeping the country amid food shortages and hyperinflation. For challenging Nicolás Maduro’s government, the siblings were threatened by armed pro-regime gangs called colectivos.View image in fullscreen“It was a really difficult time,” recalled Nelson Suárez, 35, whose brother relocated to Cartagena and Bogotá, in Colombia, before moving to Chile, where hundreds of thousands of uprooted Venezuelans have migrated over the past decade. Nelson Suárez headed north to the US.In Santiago, Arturo Suárez built a new life, fixing fridges as he chased his dream of becoming a famous singer-songwriter, under the stage name is SuarezVzla. He became a relentless promoter of Venezuelan music, founding an event called Urban Fresh to showcase budding reggaeton and trap stars. “Arturo’s my mentor,” said Mariangelica Camacho, 20, a dancer and singer who fled Venezuela with her parents at age 14 and whose career he helped launch.At one gig he met his future wife.But making ends meet was a struggle, particularly after the Covid pandemic hammered Chile’s economy. Last May, Suárez decided to join his brother in North Carolina and embarked on a five-month odyssey to the US that involved crossing the treacherous jungles of the Darién Gap between Colombia and Panama.Sánchez, who was pregnant, decided not to risk the journey having suffered a miscarriage the previous year, and remained in Santiago. Before setting off from their shoebox apartment looking out across the Andes, Suárez wrote a message to his “lioness” and his unborn child on a whiteboard hanging over her cot. “Soon we’ll be together again,” it says. “I love you both with all my life.”By September, after two months toiling in a Mexico City tortilla shop, Suárez reached the southern border, crossing into San Diego after making an immigration appointment on the Biden-era smartphone app called CBP One. From there he made a beeline for New Bern, North Carolina, where he found work as a handyman, mowing lawns and cleaning pools to support baby Nahiara, who was born in early December.But Suárez’s American dream quickly crumbled. In February, three weeks after Trump’s inauguration, he was detained by immigration officials while making a music video in Raleigh. After a stint in an Atlanta detention centre, he was moved to Texas and then – to his family’s horror – sent to El Salvador after being told he was being deported to Venezuela.View image in fullscreenOn 16 March, 24 hours after Suárez was incarcerated in Bukele’s terrorism confinement centre (Cecot), Sánchez spotted her shaven-headed husband in a propaganda photo released by the Central American country’s government. She recognized him because of tattoos on his neck and thigh and a childhood scar on his scalp. “I felt like the world had collapsed on top of me,” Sánchez said. Since then she has heard nothing and, in her darkest moments, fears he may not even still be alive.“We’ve lost all communication,” said Krubick Izarra, 26, a music producer who is godmother to the couple’s child.Trump’s El Salvador deportations – which activists call enforced disappearances – have grim echoes in Latin America, where such tactics were common during the US-backed dictatorships of the 1970s and 80s.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn Santiago, a brutalist museum commemorates the hundreds of people spirited into custody during Gen Augusto Pinochet’s 17-year regime – most never to return. “Nobody believed that in Chile people could disappear,” reads an entry in a picture book displayed in one exhibition room about the dictatorship’s dungeons.Half a century later, campaigners say the scores of Venezuelans sent to El Salvador find themselves in a similar void, deprived of contact with their families and lawyers, without due process and, in most cases, never having been convicted of any crime.“It’s a legal black hole – and in that legal black hole, I think it’s unlikely the families should expect a judicial remedy,” said Noah Bullock, the director of Cristosal, a rights group which has spent the last three years denouncing the plight of the 85,000 Salvadoran citizens incarcerated as part of Bukele’s hardline anti-gang crackdown. At least 368 of them have died as a result of torture, according to the Cristosal’s count.View image in fullscreenBullock believed the fate of prisoners such as Suárez hinged on whether it was “politically viable” for Trump and Bukele to keep them behind bars, despite mounting evidence of their innocence. “The only option for them, I think, is public advocacy and building sufficient political pressure for their freedom,” he said.Making noise is something Suárez’s musician friends in Santiago are good at.One evening last week, they gathered in a rehearsal room to practise for their latest concert and defend a man they called a cheery, kindhearted, teetotal dreamer whose only crime was seeking a better life.“Arturo has never harmed anyone – and he certainly isn’t a terrorist,” said Heberth Veliz, a 29-year-old musician who suspected his friend had been targeted because of his numerous tattoos, which include a tribute to his late mother, a map of Venezuela, a palm tree, some musical notes and the phrase “The future will be brilliant.”Veliz, whose body is also covered in tattoos, said he struggled to contain his anger when he saw the US president on television smearing Suárez as “the worst of the worst”. “I feel like jumping into the screen and slapping him so he stops talking nonsense. ‘Shut up, Trump! You don’t know what you’re talking about!’” he fumed, although he admitted he was not surprised by his friend’s treatment. “Everyone knows that the most ruthless people wear suits and ties,” he said.Cradling baby Nahiara in a pink shawl, Sánchez said she was determined to stay strong for the sake of her daughter and her absent husband. “It’s up to me to be the pillar of the family now,” she declared, vowing to continue denouncing her husband’s capture. “When he gets out, I want him to see that I didn’t give up – and I want him to feel proud.”View image in fullscreenSpeaking from the US, Nelson Suárez said he believed Trump was using innocent Venezuelans such as his sibling as “guinea pigs” to show off to his base. He felt “morally and psychologically shattered” by his disappearance.“I always wanted my brother to become world famous,” Suárez said. “But not like this, you know?” More

