US senator says margaritas in photo with wrongly deported man planted by El Salvador - live (2025)

Speaking to reporters at Dulles airport in Washington on Friday afternoon, the senator Chris Van Hollen just accused the government of El Salvador of creating the hoax he called “Margarita-gate”, by placing a pair of cocktail glasses on the table between himself and Kilmar Ábrego García as they met the night before, to make it look as though they were enjoying drinks.

Those photographs were posted on X by El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, along with a caption that downplayed the seriousness of the situation by falsely claiming that the senator and the wrongly deported man had been “sipping margaritas” as they met on Thursday evening.

But the senator said that the drinks were placed there during the meeting by someone from the Salvadoran government before the photographs were taken and that neither he nor Ábrego García had touched them. Van Hollen pointed out that there was visual evidence for this in the photographs: the rims of both glasses were covered in salt or sugar, but it was clear from the images that neither glass had been drunk from, since the rims were undisturbed.

Van Hollen himself shared a photo of the meeting on X taken before the glasses were placed there, in which there were just cups of coffee and glasses of water on the table.

Bukele’s false assertion that the men sipped margaritas was widely shared by Trump supporters, including by a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, the House Republican conference and a correspondent for the pro-Trump outlet Newsmax, who mentioned it in a question to the president on Friday.

Donald Trump retook the White House vowing to stage “the largest deportation operation in American history”. As previewed, the administration has set about further militarizing the US-Mexico border and targeting asylum seekers and refugees while conducting raids and deportations in undocumented communities, detaining and deporting immigrants and spreading fear.

Critics are outraged, if not surprised. But few expected the new legal chapter that unfolded next: a multipronged crackdown on certain people seen as opponents of the US president’s ideological agenda. This extraordinary assault has come in the context of wider attacks on higher education, the courts and the constitution.

Here are some of the most high-profile individual cases that have captured the world’s attention so far because of their extreme and legally dubious nature, mostly involving documented people targeted by the Trump administration in the course of its swift and unlawful power grab.

The US representative Pramila Jayapal decried the move to remove even more immigrants and send them to El Salvador’s notorious prison for alleged gang members.

“SCOTUS ruled that Trump had to give people adequate notice before deporting them. Yet today, there are reports that he’s deporting 177 immigrants with under 24 hours’ notice—not enough time to assert due process. We cannot stand by as this admin continues to disappear people,” she wrote.

At the airport in Washington, the Maryland senator Chris Van Hollen is currently describing his meeting with Kilmar Ábrego García in El Salvador on Thursday.

Here is the live video from the senator’s YouTube channel.

In an emergency motion, lawyers for Venezuelan nationals in the US are raising alarm that their clients have been given 24 hours of notice that they will be removed from the US.

The filing is part of a larger case from the American Civil Liberties Union, Democracy Forward and the ACLU of the District of Columbia challenging the Trump administration over the president’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to remove immigrants in the US.

The filing indicates that the government is planning a fresh wave of deportations to El Salvador’s mega-prison, Cecot, where more than 275 immigrants have already been sent. The lawyers are asking for an immediate restraining order mandating that the government give people at least 30 days notice of removals.

In their court filing, lawyers say clients received a document Friday from immigration officials, titled “Notice and Warrant of Apprehension and Removal under the Alien Enemies Act”.

It reads: “You have been determined to be ... a member of Tren de Aragua.”

“You have been determined to be an Alien enemy subject to apprehension, restraint and removal from the United States … This is not a removal under the Immigration and Nationality Act,” the notice reads.

Here’s a look at where things stand:

• Gary Shapley, the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, has been ousted after treasury secretary Scott Bessent complained to Donald Trump that Shapley had been installed without his knowledge and at the behest of billionaire Elon Musk, according to the New York Times. Citing five people with knowledge of ousting, the New York Times reports that Bessent believed that Musk “had done an end run around him” to get Shapley installed, despite the IRS having to report to Bessent’s department.

• Speaking to reporters at the White House on Friday, Donald Trump said that the US is having good conversations with China amid the ongoing trade war between the two countries. “By the way, we have nice conversations going with China … It’s, like, really very good,” he said. He did not offer additional details, Reuters reports.

• Trump, asked about Kilmar Ábrego García, the Maryland man wrongly deported to El Salvador, says he has “no interest in that prisoner”.

• Keir Starmer and Donald Trump spoke about UK-US trade talks and Ukraine in a phone call on Friday, according to Downing Street. A statement from a No 10 spokesperson reads: “The leaders began by discussing the ongoing and productive discussions between the UK and US on trade. The Prime Minister reiterated his commitment to free and open trade and the importance of protecting the national interest.”

