Utah congressman visits prison in El Salvador where man was mistakenly deported

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

Rep. Mike Kennedy visited an El Salvador prison where Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia was held.
Abrego Garcia was mistakenly deported; the Supreme Court ordered his return to the U.S.
Gov. Spencer Cox suggests handling the case differently, while Kennedy supports Trump's stance.

WASHINGTON — A Utah congressman is sharing details about his visit to a prison in El Salvador where a man mistakenly deported from the U.S. was being held.

That controversial deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia has dominated the news for weeks.

Rep. Mike Kennedy, R-Utah, and other members of Congress visited El Salvador this week. One stop on the agenda was the Terrorist Confinement Center, where Abrego Garcia was held for a time before being transferred to another detention center in Santa Ana.

The Trump administration admitted the 29-year-old was mistakenly deported but has resisted bringing him back – even after the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously said it needs to happen.

Kennedy told KSL-TV Thursday he found the prison in El Salvador "very depressing." He said he did not talk to officials about Abrego Garcia or see him.

Rep. Mike Kennedy, at right, is pictured with other members of Congress on a visit this week to El Salvador. (Photo: US Embassy of El Salvador on X via)

Asked if he's concerned about the Trump administration ignoring court orders to return Abrego Garcia, Kennedy said the president was putting Americans first.

"Americans have not felt safe since the previous administration opened our borders to illegal aliens who have taken the lives of so many innocent Americans," Kennedy said. "I support the Trump administration's commitment to investigating who has entered our country and to trying to remove hard criminals."

But not all Utah Republicans are standing as firmly by the president. At his news conference Thursday, Gov. Spencer Cox called the Abrego Garcia case "an interesting one where you have a Supreme Court order." But he expressed concern about the breaking down of constitutional norms, and he suggested the Trump administration could handle the Abrego Garcia situation differently while still achieving its goals.

"I think you can bring him back, go through the process, and then have him deported," Cox said. "That's probably the way it should work."

Abrego Garcia has no criminal record and is married to a U.S. citizen. His family and attorneys insist he's not affiliated with a gang.

According to NBC News, Abrego Garcia migrated to the U.S. illegally in 2011, but an immigration judge ruled in 2019 he could not be deported back to El Salvador over concerns about his safety.

While Kennedy did get inside the prison in El Salvador, another member of Congress, Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Maryland, initially did not. NBC News reported he went there separately to try to meet with Abrego Garcia and see if he's OK but was not let in.

Late Thursday, Reuters reported Van Hollen was eventually allowed to meet with Abrego Garcia. The senator posted about his visit on social media.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.