The State Department said the illegal immigrant was given a bed and furniture of his own in the lower security detention facility in El Salvador.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an illegal immigrant who was deported to El Salvador by the Trump administration, has been transferred from the country’s maximum-security prison to a detention facility, where he now has his own room, according to an April 20 court filing by the U.S. State Department.
Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran native, illegally entered the United States in 2011 and was living in Maryland. He was arrested and deported to El Salvador in March for allegedly being a member of the MS-13 gang, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, despite an immigration judge having issued a withholding of removal—which legally barred his deportation to his home country—in 2019 due to concerns for his safety.
The department said Abrego Garcia was transferred from El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) to a facility in Santa Ana eight days before he met with U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) on April 17 during the senator’s visit to the country.
“Abrego Garcia told Sen. Van Hollen that he had been placed in the administrative building of Centro Industrial, in a room of his own with a bed and furniture, and that he was not in a cell,” Michael Kozak, a senior official at the State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, said in the filing.
Van Hollen traveled to El Salvador last week to visit Abrego Garcia after Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said the man would not be returned to the United States.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return to the United States after it acknowledged that he was deported following an administrative error.
The administration has said that it lacked the authority to return Abrego Garcia from El Salvador as he was already in the custody of a foreign nation.