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      Indonesian student detained by Ice after US secretly revokes his visa

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      An Indonesian father of an infant with special needs, who was detained by federal agents at his hospital workplace in Minnesota after his student visa was secretly revoked, will remain in custody after an immigration judge ruled Thursday that his case can proceed.Judge Sarah Mazzie denied a motion to dismiss the case against Aditya Wahyu Harsono on humanitarian grounds, according to his attorney. Harsono, 33, was arrested four days after his visa was revoked without notice. He is scheduled for another hearing on 1 May.“His wife has been in a state of shock and exhaustion,” Sarah Gad, Harsono’s lawyer, said. “The Department of Homeland Security has weaponized the immigration system to serve just an entirely different purpose, which is to instill fear.”Harsono, a supply-chain manager at a hospital in Marshall, Minnesota, who is married to a US citizen, was surprised by authorities in his workplace basement on 27 March. Gad said that Harsono was detained without clear explanation and interrogated for hours.Harsono’s wife, Peyton, called Gad in a panic after she received a call from human resources at the hospital. Two Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents, dressed in plain clothes, had shown up and instructed the staff to stage a fake meeting in the basement so they could apprehend him, according to Gad.Hospital staff were distraught but felt forced to comply.“He unsuspectedly walks in, smiling, and then they just pull out their handcuffs and forcibly detain him, pushing against the wall, start frisking him, and stripping all of his belongings,” Gad said.View image in fullscreenThe Department of Homeland Security and the Department of State did not immediately respond to requests for comment from the Guardian.Harsono was brought to the Kandiyohi County Jail, where he is still detained, according to the Ice detainee locator.He told the Ice agents that his F-1 student visa was valid through June 2026, and that he had a pending green-card application based on his marriage to a citizen, but that he had been issued a notice to appear in court stating that he had overstayed his visa.His attorney said that as of 28 March, the day after his arrest, his F-1 visa was still active. Gad said the government revoked it without any notice to him, and then claimed he had overstayed.The revocation was backdated to 23 March and allegedly based on his 2022 misdemeanor conviction for graffitiing a semi-truck trailer. Gad said that this is not a deportable offense under the Immigration and Nationality Act. He had traveled internationally and returned multiple times to Indonesia since the conviction without incident.The day before Harsono’s bond hearing, DHS disclosed their evidence against him. Besides stating that his visa had been revoked for the misdemeanor graffiti conviction, for which he paid $100 in restitution, they also mentioned an arrest from 2021 during a protest over the murder of George Floyd. That charge was dismissed.Harsono is Muslim and frequently posts on social media in support of humanitarian relief for Gaza. He also runs a small non-profit, which sells art and merchandise, with proceeds going to organizations aiding Gaza.His wife and eight-month-old daughter, who has special needs, are distraught by his arrest, Gad said. After the judge granted Harsono a $5,000 bond on 10 April, the Minnesota Freedom Fund had been en route to pay it. But DHS immediately filed a notice to appeal the bond decision, which triggered an automatic stay, meaning Harsono had to remain in custody. Gad said this type of move is rare, usually only seen when a judge grants bond to someone charged with violent or serious crimes.“You never involve stays of an immigration judge’s bond order for a minor conviction when somebody’s on their way to becoming a green-card holder,” she said.Gad is preparing to file a federal petition and a temporary restraining order against DHS.In an appeal for help on GoFundMe, Harsono’s wife explained that her husband had been fired from his job while in detention and now the family is “in danger of losing our apartment” and they “no longer have health insurance”.The Minnesota Nurses Association condemned the hospital worker’s arrest and restated its position that “nurses should not and will not serve any role in immigration enforcement” and its hope that “all hospital employees will also reject a role in assisting Ice”.Harsono’s case comes amid a wave of reports of student visas being revoked under the Trump administration’s new executive policy. The actions by the federal government to terminate students’ legal status have left hundreds of scholars at risk of detention and deportation.At least 901 students at 128 colleges and universities have had their visas revoked or their legal statuses terminated since mid-March, according to an Associated Press review of university statements and correspondence with school officials.In some high-profile cases, including the detention of the former Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, the Trump administration has argued it should be allowed to deport noncitizens over involvement in pro-Palestinian activism it casts as antisemitic. But in the vast majority of visa revocations, colleges say there is no indication that affected students had a role in protests. More

