Reps. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) and Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) sent a letter to House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) requesting a congressional delegation visit to the maximum security prison holding Kilmer Abrego Garcia in El Salvador.
“A Congressional delegation would allow Committee Members to conduct a welfare check on Mr. Abrego Garcia, as well as others held at CECOT, such as Andry José Hernandez—a 30-year-old LGBTQ makeup artist who passed a ‘credible fear’ interview during his legal asylum process before being deported,” Frost and Garcia wrote in their letter to Comer.
Abrego Garcia, is a Salvadoran national and Maryland resident, whom Trump administration officials acknowledge was in a court filing was mistakenly deported. The administration has since changed its tone on the matter and the attorney who admitted the administration made an error has been suspended.
Abrego Garcia is currently being held at Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, a notorious maximum security prison in El Salvador.
The two Democratic lawmakers went onto argue that congressional oversight is “warranted” after Trump suggested deporting “homegrown criminals” or U.S. citizens during a meeting with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele at the White House on Monday.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Tuesday that there was no scenario in which Abrego Garcia would end up living “a peaceful life” back in the U.S.
“Deporting him back to El Salvador was always going to be the end result. There is never going to be a world in which this is an individual who is going to live a peaceful life in Maryland,” Leavitt told reporters at a briefing.
The White House has insisted that Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang and represents a danger to the country. He has no criminal record and has been leaving in the United States for more than a decade.
Abrego Garcia’s family say he is not a member of MS-13 and fled El Salvador as a teenager to escape gang violence.
An immigration court in 2019 declined to send him back to El Salvador, and the administration at that time, during President Trump’s first term, did not challenge that decision.