House Democrats Return Empty Handed From El Salvador

With little power and no official mandate, four House Democrats travel to El Salvador to protest a wrongful deportation—and warn of deeper constitutional decay.

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — In a defiant act of moral urgency, four House Democrats arrived in this Central American capital Monday to confront what they describe as a constitutional crisis unfolding back home: the wrongful deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident swept up in the Trump administration’s immigration dragnet.

Reps. Robert Garcia of California, Maxwell Frost of Florida, Yassamin Ansari of Arizona, and Maxine Dexter of Oregon—junior lawmakers with no official mandate and no security detail—traveled on their own dime after Republicans in the House blocked a formal congressional delegation. They came not only to protest, but to press both Washington and San Salvador to comply with a Supreme Court order demanding Abrego Garcia’s return.

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The trip, symbolic and unsanctioned, bore more resemblance to an act of conscience than a diplomatic effort. Still, it marked an escalation in what Democrats are casting as a challenge to executive overreach—one that has placed a man’s life, and the credibility of U.S. institutions, in the balance.

Abrego Garcia, deported in what even the Trump administration later acknowledged as an “administrative error,” is being held in a Salvadoran detention facility. His continued detention, the lawmakers argue, represents not just a bureaucratic failure but a profound erosion of due process. Their visit came on the heels of Sen. Chris Van Hollen’s trip the week before, signaling that Democrats are not finished with this fight.

At the U.S. Embassy, the delegation pressed for updates on Abrego Garcia’s welfare—and that of another deportee, Venezuelan asylum seeker Andry Hernandez Romero. They left without answers.