The president of El Salvador staged a cheerful photoshoot on a restaurant patio to prove that the man mistakenly deported by the Trump administration is in good health.
Nayib Bukele published Thursday night the first photos of Kilmar Abrego Garcia since he was wrongfully shipped off to an El Salvador prison under President Donald Trump’s massive deportation blitz.
The odd setting was an apparent jab at Democrats and others in the U.S. who had speculated wildly for days that Abrego Garcia may have been hurt—or killed—during his incarceration in the country’s infamous CECOT mega prison complex.
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“Kilmar Abrego Garcia, miraculously risen from the ‘death camps’ & ‘torture’, now sipping margaritas with Sen. Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador!” Bukele said in a post on X. “Now that he’s been confirmed healthy, he gets the honor of staying in El Salvador’s custody.”
A series of photos showed a freshly shaved Abrego Garcia donning a Kansas City Chiefs cap and a checkered top with jeans as he spoke with Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, who earlier flew to El Salvador to meet the deportee.
They met in what appeared to be a restaurant patio, where a table held two wine glasses with salted rims and cherries on top. Abrego Garcia had a cup of coffee on the side.
Van Hollen, for his part, ignored the showmanship of the photo-op and said he was just grateful to see Abrego Garcia alive and seemingly healthy.
“I said my main goal of this trip was to meet with Kilmar. Tonight I had that chance,” Van Hollen said on X. “I have called his wife, Jennifer, to pass along his message of love. I look forward to providing a full update upon my return.”
“He’s alive” trended on X Thursday night as people reacted to the proof-of-life photos.
Van Hollen flew to El Salvador on Wednesday to check on Abrego Garcia’s well-being at CECOT, where he was detained after being taken from his family in Maryland.
The Democratic senator said he was initially denied entry to CECOT—even though conservatives like Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and West Virginia Rep. Riley Moore were allowed inside to take photos in front of cells packed with inmates.
“Today’s purpose was just to see what his health condition is,” Van Hollen said in a video on Wednesday. “As you can see, they’re (soldiers) letting other cars go by but they stopped us because they’re under orders not to allow us to proceed.”
In a meeting with President Donald Trump on Monday, Bukele rebuffed calls to bring back Abrego Garcia to the U.S.
“How can I return him to the United States?” Bukele asked the press. “I smuggle him into the United States or what do I do? Of course, I’m not going to do it. The question is preposterous.”
The Supreme Court agreed unanimously that the Trump administration must “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S. after the government admitted that it deported him due to an “administrative error.”
Yet Trump officials have ignored the calls to bring back Abrego Garcia, arguing that he is a member of the international criminal gang MS-13.
“Based on the sensationalism of many of the people in this room, you would think we deported a candidate for Father of the Year,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt scoffed at reporters in a fiery press briefing.
But not even the courts have been convinced of Abrego Garcia’s ties to MS-13, which were based on him wearing Chicago Bulls merchandise and a confidential informant’s claim that he belonged to the gang’s clique in New York despite never having lived there.
The Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit said evidence of those allegations was “thin, to say the least.”
