Democrats are celebrating Sen. Chris Van Hollen’s meeting with Kilmar Abrego Garcia as a victory in their fight to secure the wrongfully deported man’s release.

But President Donald Trump is claiming the meeting as a win, too.

The two parties are locked into warring narratives on Abrego Garcia’s case, which has taken center stage amid an escalating battle between Trump and the courts over the administration’s mass deportation policy.

Van Hollen on Thursday secured a face-to-face meeting with Abrego Garcia, who was illegally deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador and held in the country’s CECOT mega-prison for the past month. The Maryland senator has led the charge for Democrats pushing for accountability from the administration.

After the Salvadoran government initially blocked his attempt to visit the notorious prison, the senator succeeded in his mission to meet Abrego Garcia — a Salvadoran native who lived in Maryland until his deportation — on Thursday, writing in a post to X: “I said my main goal of this trip was to meet with Kilmar. Tonight I had that chance.”

Democrats immediately branded the meeting a success, lauding Van Hollen for his leadership and perseverance in pushing to see Abrego Garcia.

“This is what leadership looks like. I’m proud of my partner and our senior Senator,” Van Hollen’s fellow Maryland Sen. Angela Alsobrooks wrote on X. “We won’t stop until we bring Kilmar home.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Friday also thanked Van Hollen for his trip, writing on X: “Mr. Abrego Garcia was wrongfully imprisoned. As the Supreme Court indicated, there was no basis for his warrantless arrest. The Trump admin must obey the law. He must be returned home.”

But President Donald Trump and top administration officials say Van Hollen’s visit played right into their hands.

Trump bashed Van Hollen on Truth Social Friday morning, writing: “Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland looked like a fool yesterday standing in El Salvador begging for attention from the Fake News Media, or anyone. GRANDSTANDER!!!”

The official White House account on X posted side-by-side photographs of Van Hollen’s meeting with Abrego Garcia and Trump’s Oval Office conversation with the mother of Rachel Morin, a Maryland woman whose killer — who was convicted this week — was an undocumented immigrant, drawing a comparison between the two visits.

“We are not the same,” read the post, which is now pinned atop the White House’s profile.
White House deputy press secretary Kush Desai took aim at Van Hollen in a post Thursday night, emphasizing the administration’s line on the contrast between the two parties’ priorities, writing: “Chris Van Hollen has firmly established Democrats as the party whose top priority is the welfare of an illegal alien MS-13 terrorist. It is truly disgusting. President Trump will continue to stand on the side of law-abiding Americans.”

The White House has for days sought to frame Democrats’ advocacy for Abrego Garcia as the rival party working on behalf of someone who the administration has branded an MS-13 gang member and terrorist, even as a federal judge has said the evidence presented by the administration is weak.

By contrast, the administration has projected itself as a champion for justice for the Morin family as they reel from the loss of their daughter.

Trump has resisted efforts to bring back Abrego Garcia despite repeated orders from the courts to do so. U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ordered the administration to “facilitate” his return to the States after government lawyers admitted Abrego Garcia’s deportation was an “administrative error,” and has previously cast the evidence of gang affiliation presented by the government — a tip from an informant and the fact he has worn Chicago Bulls attire — as very flimsy.

The Supreme Court subsequently upheld Xinis’ order to facilitate his return. A federal appellate court opinion — authored by one of the nation’s most prominent conservative appellate judges — issued hours before Van Hollen’s meeting with Abrego Garica was made public also excoriated the Trump administration’s handling of the case.

“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,” 4th Circuit Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, a Reagan appointee, wrote.

He continued: “This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.”

The unanimous three-judge panel refused to lift Xinis’ order calling for the U.S. to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return.

The White House Friday posted an edited headline from The New York Times, calling Abrego Garcia an “MS-13 illegal alien” who is “never coming back.”

The administration has also found a willing partner in its intensifying messaging campaign on Abrego Garcia’s case: Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele.

Bukele has appeared to join forces with the Trump administration, claiming that his hands are tied, too. During a visit to the White House Monday, the Salvadoran president said he would not release Abrego Garcia — asking, “How can I return him to the United States? Am I going to smuggle him?” — granting Trump the leeway to claim that he was unable to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return.

Bukele also broke the news of Van Hollen’s meeting with Abrego Garcia Thursday night with a mocking tone.

“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, appearing to take a jab at Democrats who had warned of the severity of the conditions in CECOT.