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      JD Vance had ‘exchange of opinions’ with senior cardinal, Vatican says

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      The US vice-president, JD Vance, had “an exchange of opinions” with the Vatican’s secretary of state over current international conflicts and immigration when they met on Saturday, the Vatican has said.The Vatican issued a statement after Vance, a Catholic convert, met Cardinal Pietro Parolin and the foreign minister, Archbishop Paul Gallagher. There was no indication he met Pope Francis, who has resumed some official duties during his recovery from pneumonia.The Holy See has responded cautiously to the Trump administration, in keeping with its tradition of diplomatic neutrality.It has expressed alarm over Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration and cuts in international aid, and has called for peaceful resolutions to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.Those concerns were reflected in the Vatican statement, which said the talks were cordial and that the Vatican expressed satisfaction with the administration’s commitment to protecting freedom of religion and conscience.“There was an exchange of opinions on the international situation, especially regarding countries affected by war, political tensions and difficult humanitarian situations, with particular attention to migrants, refugees, and prisoners,” the statement said.“Finally, hope was expressed for serene collaboration between the state and the Catholic church in the United States, whose valuable service to the most vulnerable people was acknowledged.”The reference to “serene collaboration” appeared to refer to Vance’s accusation that the US conference of Catholic bishops was resettling “illegal immigrants” in order to obtain federal funding. Top US cardinals have pushed back strongly against the claim.Parolin told La Repubblica on the eve of Vance’s visit: “It is clear that the approach of the current US administration is very different from what we are used to and, especially in the west, from what we have relied on for many years,.”As the US pushes to end the war in Ukraine, Parolin reaffirmed Kyiv’s right to its territorial integrity and insisted that any peace deal must not be “imposed” on Ukraine but “built patiently, day by day, with dialogue and mutual respect”.Vance was spending Easter weekend in Rome with his family and attended Good Friday services in St Peter’s Basilica after meeting Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni. On Saturday, after the Vance family’s introduction to Parolin, they had a private tour of the Sistine Chapel.It was not immediately clear where they would celebrate Easter. Pope Francis, for his part, according to official liturgical plans released on Saturday, indicated he hoped to attend Easter mass on Sunday, which usually draws thousands to St Peter’s Square.The pope and Vance have tangled over immigration and the Trump administration’s plans to deport people en masse. Francis has made caring for those who migrate a hallmark of his papacy and his progressive views on social justice issues have often put him at odds with members of the more conservative US Catholic church.The pope also changed church teaching to say that capital punishment was inadmissible in all cases. After a public appeal from Francis just weeks before Trump took office, Joe Biden commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row. Trump is an outspoken proponent of expanding capital punishment.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionVance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, identifies with a small Catholic intellectual movement that is viewed by some critics as having reactionary or authoritarian leanings and often described as “post-liberal”.Post-liberals share some longstanding Catholic conservative views, such as opposition to abortion and LGBTQ+ rights. They envision a counter-revolution in which they take over government bureaucracy and institutions such as universities from within, replacing entrenched “elites” with their own and acting upon their vision of the “common good”.Just days before the pope was admitted to hospital in February, Francis criticised the Trump administration’s deportation plans, warning that they would deprive people of their inherent dignity. In a letter to US bishops, he also appeared to respond to Vance directly for having claimed that Catholic doctrine justified such policies.Vance had defended the administration’s America-first crackdown by citing a concept from medieval Catholic theology known in Latin as ordo amoris. He said the concept delineated a hierarchy of care – to family first, followed by neighbour, community, fellow citizens and, last, those elsewhere.In his 10 February letter, Francis appeared to correct Vance’s understanding of the concept.“Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extends to other persons and groups,” he wrote. “The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the good Samaritan, that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”Vance has acknowledged Francis’ criticism but has said he will continue to defend his views. During an appearance on 28 February at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington, Vance did not address the issue specifically but called himself a “baby Catholic” and acknowledged there are “things about the faith that I don’t know”. More

