Four Democratic U.S. House members, in El Salvador to push for the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, said they met with officials in the U.S. Embassy and got no indication that it is working to return the mistakenly deported man to Maryland.

“We just had a meeting earlier today with the embassy,” Rep. Maxwell Frost, a Florida Democrat, said during a livestreamed press conference on Monday.

“We left that meeting with absolutely zero indication that this administration is going to facilitate — or wants to facilitate — the return of Abrego Garcia back to the United States so he can go through due process. Due process applies to all people in our country.”

The other lawmakers on the trip are Reps. Yassamin Ansari of Arizona, Maxine Dexter of Oregon, and Robert Garcia of California. They were joined by Chris Newman, an attorney for Abrego Garcia’s wife and mother.

The visit was part of an effort by Democrats to secure the release of Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old Prince George’s County sheet metal apprentice and El Salvadoran national who was deported to El Salvador and imprisoned due to what a Trump administration attorney called an “administrative error.”

The lawmakers, who also met with human rights groups, say they also want to check on Abrego Garcia’s condition.

Abrego Garcia’s case has become a platform for a national debate over the scope of President Donald Trump’s authority.

The Trump administration has publicly called Abrego Garcia an MS-13 gang member, human trafficker and illegal alien. The administration and congressional Republicans criticized Sen. Chris Van Hollen, who met with Abrego last week, saying the Maryland Democrat should focus more on the victims of immigrant crime than on Abrego Garcia. Van Hollen said Abrego Garcia seemed in good condition, but that his assessment was superficial because their visit in El Salvador was so short.

Congressional Democrats say Abrego Garcia, who had been in the United States legally since 2019, was denied due process and that Trump is defying federal court orders to bring him home and telling “lies” about Abrego Garcia that cast him as a gang member or terrorist.

“We’re deeply grateful to the members of Congress and advocates for justice now on the ground in El Salvador, building on the leadership of Senator Van Hollen,” said a statement released Monday by CASA, the immigrants’ advocacy group, on behalf of Abrego Garcia’s family.

“We are particularly concerned about Kilmar’s health and hope to receive news about that from the visit. Their presence sends a powerful message: the fight to bring Kilmar home isn’t over.”

Last week, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman James Comer, a Republican, refused to allow committee members Frost and Garcia to travel to El Salvador using committee funds.

“You can spend your own money,” Comer said. “But I will not approve a single dime of taxpayer funds for use on the excursion you have requested,” Comer said in a letter posted by Frost on social media.

“Pretty shameful,” Maxwell posted on X of Comer’s denial. “Good thing I don’t need Comer’s permission to get on a plane.”

Comer called Abrego Garcia a “foreign MS-13 gang member.”

In a letter to the Trump administration two weeks ago seeking Abrego Garcia’s release, Van Hollen and fellow Maryland Sen. Angela Alsobrooks wrote that gang members had been trying to recruit Abrego Garcia and his brother, “forcing his family to move multiple times, ultimately compelling both him and his brother to flee to the United States out of fear.”

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