Following a brief trip to El Salvador, Rep. Robert Garcia on Tuesday said he and other Democrats will continue to pressure the Trump Administration to steer away from what they say is a constitutional crisis and facilitate the release of Kilmar Ábrego García, a Salvadoran man who was deported last month despite a court order protecting him from removal.
“I think the entire country has to be courageous and stand up in this moment and demand that this cannot happen,” Garcia said from a lectern outside Long Beach City Hall. “Kilmer’s return is more than just about immigration. This is not just an immigration story. This is a human rights story. This is a story about our Constitution, and we have to be really strong.”
The Long Beach congressman on Monday traveled independently to El Salvador alongside three other Democrats — Representatives Maxwell Alejandro Frost of Florida, Yassamin Ansari of Arizona and Maxine E. Dexter of Oregon — to highlight the detention of Ábrego García.
Ábrego García, a 29-year-old Maryland man who entered the U.S. in 2011, was granted a form of legal status in 2019. Despite this, he was mistakenly deported to El Salvador by the Trump Administration and imprisoned at Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo in Tecoluca. He has since been transferred to a detention facility called Centro Industrial in Santa Ana, El Salvador. White House officials, along with El Salvador’s president, have given no indication that they plan to return him.
Garcia and the group of lawmakers said they were denied a meeting with Ábrego García after House Republicans rebuffed a request to make their trip an official delegation visit. The trip was independent and personally funded, according to Garcia’s office, unlike an officially sanctioned trip by Sen. Chris Van Hollen, who met with Ábrego García last week after at first being denied on multiple occasions.
Garcia’s group instead met with William H. Duncan, the U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, along with attorneys, activists and family members at the embassy in San Salvador on Monday morning.
The visit’s intent, Garcia explained, was to bring a continued spotlight to the wrongly deported man’s situation as well as what he feels is President Donald Trump’s increasingly aggressive deportation tactics.
“We cannot allow this to go away,” Garcia said.
Moving forward, Garcia and the rest say they won’t rule out visiting again. Other members of Congress, such as Sen. Cory Booker, D-NJ, have announced plans to travel there, as well as members from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
“We’re going to continue to go down there, apply pressure, go to the courts, protest, show up and do everything we can until he is released,” Garcia said.
The Trump Administration has sent hundreds of immigrants to El Salvador, arguing these deportees are criminals, many of whom it claims have gang affiliations. After previously admitting Ábrego García’s case was an “administrative error,” they have since labeled him a terrorist and alleged gang member.
“He is not coming back to our country,” said Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Critics have since castigated the Trump Administration for not making sure Ábrego García is returned to the United States, saying it is in violation of orders by a federal judge and the Supreme Court, which unanimously directed the government to facilitate his release.
“The government’s argument, moreover, implies that it could deport and incarcerate any person, including U. S. citizens, without legal consequence, so long as it does so before a court can intervene,” said Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor in the court’s ruling in Ábrego García’s case.
Garcia also raised the case of Andry Jose Hernandez Romero, a Venezuelan barber who was detained for months in California and was among those deported from the U.S. last month.
Garcia, himself an immigrant from Peru, said the issue is especially personal.
Gaby Hernandez, executive director with the local immigrant justice nonprofit ÓRALE, said the deportations have incited more fear among Long Beach’s communities. Simple tasks like traveling to the hospital or school are “no longer a mundane thing,” she said, and increasingly carry more risk.
This comes after federal immigration agents earlier this month attempted to enter two elementary schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
Some residents, she continued, are terrified to speak out publicly, for fear of the repercussions.
“Don’t be fearful, because your silence will not protect you,” she said. “The people that have everything to lose are the ones speaking up. So I think we need everyone to kind of stand up and show up and really protect each other.”