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      US supreme court orders temporary halt to deportations of Venezuelan men

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      The US supreme court has ordered the Trump administration to temporarily halt the deportation of Venezuelan men in immigration custody, after their lawyers said they were at imminent risk of removal without the judicial review previously mandated by the justices.“The government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this court,” the justices said early on Saturday.Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas publicly dissented.The order is the latest example of how the country’s courts are challenging the Trump administration’s overhaul of the immigration system, which has been characterised by a number of deportations that have either been wrongful or carried out without due process.In an emergency Friday court filing, lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said dozens of Venezuelan men held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Bluebonnet detention center in Texas were given notices indicating they were classified as members of the Tren de Aragua gang. They said the men would be deported under the Alien Enemies Act (AEA), and were told “that the removals are imminent and will happen tonight or tomorrow”.The ACLU warned immigration authorities were accusing other Venezuelan men held there of being members of the Tren de Aragua gang that would make them subject to deportation.The ACLU said a number of the men in Texas had already been loaded on a bus and urged the court to rule before they could be deported.The ACLU has already sued to block deportations under the Alien Enemies Act of two Venezuelans held in the Texas detention center and is asking a judge to issue an order barring removals of any immigrants in the region under the law.The supreme court has allowed some deportations under the AEA, but has previously ruled they could proceed only if those about to be removed had a chance to argue their case in court and were given “a reasonable time” to contest their pending removals.Federal judges in Colorado, New York and southern Texas have also issued orders barring the removal of detainees under the AEA until the administration provides a process for them to make claims in court. But there’s been no such order issued in the area of Texas that covers Bluebonnet, which is located 24 miles north of the city of Abilene in the far northern end of the state.District judge James Wesley Hendrix this week declined to bar the administration from removing the two men identified in the ACLU lawsuit because immigration officials filed sworn declarations that they would not be immediately deported.But the ACLU’s Friday filing includes sworn declarations from three separate immigration lawyers who said their clients in Bluebonnet were given paperwork indicating they were members of Tren de Aragua and could be deported by Saturday. In one case, immigration lawyer Karene Brown said her client, identified by initials and who only spoke Spanish, was told to sign papers in English.“Ice informed FGM that these papers were coming from the president, and that he will be deported even if he did not sign it,” Brown wrote.The ACLU asked Hendrix to issue a temporary order halting any such deportations. Later on Friday, with no response from Hendrix, the ACLU asked district judge James Boasberg in Washington to issue a similar emergency order, saying they had information that detainees were being loaded on buses.In their court filing, lawyers say clients received a document Friday from immigration officials, titled “Notice and Warrant of Apprehension and Removal under the Alien Enemies Act”.It reads: “You have been determined to be … a member of Tren de Aragua.”“You have been determined to be an alien enemy subject to apprehension, restraint and removal from the United States … This is not a removal under the Immigration and Nationality Act,” the notice reads.Before the supreme court decision, Pramila Jayapal, a Washington Democrat, denounced the reported plan. “We cannot stand by,” Jayapal wrote on social media, as the Trump administration “continues to disappear people”. More

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      Kilmar Ábrego García ‘traumatized’ by threats in prison, Maryland senator says

