What is the ‘margarita-gate’ story linking US senator Chris Van Hollen and Kilmar Abrego Garcia?

As the controversy over Donald Trump’s administration mistakenly deporting a man from Maryland to El Salvador, named Kilmar Abrego Garcia, intensifies, the topic of margaritas has found its way into the online discourse and led to US senator Chris Van Hollen being asked some bizarre questions.

Who is Kilmar Abrego Garcia?

He’s a prisoner in El Salvador, originally from Maryland in the United States, who was wrongly deported to El Salvador by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents (ICE) and who the Supreme Court says should now be brought back to the United States.

The court ruled last week that Trump’s administration must “’facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador” and bring him back to the US.

Except, even after admitting the “administrative error”, officials have claimed it is impossible to do so.

El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, said this week that the country has no basis to return him to America, and on Friday, Trump sought to defend the deportation by posting a photo of himself with an image purporting to be Abrego Garcia’s hand tattoos, with the words MS-13 seen just below the knuckles of the hand.

U.S. President Donald Trump meets with President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador in the Oval Office of the White House April 14, 2025 in Washington, DC. Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images

Trump has claimed Abrego Garcia is a member of MS-13, which is a gang with origins in Los Angeles and El Salvador, but the courts have not found that he is a member.

District judge Paula Xinis – who on 6 April criticised the Trump administration’s “wholly lawless” and “grievous error” - noted “the ‘evidence’ against Abrego Garcia consisted of nothing more than his Chicago Bulls hat and hoodie”.

This, and “a vague, uncorroborated allegation from a confidential informant claiming he belonged to MS-13’s ‘Western’ clique in New York - a place he has never lived”.

Content on Vasquez Sura’s TikTok account shows tattoos on his knuckles, but none with “MS-13” spelled out.

However, some social media users claim his wife has been trying to “censor” the tattoos, citing a 6 April post on the platform where red heart emojis cover his hand.

And despite the court order, the White House critiqued a report of a meeting between Abrego Garcia and Van Hollen in El Salvador in The New York Times.

“Fixed it for you, @NYTimes. Oh, and by the way, @ChrisVanHollen – he’s NOT coming back,” the White House account wrote on Friday.

The tweet was accompanied by a story from the Times with the headline “Senator meets with wrongly deported Maryland man in El Salvador”, now scribbled over with red lines and text to read, “Senator meets with deported MS-13 illegal alien in El Salvador who’s never coming back”.

What is ‘margarita-gate’?

Following the aforementioned meeting between Van Hollen and Abrego Garcia, El Salvador’s president shared photos of the pair having a conversation, with drinks seen on the table, to his Twitter/X account.

He wrote: “Kilmar Abrego Garcia, miraculously risen from the ‘death camps’ and ‘torture’, now sipping margaritas with Sen. Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador!”

Trump was even asked about the images in the Oval Office on Friday, praising the reporter who posed the question before branding Van Hollen “a fake”:

What has Van Hollen said about the incident?

Speaking later that day, Van Hollen told reporters that initially there were just “glasses of water on the table. I think maybe some coffee”, before “one of the government people” placed “two other glasses on the table”.

He said: “If you look at the video or the pictures I sent out from the beginning of our meeting you’ll see there are no glasses on the table. So you’ll see in later videos they are on the table.

“But they made a little mistake … If you sip out of one of those glasses, some of whatever it was, salt or sugar, would disappear and you would see a gap.

“There was no gap. Nobody drank any margaritas or sugar water or whatever it is.”

Sen. Van Hollen's Office, U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) meets with Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia (L) at an undisclosed location on April 17, 2025, in San Salvador, El Salvador. No margarita glasses are on the table, as Sen. Van Hollen claimed on social media; there were no margarita drinks at the beginning of the meeting.Photo by Sen. Van Hollen's Office via Getty Images

Van Hollen went on to add that it was a “lesson” into “the lengths that President Bukele will do to deceive people about what’s going on”.

“The White House and the president have been lying about this case from the beginning. They have been trying to change the subject from the beginning,” he said.

Why not read…

• White House slammed for ‘childish’ post about El Salvador deportee Kilmar Abrego Garcia
• Trump and Musk poll shows how popular they are - and they should be worried

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