Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) pushed back against claims that he was "sipping margaritas" with unlawfully deported Maryland resident, Kilmar Abrego García, during their meeting in El Salvador.
The claim was made on Thursday evening by El Salvador's President, Nayib Bukele, who posted photos of the meeting in a cheeky tweet. "Kilmar Abrego Garcia, miraculously risen from the 'death camps' & 'torture,'" it said. "Now sipping margaritas with Sen. Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador!🍹"
However, shortly after landing back in the US, Van Hollen disputed the claim, describing the incident as a deliberate setup orchestrated by Bukele and embraced by President Donald Trump.
"This is a lesson into the lengths that President Bukele will go to deceive people about what's going on. And it also shows the lengths Trump will go to" -- Van Hollen details how the photos appearing to show him and Abrego Garcia with margaritas were staged by the government of... pic.twitter.com/m8DB4kzT06
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 18, 2025
"When I first sat down with Kilmar, there were just glasses of water on the table," Van Hollen explained. "Then, someone from the Salvadoran government came over and placed two glasses with ice and sugar—or salt—on the rims, clearly staged to look like margaritas."
"If you look at the one they put in front of Kilmar, it actually had a little less liquid," Van Hollen said. "To try to make it look, I assume, like he drank out of it."
"But they made a little mistake," he continued, building up to revealing the blunder he called a "Sherlock Holmes moment."
Van Hollen noted that drinking a salt or sugar-rimmed glass would leave a gap. But on the photos shared by Bukele, there is no gap—evidence, he said, that neither he nor Abrego García touched the alleged margaritas.
Condemning both Bukele and the Trump administration, Van Hollen accused them of deliberately trying to distract from Abrego García's unlawful deportation and continued detention. "This is a lesson in the lengths President Bukele will go to deceive people," he said. "And the Trump White House has gone along with it."
"It also shows the lengths the Trump administration—the president—will go," Van Hollen indicted. "He just went along for the ride."
Earlier this week, Van Hollen was denied entry to the CECOT prison, where Abrego García had been held after a deportation that the Supreme Court has since unanimously ruled was illegal. Despite the court's April 10 order, the Trump administration continues to block Abrego García's return, citing unproven allegations of MS-13 affiliation—claims his legal team and court records dispute.
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