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      Wrongly deported Salvadoran man Kilmar Ábrego García has been held incommunicado and faced threats in prison that left him “traumatized”, a Democratic senator said Friday after returning from meeting him in El Salvador.Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the state Ábrego García had been living in with his US citizen wife and son until he was deported last month in what the Trump administration conceded was an “administrative error”, traveled to the central American country this week to see his constituent. After initially rejecting his request to meet Ábrego García and preventing him from traveling to the prison where he was being held, president Nayib Bukele’s government on Thursday facilitated a meeting at Van Hollen’s hotel.“His conversation with me was the first communication he’d had with anybody outside of prison since he was abducted. He said he felt very sad about being in a prison because he had not committed any crimes,” Van Hollen said at a press conference at Dulles international airport outside Washington DC.He recounted speaking to Ábrego García about his wellbeing, and informing him of the controversy caused by his arrest and Donald Trump’s refusal to let him back into the United States, in spite of a supreme court ruling saying the president should “facilitate” his return.The senator said Ábrego García told him about how he had been arrested by federal agents after a traffic stop while driving with his five-year-old son, who has autism. He was taken to Baltimore, then Texas, where he was shackled and placed with other deportees on an aircraft where they could not see out the windows. The plane flew to El Salvador, where, Ábrego García said, he was taken to the Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot) and put in a cell with about 25 other people.“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 said, adding that Ábrego García otherwise appeared to be in sound health.Just more than a week ago, Ábrego García was moved to another prison in the city of Santa Ana, where conditions are better, but he still has no contact with the outside world, Van Hollen said. He has also not been told whether he is being charged with a crime, or how long he will be detained.“They haven’t told him anything about why he was sent or how long he would be there,” the senator said.Van Hollen described himself as motivated to make the trip both out of a desire to relay Ábrego García’s condition to his family, and outrage that the Trump administration had deported him despite a judge granting him protection from removal, over a “well-founded fear of future persecution” from gangs in El Salvador, and was now refusing to bring him back.“This case is not only about one man, as important as that is. It is about protecting fundamental freedoms and the fundamental principle in the constitution for due process, that protects everybody who resides in America,” Van Hollen said. “This should not be an issue for Republicans or Democrats. This is an issue for every American who cares about our constitution.”On Thursday, the federal appeals judge James Wilkinson, an appointee of Republican president Ronald Reagan, wrote an opinion blasting the administration’s conduct in the case as litigation over Ábrego García’s deportation continued.“The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order,” he wrote.The Trump administration has countered the criticism by claiming that Ábrego García was a member of the MS-13 criminal gang, with the White House posting on social media that he was “NOT coming back”.Trump administration officials also seized on a claim from Bukele that Van Hollen and Ábrego García drank margaritas during their meeting, which the senator took pains to refute, saying the drinks had been placed on their table by a Salvadoran government employee.“Let me just be very clear: neither of us touched the drinks that were in front of us,” he said, adding that the glass placed in front of Ábrego García contained less liquid, as if trying to create the impression that he had drunk from it.“But this is a lesson into the lengths that president Bukele will do to deceive people about what’s going on. And it also shows the lengths that the Trump administration, or the president, will go to, because when he was asked about a reporter about this, he just went along for the ride.”Van Hollen was joined at the airport by Ábrego García’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, who brushed away tears as the senator described meeting her husband. At the White House earlier in the day, Trump had read from a domestic violence protective order Vasquez filed in 2021, which she has said stemmed from a rough patch in their marriage that they later worked through.“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,” Van Hollen said of his meeting with Ábrego García. “I told him I would work very hard to make that happen.” More

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      ‘Shocking to the sense of liberty Americans hold dear’: the impassioned US court order in the Ábrego García case