• Donald Trump and his team will continue to study whether to fire the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, the White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said. “The president and his team will continue to study that matter,” Hassett told reporters at the White House in response to a question.

• The Trump administration has requested records from Harvard University on the money it receives from foreign funding, in the latest step in Donald Trump’s pressure campaign against the university. The education department said it sent a records request from Harvard “after a review of the university’s foreign reports revealed incomplete and inaccurate disclosures”.

• Donald Trump has accepted the Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni’s invitation to pay an official visit to Italy in the “very near future”, a joint statement by the leaders said on Friday. The statement came a day after the two leaders met at the White House in an attempt by Meloni to bridge the gap between the EU and the US amid trade tariff tensions.

• Elon Musk’s unofficial “department of government efficiency” and the Trump administration have spared the jobs of US Department of Transportation employees who provide support services for spacecraft launches by Musk’s companies, SpaceX and Starlink – a revelation that raises a new round of conflict-of-interest questions around Doge. In its most recent buyout announcement, the transportation department did not note that the positions spared supported Musk’s and others’ space operations.

From the Guardian’s Edward Helmore and Léonie Chao-Fong and agencies:

Jennifer Vasquez Sura, wife of Kilmar Ábrego García, the man the Trump administration has admitted it mistakenly deported to El Salvador, on Friday expressed relief to learn he is alive after a Democratic US senator managed to meet with him.

“It was very overwhelming – the most important thing for me, my children, his mom, brothers was to see him alive, and we saw him alive,” Vasquez Sura told ABC in an interview.

The Maryland senator Chris Van Hollen revealed on Thursday evening that he had met with Ábrego García at the maximum-security prison in El Salvador known as Cecot, where the autocratic regime holds prisoners without due process. Ábrego García was arrested by immigration agents in Maryland, where he lives and works with his family.

He had been afforded a federal protection order against deportation to El Salvador, which the Trump administration ignored last month when it flew him and more than 200 Venezuelan deportees to El Salvador without warning or a court hearing, in a move that has fallen foul of judges in the US right up to the supreme court.

For the full story, click here:

The White House has released a list of the various activities scheduled for Easter celebrations next Monday.

Part of the celebrations, which will be helmed by first lady Melania Trump, include:

• Be Best Military Card Writing Station, encouraging children to send messages of gratitude to American troops.

• Be Best Hopscotch, for the most energetic young guests.

• Space Exploration Experience, courtesy of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa).

• Hen to Home Activity, courtesy of the American Egg Board.

• Garden Café for Tasty Treats, courtesy of the American Egg Board.

• Play Garden, courtesy of the Toy Association.

• Bloom Bar and Carrot Planting, courtesy of the International Fresh Produce Association.

• Easter Candy Distribution, courtesy of the National Confectioners Association.

• Reading Nook, courtesy of Amazon.

• Family Photo Opportunity Celebrating Reading, courtesy of Amazon.

• Bunny Hop Stage, courtesy of YouTube.

• AI-Powered Experience and Photo Opportunity, courtesy of Meta.

• Ringing of the Bell Photo Opportunity, courtesy of the New York Stock Exchange.

The children’s celebrations next week come amid Donald Trump’s widespread immigration crackdowns across the country that include efforts by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to deport unaccompanied immigrant children, as Reuters reported in February.

Additionally, as part of sweeping budget cuts across the federal government, the Trump administration is reported to have cut funding last month to a legal program that provides representation for unaccompanied immigrant children.

Donald Trump has said the US will ‘take a pass’ on a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine if ‘parties make it difficult’.

The US president made the comments to reporters during the swearing-in ceremony for Mehmet Oz as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Gary Shapley, the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, has been ousted after treasury secretary Scott Bessent complained to Donald Trump that Shapley had been installed without his knowledge and at the behest of billionaire Elon Musk, according to the New York Times.

Citing five people with knowledge of ousting, the New York Times reports that Bessent believed that Musk “had done an end run around him” to get Shapley installed, despite the IRS having to report to Bessent’s department.

The Times further reports that Musk’s so-called “department of goverment efficiency” encouraged Shapley’s appointment through White House channels without consulting Bessent, according to the sources who spoke to the outlet.

The next acting head of the IRS is expected to be the deputy treasury secretary, Michael Faulkender, the Times reported.

He would hold the role until the president’s nominee for the permanent role, former Missouri congressman Billy Long, if approved by the Senate, takes over.