US senator heading to El Salvador to check on mistakenly deported man

​​​​​​​By Diyar Guldogan

WASHINGTON (AA) - US Sen. Chris Van Hollen said he is traveling Wednesday to El Salvador to check on a Maryland man who was wrongly deported to the country.

"I'm about to board my flight for San Salvador. The goal of this mission is to let the Trump administration, to let the government of El Salvador know that we are going to keep fighting to bring Abrego Garcia home until he returns to his family," Van Hollen said in a video on X.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, 29, was deported to his native country March 15 along with hundreds of alleged Salvadoran and Venezuelan gang members, even though a court order in a separate case barred him from being removed from the US.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) admitted that it made an error in deporting Abrego Garcia but claimed it did not have the authority to bring him back because he was now in the custody of another country.

After legal wranglings in federal court, the nation's highest court stepped in last week and ordered the Trump administration to give details on Abrego Garcia's status to have him returned to the US.

Van Hollen said he hopes to meet with representatives of the government and to see Abrego Garcia.

"We are going to keep fighting because this is a miscarriage of justice. The Supreme Court has ruled 9-0 that he was illegally taken out of the country and put in a prison in El Salvador," he added.

As Democrats are pushing for Abrego Garcia's return to the US "immediately," White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that he is a foreign terrorist and an MS-13 gang member.

On Monday, El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele ruled out returning Abrego Garcia, saying: "How can I return him to the United States? Should I smuggle him to the United States? Or what do I do? Of course, I'm not going to do it."