Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has a long history of using social media to flaunt his powers — from declaring himself “the coolest dictator in the world” to posting dramatically shot videos of people being herded into his country’s prisons.
That audacious style was once again on display when Bukele shared photos of Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) visiting with Kilmar Abrego García on Thursday. Abrego García, a Salvadoran immigrant and Maryland resident who is married to a U.S. citizen, was mistakenly deported last month to El Salvador. He was being held in the country’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center, known as CECOT.
Bukele mocked the senator’s visit, telling his followers that Van Hollen and Abrego García were drinking margaritas in the “tropical paradise of El Salvador.”
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, miraculously risen from the “death camps” & “torture”, now sipping margaritas with Sen. Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador!🍹 pic.twitter.com/r6VWc6Fjtn
— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) April 18, 2025
Van Hollen said his attempts to meet with Abrego García were initially refused, even though Bukele previously allowed Republican officials and social media influencers to visit the prison. But late Thursday, Van Hollen shared an image of himself seated at a table with Abrego García in a restaurant in El Salvador. Only in Van Hollen’s photo, there were no salt-rimmed glasses and cherries.
I said my main goal of this trip was to meet with Kilmar. Tonight I had that chance. I have called his wife, Jennifer, to pass along his message of love. I look forward to providing a full update upon my return. pic.twitter.com/U9y2gZpxCb
— Senator Chris Van Hollen (@ChrisVanHollen) April 18, 2025
In a news conference on Friday, Van Hollen said that Bukele’s staff had placed glasses at the table during their meeting and that neither he nor Abrego García drank from them. Van Hollen added that Bukele’s staff had made the glass in front of Abrego García less full so it appeared as if he had a drink from it. “It is the lengths that President Bukele will [go] to deceive people about what’s going on,” Van Hollen said.
In a subsequent post, Bukele said that now that Abrego García had been “confirmed healthy,” he would stay in Salvadoran custody. The Trump administration has admitted that Abrego García was deported because of an error but has argued that it is not bound to follow court orders to return him to Maryland. In an Oval Office meeting with President Donald Trump on Monday, Bukele said he did not have the power to return Abrego García.
Bukele’s prison videos are a hallmark of his presidency
The meeting between Van Hollen and Abrego García was in a very different setting than what Bukele and the Trump administration showed the world as the United States began deporting people to El Salvador last month.
On March 31, Bukele gleefully captured the men’s dramatic arrival: an onslaught of heavily armed soldiers surround a plane at night, men in bulletproof vests and face masks march the deported men off the plane, they have their heads shaved as they kneel, they are then rushed into prison cells.
“The shaving of the head, removal of clothes, the gathering of a large amount of security guards around one prisoner are all images we have seen before,” Sonja Wolf, a professor at Panamerican University in Mexico, told The Washington Post. “These are denigrating practices and dehumanizing practices that he uses to show the power of the state.”
Bukele has used such images to justify his policies. “Put them all in jail so they can’t kill anymore,” he wrote on X last year, adding, “World’s highest incarceration rate / safest country in the Western Hemisphere It’s not rocket science.”
Republicans have also used Bukele’s prisons to show toughness on immigration
Access to CECOT has also helped the Trump administration generate chilling content that, at times, has used humor to mock people who are subject to deportation. “ASMR: Illegal Alien Deportation Flight,” posted the White House’s official account on X, with a video of a man being shackled as he boards a plane.
Other times, the message has been more direct. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem published a video on March 26, standing in front of a CECOT cell, filled with men with shaved heads, many wearing nothing more than T-shirts and shorts. Noem, wearing a $50,000 Rolex watch, thanked Bukele and his government for allowing the U.S. “to bring our terrorists here” and later warned that “if you come to our country illegally, this is one of the consequences you could face.”
I toured the CECOT, El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center.President Trump and I have a clear message to criminal illegal aliens: LEAVE NOW.
If you do not leave, we will hunt you down, arrest you, and you could end up in this El Salvadorian prison. pic.twitter.com/OItDqNsFxM
— Secretary Kristi Noem (@Sec_Noem) March 26, 2025
Other congressional Republicans also have made similar treks to El Salvador, posing outside the cells of CECOT, including Rep. Riley Moore (West Virginia).
I just toured the CECOT prison in El Salvador. This maximum security facility houses the country’s most brutal criminals, including murderers, rapists, pedophiles, and terrorists. Several inmates were extremely violent criminals recently deported from the U.S.
I leave now even… pic.twitter.com/zhO8i2IbOd
— Rep. Riley M. Moore (@RepRileyMoore) April 15, 2025
Natalia Banulescu-Bogdan, deputy director of the international program at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, told The Post that such images can create “a cruel juxtaposition of humor and suffering” even if one side laughs or celebrates them.
Van Hollen was denied access to CECOT during his visit. The senator said Salvadoran officials had initially suggested that he meet Abrego García by the pool. “They wanted to create this appearance that life was just lovely for Kilmar, which of course is a big, fat lie,” Van Hollen said.
The senator later said that Abrego García told him that he was moved to another detention center, in Santa Ana, about 9 days ago.
