Deported Man's Family Tell of Relief After Senator Meets Him in El Salvador

Jennifer Vasquez Sura, the wife of Kilmar Ábrego García, the man the Trump administration has admitted it mistakenly deported to El Salvador, yesterday expressed relief to learn he is alive after a Democratic US senator managed to meet him.

- Edward Helmore

"It was very overwhelming - the most important thing for me, my children, his mom, brothers was to see him alive, and we saw him alive," Vasquez Sura told ABC.

The Maryland senator Chris Van Hollen revealed on Thursday evening that he had met Ábrego García at the notorious maximum security prison in El Salvador known as Cecot, where the autocratic regime holds prisoners without due process.

Ábrego García was arrested by immigration agents in Maryland, where he lives and works with his family. He had been afforded a federal protection order against deportation to El Salvador, which the Trump administration ignored last month when it flew him and more than 200 Venezuelan deportees to El Salvador without warning or a court hearing, in a move that has fallen foul of judges in the US right up to the supreme court.