During a press briefing after his meeting with Kilmar Abrego Garcia in El Salvador, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) slammed El Salvador's government.
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00:00I will say, I want to say something about the government of El Salvador.
00:03They are making a huge mistake.
00:05You know, they want to brand themselves as a country for technology.
00:10You know, the president said, you know, Bitcoin is legal tender.
00:14But now what they're branding themselves as, as the place for these huge prisons,
00:21where people who are illegally deducted, excuse me, illegally abducted,
00:28are warehoused.
00:30That is not a good look.
00:32There are also other things Americans can do with respect to economic pressure on El Salvador.
00:38People can stop traveling.
00:40Actually, tourism has been going up.
00:42They can stop traveling.
00:44There may be states that decide, you know, they don't want any of their pension funds
00:49invested in companies that invest in a place like El Salvador.
00:55So there are many things that can be done.
00:58And I just urge the president of El Salvador, the vice president of El Salvador to rethink
01:03whether they want to become a place that just gets paid off for being complicit in this
01:10illegal scheme.
01:11Senator, have you talked to your colleagues, Senator, have you talked to your colleagues
01:16who plan to go down and what do you hope, what do you hope from your, have you, right here.
01:21Senator, why did the Salvadoran government reverse itself on allowing you to meet with Mr.
01:27Obrego Garcia after telling you no?
01:29And also, do you have a sense of why the government transferred Mr. Obrego Garcia from CICOT to this
01:36other prison in Santa Ana?
01:38Well, I think the reason they relented is pretty clear.
01:44They were feeling the pressure.
01:45I mean, they were feeling the pressure because while I was in El Salvador, we had two major press conferences
01:54that included the local press who reported on this.
01:59And I think that they decided that it was not a good look to continue to detain Al Brego Garcia
02:08without anybody having access to him.
02:12There's no other explanation for the fact that they said no, no, no, no, no, and then prevented us from going to the prison.
02:19So that's why.
02:22I'm sorry, what was the second question?
02:23The second part, why, and welcome home, why did they transfer him from CICOT to the other prison in Santa Ana?
02:32Oh, well, I mean, number one, I will say my main request was to meet with him.
02:37And as I said, he's no longer in CICOT.
02:39So he's at a different prison, which is pretty far outside of San Salvador.
02:46But in addition to that, I didn't even know that.
02:49I mean, so we all thought he was at CICOT.
02:52I mean, until I met with him.
02:54That's why I tried to go to CICOT.
02:57So I think that's why he wasn't brought up to CICOT.