I don’t know who needs to hear this today, but spending four years watching American families suffer under skyrocketing inflation, the cost of a bunch of foreign wars, and a border crisis, then flitting off to Central America to stump for illegal alien gangbangers is…not a good look.
Yet that’s exactly what U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen - a sitting American lawmaker - decided to do this week, when he filmed himself about to board a flight to El Salvador to advocate for the release of a man deported by the Trump administration for being an unlawfully present alien and member of MS-13.
“I’m about to board my flight to El Salvador, where I hope to meet with senior government officials to discuss the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia,” Van Hollen said from a terminal at Washington Dulles International Airport. “I also hope to see Kilmar and check on his condition — and remind him that we won’t stop fighting until he’s home.”
I’m about to board my flight to El Salvador, where I hope to meet with senior government officials to discuss the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
— Senator Chris Van Hollen (@ChrisVanHollen) April 16, 2025
I also hope to see Kilmar and check on his condition — and remind him that we won’t stop fighting until he’s home. pic.twitter.com/dunE0lytIb
Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national, illegally entered the United States via the Southwest border in 2011, but was issued a “withholding of removal” status in 2019 - a full eight years later - after arguing he feared for his life thanks to gang violence in his home country. He was recently deported by the Trump administration as one of about 200 gang members who were sent to a Salvadoran prison per an agreement with the nation’s president.
Related: ICE Busts Car Window to Arrest Illegal Alien Allegedly Tied to MS-13
However, the Trump administration has claimed two separate courts had found Abrego Garcia is not only unlawfully present, but a member of the notoriously violent Salvadoran gang MS-13, which the White House has used to justify his deportation.
While the Supreme Court ruled earlier this month that the Trump administration does have some authority to deport known violent gang members, the Court also ruled that deportees must be given due process before being given the boot, and upheld a lower court order demanding the Trump administration return Abrego Garcia to the U.S. for due process after finding he was deported due to an administrative error - a mistake some administration officials have admitted.
But now that it’s done, the administration has argued that they have no jurisdiction over a Salvadoran national currently residing in El Salvador, and have no authority to demand the president of El Salvador to release his own citizen back to the United States. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi has said all it would’ve taken to deport Abrego Garcia the correct way would’ve been an “extra step in paperwork,” saying he would “go right back to El Salvador, which is his home country, where he belongs.”
For his part, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has said he had no plans to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S.
“How could I return him to the United States? I smuggle him to the United States? Of course I’m not going to do it. The question is preposterous,” Bukele told reporters.
Democrats have seized on Abrego Garcia’s deportation as a political football to accuse the Trump administration of inhumane treatment of illegal aliens, including criminals who’ve committed some of the most heinous acts imaginable. Some congressional Democrats have even made efforts to take a taxpayer-funded trip to El Salvador to advocate for Abrego Garcia and other illegal alien gang members sent to El Salvador's Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (the nation’s prison for terrorists).
Rep. Robert Garcia Garcia and Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) are even attempting to send a congressional delegation - a tall order that would require GOP leadership approval, given that’s the party currently in control of Congress - to visit deportees at the prison.
Imagine if Democrats worked for the American people half as hard as they do for illegal alien gangbangers.