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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.