US is seeking release of man wrongly sent to El Salvador, but it's not Abrego Garcia, court records show

Jeff Barker, The Baltimore Sun on Jun 3, 2025

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BALTIMORE — Court records show that U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is personally intervening with El Salvador to facilitate the return of a Venezuelan man with the pseudonym “Cristian” — a case similar to one in which a judge has directed the Trump administration to bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to Maryland.

Rubio has “a personal relationship” with President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador and “is committed to making prompt and diligent efforts” to comply with a court order to facilitate Cristian’s return, said a document filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Maryland by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official.

The document raises questions about whether Rubio is also seeking the release of Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old sheet metal apprentice mistakenly deported to El Salvador and imprisoned in March.

Abrego Garcia has not been returned, and another Maryland judge, Paula Xinis, ordered U.S. officials to be deposed on what, if anything, they have done to facilitate his return.

The Trump administration has said it lacks the authority to compel the release of Abrego Garcia because he is in foreign custody. Monday’s document disclosed that Rubio “has a personal relationship with President Bukele and senior officials in the El Salvadoran government that dates back over a decade to the Secretary’s service on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.”

The court document, written by ICE official Melissa B. Harper, said the State Department had authorized her to say that Rubio “is personally handling the discussions with the government of El Salvador” regarding Cristian’s case “based on this deep experience with El Salvador and the Secretary’s familiarity with political and diplomatic sensitivities in that country.”

The Baltimore Sun has reached out to the White House asking whether Rubio’s actions in Cristian’s case and relationship with Bukele contradict earlier statements that the United States is unable to secure Abrego Garcia’s release. Trump administration officials have said without evidence that Abrego Garcia was a gang member.

“Cristian” is a Venezuelan man wrongly sent to an El Salvador prison while he had a pending asylum application, said the federal judge in his case, Stephanie Gallagher. He requested to go by a pseudonym — court papers call him “Cristian” — because of concerns for his safety while in detention or elsewhere.

In a previous document, Gallagher compared her order in Cristian’s case to that imposed by Xinis, who has ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate and effectuate” the return of Abrego Garcia.

“Like Judge Xinis in the Abrego Garcia matter, this Court will order Defendants to facilitate Cristian’s return to the United States so that he can receive the process he was entitled to under the parties’ binding Settlement Agreement,” Gallagher wrote in April.

Under the settlement agreement, Cristian was among a group who entered the United States as unaccompanied minors and were permitted to seek asylum, the judge wrote.

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