Maryland senator on meeting with Kilmar Abrego Garcia

WASHINGTON (CBS, KYMA/KECY) - Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) spoke with Weijia Jiang on Face the Nation Sunday after he returned to Washington after securing a meeting with Kilmar Abrego Garcia near the Salvadoran jail where he is imprisoned.

When Jiang asked Senator Van Hollen his response to the White House claiming they have new details surrounding the Abrego Garcia case, the senator said the following:

"In Abrego Garcia's case, the Trump administration admitted in federal court that he'd been wrongfully abducted and sent to a prison in El Salvador. But rather than fixing the problem, as the Supreme Court has said, in terms of his need to be- use their efforts to to facilitate his release, they reprimanded the lawyer who made that case. So, they need to bring him home. Now, with respect to these other facts. I say, put up or shut up in court, as you just heard in your last conversation, they have not done that and I do want to just read one sentence from the federal district court who said, and I quote, 'that the administration has presented no evidence linking Abrego Garcia to MS-13, or to any other terrorist activity,' unquote. Go to court, stop tweeting and put up or shut up in front of the judges."

During the interview, Jiang asked Van Hollen if he told Abrego Garcia why he was deported, to which Van Hollen said:

"I did not go over all the facts of his case, other than to say that the courts of the United States had determined that he had been wrongfully detained and deported. He has no news of his case. He did tell me that when he was taken to the Baltimore detention facility, he wanted to make one phone call to let people know exactly what was happening in terms of his detention there, and he was not able to make it. He did not know at that time that they were going to send him back to El Salvador, where, as you say, a federal immigration judge had prohibited the administration from sending him."

When Jiang asked Van Hollen if he asked Abrego Garcia if he was a member of MS-13, and Van Hollen said, "I know his answer. His answer he has made repeatedly, including in court, which is that he is not," before adding he was in El Salvador to "make sure that he was still alive and check on his health."

Later in the interview, Jiang asked Van Hollen if he has any concerns regarding the Salvadoran government was using him as pawn "to make their point that Abrego Garcia is doing well and that he should stay where he is," to which the senator responded saying:

"No, in fact, the El Salvadoran government tried really hard not to let me see him, but I think they realized that that was not a good look at the end of the day. I had press conferences in El Salvador with local press and made the point that El Salvador was violating international law by not allowing anyone to reach him, not his wife, not his lawyers, nobody. They realized that was a bad look. So I'm glad I met him, that was the purpose of my visit. They go to great lengths to deceive people, and that's what you saw, because they got these government guys, essentially told the waiters to bring these drinks that appear to look like margaritas to the table. No one touched them. I can go into the details about how their whole scheme was set up, but the reality is, if you look at the photos when I first sat down, and the ones at the end, you can see that that was all staged. They're trying to create the impression that you know this is a guy in paradise when, in fact, he's been in one of the most notorious prisons in the world."

Jiang followed up by asking if Abrego Garcia will remain in El Salvador as long as President Donald Trump is in office, or if President Trump changes his mind, and Van Hollen responded by saying:

"No, because the Supreme Court of the United States and the other courts have said that the administration has to facilitate his return. As of right now, they are in defiance of that court order. They're not doing anything. I want to be really clear, this is not a case about just one man whose constitutional rights are being ignored and disrespected. Because when you trample on the constitutional rights of one man, as the courts have all said is happening in this case, you threaten the constitutional rights of every American. I would think that conservatives and libertarians would recoil at the idea that someone has lost his liberty without due process. That's my focus. My focus is not on one man. It's on making sure one man's rights are secured so that we can uphold the rule of law."

To watch more of Jiang's interview with Van Hollen, click here.