U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen on Tuesday made a direct appeal to President Donald Trump in the continuing case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, telling him in a lengthy letter that the Salvadoran government has contradicted his administration’s statements about which government is in charge of facilitating his release and return to Maryland.

Admonishing Trump for what Van Hollen called a “farce” of a legal defense in Abrego Garcia’s case, the senator outlined in detail his conversation with Vice President Félix Ulloa, of El Salvador, when he was in the country earlier this month to meet with the deported Maryland resident.

The White House, in response to Van Hollen’s latest salvo, did not address the specific arguments but instead doubled down on its attacks against Abrego Garcia, the senator and Democrats at large.

Ulloa told Van Hollen that it was up to the U.S. government to determine if he would be released from prison — not the government of El Salvador, as Trump and his administration have indicated.

Ulloa repeatedly said that “the ball is in your court” and that the reason El Salvador is imprisoning Abrego Garcia, despite the Trump administration’s admission that he was wrongfully detained and deported, is because of the financial arrangement in which the U.S. is paying El Salvador to detain people, Van Hollen wrote.

“We have a deal with the U.S. government. They send people. We host them. They pay. And that’s it,” Ulloa said, according to Van Hollen.

Van Hollen’s letter to the president appeared to be spurred, in part, by Trump’s comments about the case during an interview with Time magazine last week, which followed the senator’s trip the week before.

The Maryland Democrat quoted from the interview in the letter to Trump and pointed out that the president said he had not asked El Salvador President Nayib Bukele to return Abrego Garcia. Trump told Time that it was up to his administration’s lawyers to determine how to handle the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return.

Though Trump added that “bringing him back and retrying him wouldn’t bother me,” he also reiterated claims he and his administration have made about Abrego Garcia’s alleged connections to the MS-13 gang. His lawyers have not presented evidence in court supporting that claim, a judge said.

The White House doubled down on those attacks when asked for comment about Van Hollen’s letter Tuesday.

“Chris Van Hollen and Democrats dug themselves into the hole of demanding the return of a violent illegal alien, wifebeater, and foreign terrorist, and they just keep digging themselves deeper,” said White House spokesman Kush Desai.

Meanwhile, the family of Rachel Morin, the Harford County mother who was killed in 2023 by a man who was in the country illegally, continued to join Trump in denouncing Van Hollen’s advocacy for Abrego Garcia’s return. Morin’s mother, Patty Morin, has spoken during a White House press briefing and on Fox News, where she also published an op-ed Tuesday calling Van Hollen’s actions “a slap in the face.”

“Rather than working for Americans and the victims of migrant crime, Van Hollen spends his time actively making American lives worse and championing dangerous criminals from another country. This isn’t compassion. It’s recklessness,” Patty Morin wrote. (Abrego Garcia has no criminal record in either El Salvador or the U.S.)

Van Hollen has said he did not ask Abrego Garcia directly about the MS-13 allegations and that he is instead focusing on the illegal process of the man’s deportation. He said in the letter that Trump’s approach has been “shameful” and that his administration’s legal defense for not following court rulings is a “farce.”

“So your Administration should put up or shut up in court,” Van Hollen wrote, repeating a line he has said frequently in interviews since Abrego Garcia was deported. “I am not vouching for the man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, I am vouching for his rights.”

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