The El Salvadoran president also indicated that the fight over Abrego Garcia is far from over, writing that the Maryland man “gets the honor of staying in El Salvador’s custody.”

“I love chess,” Bukele wrote in a separate post as reactions to Van Hollen’s visit poured in. The Trump War Room, an account run by the president’s political operation, reposted the message.

El Salvador refused Thursday to allow Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen to see the Maryland man who the Trump administration mistakenly whisked off to a notorious prison in his Central American homeland.

The Maryland senator said he traveled to El Salvador to check on the health condition of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who the administration sent to the prison despite a judge’s order that he be allowed to remain in the U.S. Van Hollen said soldiers blocked their approach.

“Nobody has had any communication with him since he was illegally abducted from Maryland,” he said in a video posted to social media.

The case has become a flashpoint for Democrats and other critics of the administration’s deportation efforts. The Supreme Court has directed the government to facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia, who had been allowed to remain in the U.S. after a judge determined he had a legitimate fear of persecution in El Salvador.

President Donald Trump and El Salvador’s leader, President Nayib Bukele, have said they have no basis to bring him back.

Van Hollen, who tried to visit Abrego Garcia with an attorney for the family, was denied access despite the fact that Republican members of Congress have been able to enter a facility that has drawn condemnation for the harsh conditions of confinement.

“Today’s purpose was just to see what his health condition is, and these soldiers were ordered to prevent us from going any farther from this spot,” the senator said in the video.

Democrats have taken on Abrego Garcia’s plight as part of what they’ve called a growing constitutional crisis under the Trump administration. In a press conference, Van Hollen said that his deportation should spark fears of a greater violation of due process rights.

Some House Democrats moved to arrange a Congressional visit to CECOT to see Abrego Garcia, where others like New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker have started planning their own visits to El Salvador.

House Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green, a Republican from Tennessee, shut down the idea of a Congressional sponsored trip to El Salvador in a statement Thursday.

“There is no excuse for Democrats to waste taxpayer dollars visiting and defending a transnational gang member and reported domestic abuser,” Green wrote. “If Democrats care so much about defending this individual, they can use their own personal credit cards—not taxpayers’ money—to virtue-signal to their radical base.”

Sen. Lisa Murkowski said a fear of retaliation under President Donald Trump’s administration is rising to levels she’s not seen before, acknowledging this week that it is so pervasive that even the outspoken senator is “oftentimes very anxious” to speak up out of fear of recrimination.

The Alaska senator, who has been among Trump’s most prominent critics in the Republican Party, made the startling admission at a conference of nonprofit and tribal leaders in Anchorage on Monday. Addressing a question about how to respond to people who are afraid in the current political climate, Murkowski responded: “We are all afraid.”

“It’s quite a statement,” she continued after a long pause, in remarks first reported by the Anchorage Daily News. “We’re in a time and place where — I don’t know, I certainly have not — I have not been here before. And I’ll tell you, I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice because retaliation is real. And that’s not right. But that’s what you’ve asked me to do and so I’m going to use my voice to the best of my ability.”

Murkowski has repeatedly criticized Trump’s policies amid overwhelming buy-in from her fellow party members. The Alaska senator openly rebuked the president for “walking away from our allies” as he increasingly aligned himself with Russian leader Vladimir Putin and publicly berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. She has also voiced strong opposition against the Department of Government Efficiency’s mass firing wave and slash-and-burn efforts to cut down government agencies.

The senator said this week that she has been “just trying to listen as carefully as I can to what is happening” and trying to address the “impacts it is having on the ground.”

She did not explicitly mention Trump by name in a video of her remarks posted by the Alaska newspaper.

“It is as hard as anything I’ve engaged in in the 20-plus years I have been in the Senate,” Murkowski said, later recounting to the Anchorage Daily News anecdotes of people approaching her in tears to describe how they had been fired from their jobs with no notice or that they were afraid to speak up about the “status of where we are” out of fear of retaliation from their agency or employer.

Murkowski last month said she refused to “compromise my own integrity” by remaining silent as Elon Musk’s DOGE slashed through government agencies, ending longstanding federal programs and putting thousands of federal employees out of work.

The longtime senator, who successfully beat a Trump-backed challenger in 2022, said last month that she would not be cowed into compliance despite threats of being primaried, even if Musk should pour millions into backing a possible challenger. Murkowski is not up for reelection until 2028.