Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen turned away from El Salvador prison in push for alleged MS-13 member Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s return
Sen. Chris Van Hollen was blocked Wednesday from visiting Kilmar Abrego Garcia at the notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) mega-prison complex after the Democrat traveled to El Salvador to push for the release of the illegal migrant and purported MS-13 member.
Van Hollen (D-Md.), 66, met with the Central American nation’s vice president, Félix Ulloa, and publicly pleaded for Abrego Garcia to be set free.
“They should just let him go,” Van Hollen complained to reporters after the meeting. “I promised them [Abrego Garcia’s family] that I would do everything I could to get him out.”
“I won’t stop trying,” he added. “This is an unsustainable and unjust moment. So it cannot continue this way.”
Meanwhile, fresh revelations emerged Wednesday that Abrego Garcia’s wife — who has pushed for his release — pursued a domestic violence restraining order against him in 2021, alleging that he ripped off her shirt, punched her and scratched her.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen has been lobbying for Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s release.
El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison is infamous for overcrowding and brutal conditions.
White House officials needled Van Hollen over his advocacy for Abrego Garcia while his own constituents grapple with migrant crime.
“The criminal illegal immigrant is already home — he’s a Salvadoran citizen,” the Trump administration said in a statement. “… [W]here was his [Van Hollen’s] concern for Maryland constituents put at risk by the many other illegal immigrants allowed to roam free until now?”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt raked Van Hollen over the coals Wednesday for “rushing” over to El Salvador advocate for Abrego Garcia instead of focusing on his constituents who have been harmed by illegal immigrants.
“It’s appalling and sad that Senator Van Hollen and the Democrats applauding his trip to El Salvador today are incapable of having any shred of common sense or empathy for their own constituents and our citizens,” she chastised.
Leavitt then welcomed Patty Morin to the White House press briefing to discuss in gruesome and graphic detail how an illegal immigrant savagely raped and murdered her daughter, Rachel, a mom of five, in 2023.
“To have a senator from Maryland who didn’t even acknowledge or barely acknowledged my daughter and the brutal death that she endured, leaving her five children without a mother,” she lamented during her somber remarks, ‘to use my tax money to fly to El Salvador to bring back a person…i just don’t understand this.”
On Monday, Victor Martinez-Hernandez was found guilty by a jury of first-degree rape, first-degree premeditated murder, third-degree sexual assault and kidnapping.
“While the conviction of Rachel Morin’s killer will not return Rachel to her family where she rightfully belongs, this verdict brings a measure of justice that they so deserve,” Van Hollen had said in a statement Tuesday, the day after the verdict.
“A US federal court judge said that the Trump administration did not have evidence to support the claim that he had ever been part of MS-13,” Van Hollen claimed during his visit Wednesday. “In fact, Mr. Abrego Garcia is legally in the United States.”
Court documents indicate that Abrego Garcia illegally entered the US in 2011. In 2019, a federal judge blocked him from being deported back to his home country of El Salvador amid concerns he could face persecution from groups like the Barrio 18 gang.
“I want to emphasize that President Trump and our Attorney General Pam Bondi and the vice president of the United States are lying when they say that Abrego Garcia has been charged with a crime or is part of MS-13,” he added. “That is a lie.”
The Maryland Democrat said that he wants
to cultivate close ties with El Salvador, but needs Kilmar Abrego
Garcia to be released.
The Trump administration claimed in court documents that Abrego Garcia is “confirmed to be a ranking member of the MS-13 gang by a proven and reliable source,” something his family disputes.
Wednesday evening, the Justice Department released police reports that indicated Abrego Garcia was an active MS-13 member at the time of his initial detention in March 2019.
Last week, the Supreme Court instructed the Trump administration to take steps “to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to” the Latin American country.
At the same time, the high court ruled that lower courts must show “deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.”
After that order, the Trump administration declined to pressure El Salvador to release Abrego Garcia and insisted that they are complying with the Supreme Court’s ruling because they have taken steps to “facilitate” his return if El Salvador ever releases him.
Trump, 78, welcomed El Salvador President Nayib Bukele to the White House on Monday, and the US ally scoffed at the notion that he’d send Abrego Garcia back to the US.
“I hope you are not suggesting that I smuggle terrorists into the United States,” Bukele, 43, told reporters while sitting alongside Trump in the Oval Office. “Of course, I’m not going to do it.
“The question is preposterous,” Bukele added. “I don’t have the power to return him to the United States.”
Trump administration officials have countered that they don’t have the power to bring him back because Abrego Garcia is an El Salvadoran national imprisoned in his home country.
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By Joe Hutchison
Daily Mail
Apr 16, 2025
A Democrat senator has been blasted for traveling to El Salvador to free a deported illegal migrant routinely being referred to as a 'Maryland man'.
Senator Chris Van Hollen flew to El Salvador in an attempt to 'rescue' Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who was deported by the Trump administration earlier this week.
Garcia entered the US illegally in 2011. A judge blocked his return to El Salvador in 2019, citing the fact that gangsters were after him, but said he could be deported elsewhere.
