San Salvador, El Salvador - Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen said Thursday he had met with a Salvadoran man wrongfully deported to a mega-prison in his home country by the Trump administration, in a case that has sparked outrage in the US.

Van Hollen had earlier said he had been denied access to the prison where Washington has paid President Nayib Bukele millions to lock up nearly 300 people it says are criminals and gang members – including 29-year-old Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

"I said my main goal of this trip was to meet with Kilmar. Tonight I had that chance," Van Hollen later posted on X, along with a photo of him sitting at what appeared to be a restaurant table with Abrego Garcia.

Van Hollen added that he would offer "a full update upon my return" to the US.

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Abrego Garcia was detained in Maryland last month and expelled to El Salvador along with 238 Venezuelans and 22 fellow Salvadorans who were deported shortly after President Donald Trump invoked a rarely-used wartime authority.

Trump administration officials have claimed he is an illegal migrant, a gang member, and involved in human trafficking, without providing any evidence.

Abrego Garcia had enjoyed a protected status in the US, precluding his deportation to El Salvador for his own safety.

A federal judge has since ordered his return, later backed up by the Supreme Court.

But the administration – despite admitting an "administrative error" in his deportation – is defying the judiciary, contending he is now solely in Salvadoran custody and has continued to smear Abrego Garcia as a "gang member."

Bukele, who met Trump in Washington on Monday, said he does not have the power to send the man back.

The Salvadoran leader posted to X late Thursday that Abrego Garcia was "sipping margaritas with Sen. Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador" – a falsehood, since the man appeared to have a cup of coffee and glass of water on the table in front of him.

"Now that he's been confirmed healthy, he gets the honor of staying in El Salvador's custody," Bukele added in another post.

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Van Hollen, on the second day of his trip to El Salvador, had earlier tried to make his way to the notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) outside the capital San Salvador to see Abrego Garcia.

The car he was traveling in was stopped by soldiers, he said, about 1.8 miles from the complex holding thousands of Salvadorans, and now also hundreds of migrants expelled from the US, in horrific conditions.

"We were told by the soldiers that they had been ordered not to allow us to proceed," the senator later told reporters.

On Wednesday, Salvadoran Vice President Felix Ulloa had denied Van Hollen permission to see the prisoner or even talk to him by telephone.

Asked why Abrego Garcia was being held at all, Ulloa told him "that the Trump administration is paying El Salvador, the government of El Salvador, to keep him at CECOT," the senator recounted.