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      Upon review of the government’s motion, the court denies the motion for an emergency stay pending appeal and for a writ of mandamus. The relief the government is requesting is both extraordinary and premature. While we fully respect the Executive’s robust assertion of its Article II powers, we shall not micromanage the efforts of a fine district judge attempting to implement the Supreme Court’s recent decision.It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter. But in this case, it is not hard at all. The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done.This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.The government asserts that Abrego Garcia is a terrorist and a member of MS-13. Perhaps, but perhaps not. Regardless, he is still entitled to due process. If the government is confident of its position, it should be assured that position will prevail in proceedings to terminate the withholding of removal order. Moreover, the government has conceded that Abrego Garcia was wrongly or “mistakenly” deported. Why then should it not make what was wrong, right?The Supreme Court’s decision remains, as always, our guidepost. That decision rightly requires the lower federal courts to give “due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs”. That would allow sensitive diplomatic negotiations to be removed from public view. It would recognize as well that the “facilitation” of Abrego Garcia’s return leaves the Executive Branch with options in the execution to which the courts in accordance with the Supreme Court’s decision should extend a genuine deference. That decision struck a balance that does not permit lower courts to leave Article II by the wayside.The Supreme Court’s decision does not, however, allow the government to do essentially nothing. It requires the government “to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador”. “Facilitate” is an active verb. It requires that steps be taken as the Supreme Court has made perfectly clear. The plain and active meaning of the word cannot be diluted by its constriction, as the government would have it, to a narrow term of art. We are not bound in this context by a definition crafted by an administrative agency and contained in a mere policy directive. Thus, the government’s argument that all it must do is “remove any domestic barriers to [Abrego Garcia’s] return” is not well taken in light of the Supreme Court’s command that the government facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador.“Facilitation” does not permit the admittedly erroneous deportation of an individual to the one country’s prisons that the withholding order forbids and, further, to do so in disregard of a court order that the government not so subtly spurns. “Facilitation” does not sanction the abrogation of habeas corpus through the transfer of custody to foreign detention centers in the manner attempted here. Allowing all this would “facilitate” foreign detention more than it would domestic return. It would reduce the rule of law to lawlessness and tarnish the very values for which Americans of diverse views and persuasions have always stood.The government is obviously frustrated and displeased with the rulings of the court. Let one thing be clear. Court rulings are not above criticism. Criticism keeps us on our toes and helps us do a better job. Court rulings can overstep, and they can further intrude upon the prerogatives of other branches. Courts thus speak with the knowledge of their imperfections but also with a sense that they instill a fidelity to law that would be sorely missed in their absence.“Energy in the [E]xecutive” is much to be respected. It can rescue government from its lassitude and recalibrate imbalances too long left unexamined. The knowledge that executive energy is a perishable quality understandably breeds impatience with the courts. Courts, in turn, are frequently attuned to caution and are often uneasy with the Executive Branch’s breakneck pace.And the differences do not end there. The Executive is inherently focused upon ends; the Judiciary much more so upon means. Ends are bestowed on the Executive by electoral outcomes. Means are entrusted to all of government, but most especially to the Judiciary by the Constitution itself.The Executive possesses enormous powers to prosecute and to deport, but with powers come restraints. If today the Executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home? And what assurance shall there be that the Executive will not train its broad discretionary powers upon its political enemies? The threat, even if not the actuality, would always be present, and the Executive’s obligation to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” would lose its meaning.Today, both the United States and the El Salvadoran governments disclaim any authority and/or responsibility to return Abrego Garcia. We are told that neither government has the power to act. The result will be to leave matters generally and Abrego Garcia specifically in an interminable limbo without recourse to law of any sort.The basic differences between the branches mandate a serious effort at mutual respect. The respect that courts must accord the Executive must be reciprocated by the Executive’s respect for the courts. Too often today this has not been the case, as calls for impeachment of judges for decisions the Executive disfavors and exhortations to disregard court orders sadly illustrate.It is in this atmosphere that we are reminded of President Eisenhower’s sage example. Putting his “personal opinions” aside, President Eisenhower honored his “inescapable” duty to enforce the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education II to desegregate schools “with all deliberate speed.” This great man expressed his unflagging belief that “[t]he very basis of our individual rights and freedoms is the certainty that the President and the Executive Branch of Government will support and [e]nsure the carrying out of the decisions of the Federal Courts.” Indeed, in our late Executive’s own words, “[u]nless the President did so, anarchy would result.”Now the branches come too close to grinding irrevocably against one another in a conflict that promises to diminish both. This is a losing proposition all around. The Judiciary will lose much from the constant intimations of its illegitimacy, to which by dent of custom and detachment we can only sparingly reply. The Executive will lose much from a public perception of its lawlessness and all of its attendant contagions. The Executive may succeed for a time in weakening the courts, but over time history will script the tragic gap between what was and all that might have been, and law in time will sign its epitaph.It is, as we have noted, all too possible to see in this case an incipient crisis, but it may present an opportunity as well. We yet cling to the hope that it is not naïve to believe our good brethren in the Executive Branch perceive the rule of law as vital to the American ethos. This case presents their unique chance to vindicate that value and to summon the best that is within us while there is still time.In sum, and for the reasons foregoing, we deny the motion for the stay pending appeal and the writ of mandamus in this case. It is so ordered.

