Jennifer Vasquez Sura, the wife ofKilmar Ábrego García, the man theTrump administrationhas admitted it mistakenly deported, expressed relief to learn he is alive after a Democratic US senator managed to meet with him in El Salvador – as the White House posted on social media that Ábrego García is “never coming back” to the US.
“It was very overwhelming – the most important thing for me, my children, his mom, brothers was to see him alive, and we saw him alive,” Vasquez Sura told ABCin an interview.
The Maryland senator Chris Van Hollenrevealedon Thursday evening that he had met with Ábrego García at the maximum-security prison in El Salvador known asCecot, where the autocratic regime holds prisoners without due process. On Friday, after returning to Washington, Van Hollen said Ábrego García told the senator that he had been moved from Cecot – where he was sharing a cell with 25 other prisoners – to a detention center with better conditions.
Van Hollen said he traveled toEl Salvadorfor more than just Ábrego García. “It’s about protecting the constitutional rights of everybody who resides in the United States,” said Van Hollen, as Vasquez Sura stood nearby.
Ábrego García in March was arrested by immigration agents inMaryland, where he had been living and working.
Despite being undocumented, Ábrego García had been afforded a federal protection order against deportation to his native El Salvador, which the Trump administration ignored when it flew him and more than 200Venezuelan deporteesto El Salvador without warning or a court hearing, in a move that hasfallen foulof judges in the USright up tothe supreme court.
Van Hollen posted a picture of himself with Ábrego García in what appeared to be a cafeteria-style setting in the hospital wing of the prison. The previous day he had not been given access to the prison or his constituent after flying to El Salvador pledging to try to bring him back.
Vasquez described her spouse as “a very loving husband, an amazing father”. They were just parents “trying to live the American dream,” she said.
The Trump administration claims Ábrego García is a member of the Salvadorian violent gang network MS-13. But his family andthe headof the sheet-metal workers’ union that represents the trade in which he is an apprentice, have said he is not connected to a gang. He has not been charged with any crimes in the US or El Salvador. And the government admitted in a court filing that he had beendeported in error, but it has since refused to work to secure his return to the US despite court orders to do so.
The federal judge Paula Xinis has rebuked theTrump administrationfor resisting the court’s instructions to have the father returned, saying that the government has not submitted any evidence to her court that Ábrego García is a gang member or criminal.
The US president posted on social media criticizing the senator and the press in characteristic Trump language, saying Van Hollen “looked like a fool yesterday standing in El Salvador begging for attention from the Fake News Media, or anyone”.
Hours later in the White House, Trump reeled off unsubstantiated allegations against Ábrego García as “an MS-13 member, an illegal alien and a foreign terrorist, I assume”. He also read from a domestic violence protective order Vasquez filed against him in 2021 over allegations of domestic violence, describing him as violent and hitting and scratching her. Such a record is normally confidential unless the alleged victim chooses to release it, but the US president read excerpts to reporters.
Havingpreviously saidit was from a bad period in their marriage that they worked through, with counseling, and forged a stronger partnership, Vasquez in the ABC interview declined to discuss the protective order further. “I’m happy he’s alive, and that’s all I can say,” she said.
Meanwhile, Vasquez said on Friday that Garcia had been picked up by federal agents as he was pulled over while driving in Maryland. “What we thought was a regular traffic stop, turned out not to be a regular traffic stop,” she said, and reiterated denials that Garcia was a member of MS-13 or any other gang.
“He’s not,” she added.
Hours later on Friday, the White House made a sensational post on X, mocking the New York Times and Van Hollen and saying that Ábrego García is “never coming back”.
In ascathingcourt order, a US court of appeals for the fourth circuit on Thursday denied the administration’s effort to appeal an earlier order from a federal judge in Maryland requiring the government to facilitate Ábrego García’s return, and the judge issued a stark warning about US constitutional democracy, as Donald Trump continues to defy courts’ orders on numerous fronts.
The court said the administration’s claim that it can’t do anything to free the father from the prison and return him “should be shocking” to the public.
The blistering order further ratcheted up the escalating conflict between the US government’s co-equal executive and judicial branches.
The judge James Wilkinson said: “The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order.”
“Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done,” he added.
The panel emphasized that Ábrego García is entitled to due process. “If the government is confident of its position, it should be assured that position will prevail in proceedings to terminate the withholding of removal order,” the panel said.
“The judiciary will lose much from the constant intimations of its illegitimacy, to which by dent of custom and detachment we can only sparingly reply. The executive will lose much from a public perception of its lawlessness and all of its attendant contagions,” the judges said.
Lawyers for immigrants in Texas on Friday told a judge that they believed the Trump administration was about to deport their clients under the Alien Enemies Act. An attorney for Trump’s justice department said no deportation flights were planned – though the homeland security department said it reserved the right to remove people Saturday, CNNreported.
Meanwhile, the federal judge Brian Murphy on Friday barred the Trump administration from implementing a new policy allowing it to rapidly deport hundreds if not thousands of immigrants to countries other than their own without giving them a chance to show they fear being persecuted, tortured or killed there.
Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting