U.S. Rep. Maxine Dexter, representing Oregon’s 3rd Congressional District, meets with reporters at the Portland International Airport April 22, 2025. Dexter was returning from a trip to El Salvador, where she and three other Congressional Democrats attempted to meet with wrongfully deported Maryland man Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who is being detained in an unknown location. (Alex Baumhardt/Oregon Capital Chronicle)
U.S. Rep. Maxine Dexter wheeled her suitcase right off a plane at the Portland International Airport and into a news conference following a whirlwind 48-hour trip to El Salvador to demand the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man wrongfully deported to and imprisoned in El Salvador by the U.S. government.
Dexter, a Democrat who represents Oregon’s 3rd Congressional District, met with reporters Tuesday afternoon outside the airport’s lost and found.
“We’re disappearing people,” Dexter said. “I’m here to vouch for every American citizen’s right, as well as anyone within our borders right, to due process.”
She and three other congressional Democrats who went on the trip — Rep. Robert Garcia of California, Maxwell Frost of Florida and Yassamin Ansari of Arizona — were denied a meeting with Abrego Garcia by Salvadoran officials, and were not told where he’s being detained, she said. He has been moved from the maximum-security Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, about 45 minutes from El Salvador’s capital, San Salvador, to an unknown prison, she said. He has had no contact with his lawyer or family since he was visited April 17 by Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, also a Democrat.
The congressmembers decided to take the trip late last week, Dexter said, to attempt to meet with Abrego Garcia and to demand Trump officials abide by a Supreme Court order to facilitate his return. She said they also hoped to raise awareness about the broader issues raised by that unlawful deportation, and the executive’s defiance of the country’s highest court.
Abrego Garcia, 29, entered the U.S. without authorization more than a decade ago but has not been criminally convicted of anything. Though an immigration judge in October 2019 denied his asylum request for being targeted by a local gang in El Salvador, he was granted protection from being deported due to a “well-founded fear” of gang persecution.
He agreed to check in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, annually, and court filings from the Department of Homeland Security show the agency issued him a work permit, according to reporting in the Baltimore Banner. Trump officials admitted in March they had mistakenly deported Abrego Garcia, but they said they did not have the power to bring him back from El Salvador.
“What happened to these people is a nightmare, and it is not just this family’s nightmare. It’s a constitutional crisis,” Dexter said of Abrego Garcia, and hundreds of Venezuelans with pending immigration cases who were recently swept up in mass deportations and sent to prisons in El Salvador under Trump directives.
While in El Salvador, the congressmembers spoke with Abrego Garcia’s lawyer and human rights activists, and spoke remotely with his family. They also sent official letters to Secretary of State Marco Rubio demanding Abrego Garcia’s proof of life, access to counsel and demanding his safe return. They have not heard back from Rubio, Dexter said.
They also met with an attorney for Andry Hernández Romero, one of more than 200 Venezuelan immigrants flown from the U.S. to CECOT in El Salvador earlier this month. Hernández Romero is gay and had sought asylum in the U.S. from persecution over his sexuality and political views.
“There is no access to counsel that is facilitated in El Salvador. When they go to these prisons, they are detained and they are disappeared,” Dexter said. “There’s no access for family or attorneys to these detention facilities to meet with the people in prison in the way that we would expect in the United States.”
Dexter said concerns over deportations without due process, and particularly the story of Abrego Garcia, were the No. 1 reason people called her office last week. In the last few days, she said, nearly three-quarters of the calls her office received were expressing support for her going to El Salvador to demand Abrego Garcia’s return and to raise awareness over wrongful deportations.
President Trump has recently doubled down on X with unfounded claims that Abrego Garcia is a member of the Salvadoran gang MS-13, which Rubio designated a foreign terrorist organization in February. Dexter said if that’s truly the case, the government should be able to prove it in court.
“If we’re willing to let Donald Trump be a decider, that is a dangerous precedent for us,” Dexter said.
Dexter said other congressional Democrats are planning to go to El Salvador to raise awareness and demand the release of unlawfully deported immigrants in the weeks ahead.
Van Hollen, who made that first trip on April 17, joined Dexter, Garcia, Frost and Ansari on their flight from Los Angeles to El Salvador, where he helped connect them with Abrego Garcia’s family, and human rights groups on the ground, who have been calling for his release and the release of hundreds of other wrongfully detained people.
Dexter advised her Republican colleagues, many of whom have so far been quiet about the unlawful deportations, to “step up and find their courage before it’s too late.”
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