      This was excerpted from the order by the US court of appeals for the fourth circuit in Kilmar Abrego Garcia v Kristi Noem. It has been edited to remove some legal citations More

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      in US Politics

      Wife of Kilmar Ábrego García speaks as White House defiant over US return

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      Jennifer Vasquez Sura, the wife of Kilmar Ábrego García, the man the Trump administration has admitted it mistakenly deported, expressed relief to learn he is alive after a Democratic US senator managed to meet with him in El Salvador – as the White House posted on social media that he is “never coming back” to the US.“It was very overwhelming – the most important thing for me, my children, his mom, brothers was to see him alive, and we saw him alive,” Vasquez Sura told ABC in an interview.Maryland senator Chris Van Hollen revealed on Thursday evening that he had met with Ábrego García at the maximum security prison in El Salvador known as Cecot, where the autocratic regime holds prisoners without due process. Ábrego García was arrested by immigration agents in Maryland, last month, where he was living and working.Despite being undocumented, Ábrego García had been afforded a federal protection order against deportation to his native El Salvador, which the Trump administration ignored last month when it flew him and more than 200 Venezuelan deportees to El Salvador without warning or a court hearing, in a move that has fallen foul of judges in the US right up to the supreme court.In court filings Friday, lawyers for detained Venezuelan nationals said their clients were being loaded onto buses in anticipation of new wave of deportations, for which there had been less than 24 hours’ notice. They asked US district judge James Boasberg for an immediate restraining order requiring 30 days’ notice, as Politico’s Kyle Cheney first reported.Van Hollen posted a picture of himself with Ábrego García in what appeared to be a cafeteria-style setting in the hospital wing of the prison, and the senator said he would provide a full update upon his return to the US. The previous day he has failed to be given access to the prison or his constituent after flying to El Salvador pledging to try to bring him back.Vasquez described her spouse as “a very loving husband, an amazing father” adding they were just parents “trying to live the American dream”.The Trump administration claims Ábrego García is a member of the Salvadorian violent gang network MS-13. But his family and the head of the sheetmetal workers union that represents the trade in which he is an apprentice, have said he is not connected to a gang. He has not been charged with any crimes in the US or El Salvador and the government admitted in a court filing that he had been deported in error, but since has refused to work to secure his return to the US despite court orders to do so.View image in fullscreenFederal judge Paula Xinis has rebuked the Trump administration for resisting the court’s instructions to have the father returned and has said that the government has not submitted any evidence to her court that Ábrego García is a gang member or criminal.The US president posted on social media criticizing the senator and the press in characteristic Trump language, saying Van Hollen “looked like a fool yesterday standing in El Salvador begging for attention from the Fake News Media, or anyone”.Hours later in the White House, Trump reeled off unsubstantiated allegations against Ábrego García as “an MS-13 member, an illegal alien and a foreign terrorist, I assume”. He also read from a domestic violence protective order Vasquez filed against him in 2021 over allegations of domestic violence, describing him as violent and hitting and scratching her. Such a record is normally confidential unless the alleged victim chooses to release it, but the US president read excerpts to reporters.Having previously said it was a bad period in their marriage that they worked through, with counseling, and forged a stronger partnership, Vasquez in the ABC interview declined to discuss the protective order further. “I’m happy he’s alive, and that’s all I can say,” she said.Meanwhile, Vasquez said on Friday that Garcia had been picked up by federal agents as he was pulled over while driving in Maryland. “What we thought was a regular traffic stop, turned out not to be a regular traffic stop,” she said, and reiterated denials that Garcia was a member of MS-13 or any other gang.“He’s not,” she added.Hours later on Friday, the White House made a sensational post on X, mocking the New York Times and Van Hollen and saying that Ábrego García is “never coming back”.In scathing court order, a US court of appeals for the fourth circuit on Thursday denied the administration’s effort to appeal an earlier order from a federal judge in Maryland requiring the government to facilitate Ábrego García’s return, and the judge issued a stark warning about US constitutional democracy, as Donald Trump continues to defy courts’ orders on numerous fronts.The court said the administration’s claim that it can’t do anything to free the father from the prison and return him “should be shocking” to the public.The blistering order further ratcheted up the escalating conflict between the US government’s co-equal executive and judicial branches.Judge James Wilkinson said: “The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order.”“Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done,” he added.The panel emphasized that Ábrego García is entitled to due process. “If the government is confident of its position, it should be assured that position will prevail in proceedings to terminate the withholding of removal order,” the panel said.“The judiciary will lose much from the constant intimations of its illegitimacy, to which by dent of custom and detachment we can only sparingly reply. The executive will lose much from a public perception of its lawlessness and all of its attendant contagions,” the judges said.Meanwhile, federal judge Brian Murphy on Friday barred the Trump administration from implementing a new policy allowing it to rapidly deport hundreds if not thousands of migrants to countries other than their own without giving them a chance to show they fear being persecuted, tortured or killed there.Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting More