House Republican committee chairs are denying Democrats’ requests to travel to El Salvador and visit its CECOT prison facility as scrutiny builds on the Trump administration’s handling of Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s mistaken deportation.
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) and House Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green (R-Tenn.) this week denied requests from Democrats to use official committee funds for Congressional delegation — otherwise known as CODEL trips — to El Salvador, with Comer calling the request “absurd” and Green saying it would “waste taxpayer dollars.”
The denials come as Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) made a trip to the country this week and met with Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national who was living in Maryland and whose return the Supreme Court has said the Trump administration should facilitate.
But it also comes as House Republicans are visiting El Salvador and the CECOT prison themselves. Several House GOP lawmakers, led by House Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.), visited El Salvador and the CECOT prison this week.
Comer specifically denied a request that Reps. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) and Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) made earlier in the week to visit the prison and to “conduct a welfare check on Abrego Garcia” and others held there, in addition to other oversight.
“It is absurd that you both displayed active hostility for over two years toward the Committee’s oversight of the Biden Border Crisis and the consequences of millions of illegal aliens entering the country, yet now, you are seeking travel at Committee expense to meet with foreign gang members,” Comer said in a letter denying the request Friday.
Comer claimed photos showed Van Hollen “enjoying margaritas garnished with cherry slices with the foreign gang member.” Van Hollen said in a press conference on Friday that an aide for El Salvador President Nayib Bukele had placed the salt- or sugar-rimmed glasses on the table and neither he nor Abrego Garcia “touched” the drinks. Claims of Abrego Garcia’s membership in MS-13 are based largely on a confidential tip and disputed by him and his family.
“If you also wish to meet with him, you can spend your own money. But I will not approve a single dime of taxpayer funds for use on the excursion you have requested,” Comer told Garcia and Frost. “Your request is denied.”
Garcia responded to Comer’s denial in a post on the social platform X by saying it “won’t stop us from doing our jobs.”
“Let’s be clear, the Trump administration admitted the deportation was a mistake, they have presented no evidence he was in MS-13, and they are defying the Supreme Court,” Garcia said.
Green also said he would deny requests from Democrats to visit El Salvador.
“There is no excuse for Democrats to waste taxpayer dollars visiting and defending a transnational gang member and reported domestic abuser,” Green said in a statement on Thursday, in reference to Abrego Garcia’s wife filing for a protective order against him in 2021. “If Democrats care so much about defending this individual, they can use their own personal credit cards—not taxpayers’ money—to virtue-signal to their radical base.”
Green’s statement came after Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) had made a request for an official CODEL to El Salvador to conduct oversight over the Abrego Garcia case, as Axios reported.
Other Congressional Republicans, though, have clearly seen value in conducting trips to El Salvador and the CECOT prison.
Smith posted about a trip he made to El Salvador CECOT prison earlier in the week, including photos of detainees behind bars.
“Thanks to President Trump, the CECOT prison in El Salvador, which is home to some of the country’s most vicious criminals, now includes illegal immigrants who broke into our country and committed violent acts against Americans,” Smith said in the post. “It is unconscionable that Democrats in Congress are urging the release of more foreign criminals back into our country.”
Accompanying Smith in El Salvador was Rep. Riley Moore (R-W.Va.), who also posted photos from the CECOT prison and said the trip left him “even more determined to support President Trump’s efforts to secure our homeland.”
The U.S. Embassy in El Salvador shared a photo on Wednesday with Smith, Moore, and Republican Reps. Kevin Hern (Okla.), Carol Miller (W.Va.), Claudia Tenney (N.Y.), Ron Estes (Kan.), and Rep. Mike Kennedy (Utah), saying the members visited “to strengthen bilateral ties and discuss initiatives that promote economic development and mutual cooperation.” It is not clear whether all of the members visited the CECOT prison.
Updated at 7:25 p.m. EDT