In court filings this week, the Trump administration said he was deported to El Salvador in error. The Supreme Court has since ordered his return to the US.
However, Trump officials insist Garcia is not an innocent American, as claimed. They say he's an MS-13 gangster who deserves to be sent back to El Salvador.
Democrats, furious about his deportation, are up in arms.
Van Hollen is among them. Determined to save Garcia, he flew to El Salvador in an effort to get him out of jail and back in America.
But when he showed up asking for a meeting, he was denied.
He is now being mocked by Republicans and Conservative Americans, including the mother of a woman who was murdered by an illegal migrant.
'Senator Van Hollen has done more to bring a MS-13 gang member, human trafficker and illegal alien back to Maryland than he has to help keep his American constituents safe or advocate for the victims of these vicious gangs like MS-13.
On March 12, Garcia was pulled over outside of an IKEA in Baltimore with his son. He is now locked up in El Salvador's notorious prion
'While Senator Van Hollen and the mainstream media peddle a sob story about a brutal MS-13 gang member, Secretary Noem stands with the victims of illegal alien crime, like Maryland mom Rachel Morin.
'We hear far too much about the gang members and criminals sob stories and not enough about their victims,' the Department of Homeland Security said in a post on X.
The efforts by Van Hollen have also been criticized by Morin's mother Patty who spoke about the lack of any correspondence from state officials when her daughter was murdered.
Speaking on Fox News with anchor Sean Hannity, she said: 'I'm very angry, I'm outraged. I'm too sad at the moment to show anger at the same time.
'He did not call our family, he did not give condolences. There was no action [from] the Democratic party in anyway.
'From Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, anyone here in Maryland, none of the Senators did anything to help search for the murderer of my daughter.'
Rachel Morin's illegal immigrant killer Victor Martinez-Hernandez was found guilty of first degree murder, first degree rape and kidnapping on Monday - and is now awaiting sentencing.
Her body had been stuffed in a tunnel drain. An autopsy revealed Morin died from a combination of strangulation and blunt-force trauma.
Rachel Morin, seen here, was raped and murdered by Victor Martinez-Hernandez in 2023
In a follow up video about his 'mission' to El Salvador, Van Hollen said: 'I just landed in San Salvador a little while ago, and I look forward to meeting with the team at the U.S. embassy to discuss the release of Mr. Abrego Garcia.
'I also hope to meet with Salvadoran officials and with Kilmar himself. He was illegally abducted and needs to come home.'
Border czar Tom Homan also hit out at the trip by Van Hollen, saying he was 'disgusted'.
He told Fox News: 'He wasn't abducted. He's an MS-13 gang member, classified as a terrorist that was removed from this country, so we got rid of a dangerous person.
Abrego-Garcia, who is a legal resident, arrived at the notorious supermax prison CECOT in El Salvador March 15 on one of three planes from the US.
Abrego Garcia first entered the U.S. in 2011 but was granted permission to stay by a judge in 2019. He later settled down in Maryland and has an American wife and son.
The Trump administration deported Abrego Garcia on March 15 after files indicated that he had connections with MS-13, a vicious Salvadorian-American gang.
Van Hollen later shared an update on his X that he had landed in the country, seen here
His wife and lawyer deny his gang affiliation and have sued the administration for improperly removing him from the U.S.
The Trump administration initially said his removal was a mistake. The Supreme Court then ordered his return.
But the Trump administration is standing firm.
In the Oval Office on Monday, Trump and El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele led a united defense of their actions in the case of Abrego Garcia.
Bukele argued he couldn't return, saying: ''How can I return him to the United States?
'I smuggle him into the United States or what do I do? Of course, I'm not going to do it.
'The question is preposterous. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? I don't have the power to return him to the United States.'
Trump supported Bukele's claim and went further, lobbying the El Salvadorian leader to take more migrants and build more prisons hold them.
'I just asked the president, you know, it's this massive complex that he built, a jail complex. I said, 'Can you build some more of them, please?'' Trump said.
He asked Bukele to take 'as many as we can get out of our country that were allowed in here by incompetent Joe Biden, through open borders, open borders.'
The Justice Department, in its latest filing, argued the courts lack the ability to dictate steps that the White House should take in the matter of the return of Abrego Garcia.
Attorney General Pam Bondi, who joined Trump and Bukele in their Oval Office meeting, said the decision was in El Salvador's hands.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was also in the Oval Office, backed Bondi, saying the administration was not bound to follow court orders.
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EXCLUSIVE Wife of deported 'Maryland man' reveals horrors she experienced at his hands in scathing police report
Jennifer Vasquez, Kilmar Abrego Garcia's wife, testified he beat her many times
Daily Mail
Apr 16, 2025
The wife of deported Salvadorian migrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia accused her husband of violently beating her multiple times in a 2021 court filing exclusively obtained by DailyMail.com.
1 comment:
He is a Democrap and therefore he is a posturing political whore.
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