US senator meets man mistakenly deported to El Salvador

A US senator has met a man who Trump istration officials have acknowledged was deported in error from Maryland to a mega-prison in El Salvador.

Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen posted photos with Kilmar Ábrego García, as the istration continues to resist his return to the US despite yet another court ruling against the government on Thursday.

After the meeting, which appeared to take place in a hotel, El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele said the detainee would remain in the country's custody.

The White House has accused Mr Ábrego García of being a member of the transnational Salvadoran gang MS-13, a designated foreign terrorist organisation, which his lawyer denies.

In a post on his social media site Truth Social the morning after the meeting, Trump said Van Hollen "looked like a fool yesterday standing in El Salvador begging for attention from the Fake News Media, or anyone".

The visit came amid an escalating showdown between the US president and the courts over the case.

A federal court on Thursday ruled against the Trump istration in a case that could force officials to testify under oath about the deportation.

In a scathing judgement, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals called the istration's handling of the situation "shocking".

"The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order," wrote conservative Judge Harvie Wilkinson III, one of three judges on the .

The government "claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done", Judge Wilkinson wrote.

"This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear."

Why, the judge wrote, should the government "not make what was wrong, right":[]}