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Maryland Rep. Glenn Ivey returned to Dulles International Airport on Tuesday, frustrated that he had been unable to meet with Kilmar Abrego Garcia in an El Salvador prison.
Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran living in Maryland, has been detained in El Salvador since March, after being wrongly deported by the Trump administration. A federal judge in Maryland has ruled the administration must facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return.
Ivey said the Salvadoran government was notified in advance of Ivey’s visit, accompanied by Abrego Garcia’s attorney, but when they arrived at Santa Ana prison, they were told they needed to get a permit in San Salvador, more than an hour away.
“It’s ridiculous that an international delegation would get this kind of treatment,” when seeking to check on the welfare of a constituent, Ivey said.
Speaking to reporters in the international arrivals area, Ivey said Abrego Garcia isn’t the only person being inappropriately held, citing 250 Venezuelans who were deported from the U.S. and are now in jails in El Salvador.
“Fifty that were deported were actually here on legal status,” and never violated U.S. immigration law, Ivey said. “They were in the U.S. legally, but were deported to a country where they have no criminal offenses pending.”
He added, “Deporting people who have their paperwork in order is just wrong.”
More recently, other deportees were sent to South Sudan, Ivey said.
“The deportations, I get the point, we want to make sure that people who aren’t supposed to be here are sent back to where they should go,” said Ivey, a Democrat. “But, that’s a little bit different from sending them to some of the toughest jails in the Western Hemisphere for indefinite detention, with no criminal charges pending.”
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Ivey said that to the best of his knowledge, Congress hasn’t gotten a copy of the contracts the U.S. has established with countries to house people deported from U.S. facilities.
“We don’t know the terms, we don’t know the conditions, we don’t know how much the United States is paying to have these people detained in jails overseas or how these jail sites are being selected,” Ivey said.
He said transparency is needed to make sure taxpayer dollars are being appropriately used.
“Congress controls the purse — we’ve got the power of the purse, under the Constitution,” Ivey said. “We have an absolute, not just a right, but an obligation to make sure that the American taxpayer dollars are being spent in the right way.”
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