San Salvador, El Salvador - Congressman Glenn Ivey said Monday that authorities in El Salvador had prevented him from visiting his Maryland constituent Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was wrongfully deported from the US by the Trump administration.

Ivey is the sixth Democratic lawmaker to visit El Salvador in an effort to secure the return of Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man who is being held in a penal facility in Santa Ana.

"We were not able to meet with Kilmar, for sure," Ivey told a press conference in San Salvador. "We went out to the Santa Ana prison today and got there, and we spoke to the people at the gate. They wouldn't open the gate and let us in."

Ivey said he was told to obtain a permit for a visit, but he had already spoken to senior officials in order to arrange the meeting.

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He said he had spoken to Salvadoran Ambassador to the US Milena Mayorga and that he intended to speak to Abrego Garcia "to make sure that he's okay, to discuss his legal rights and the like."

The Maryland representative met leaders of human rights groups, but was unable to meet officials from the government of President Nayib Bukele, a key Trump ally who has also refused to facilitate returning Abrego Garcia to the US – as ordered by the Supreme Court.

Chris Newman, an attorney for Abrego Garcia's family, said this was his third visit to El Salvador to try and secure the release of his client.

El Salvador has received 288 migrants deported from the US, including 252 Venezuelans, who are being held in a maximum security prison compared by experts to a concentration camp.

The Trump administration says – without proof – that Abrego Garcia is a violent criminal who is a member of the MS-13 gang, which has been declared a "terrorist" organization by Washington.

The president has used an obscure wartime law to summarily deport people it accuses of being gang members, a process some US courts have halted and that one, in Texas, has deemed unlawful.