Once again, Democrats are on the wrong side of the biggest story in the country. This time, it’s Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen who is starring in the clown show after he flew down to El Salvador on Wednesday in a blatant publicity stunt to capitalize on progressive outrage over the deportation of suspected MS-13 gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
The case of Abrego Garcia has become a flashpoint in the battle of public opinion over President Donald Trump’s efforts to carry out the “largest mass deportation program in American history.” On March 12, immigration authorities detained the 29-year-old Abrego Garcia at his residence in Maryland and then deported him to his home country of El Salvador, where he is currently being held in prison.
The Trump administration alleges that Abrego Garcia has ties to MS-13, a violent international gang that gained a stronger foothold in the United States during the Biden administration.
Democrats (along with a predictably supportive corporate media) have set out to cast Abrego Garcia as an innocent victim, claiming that he has no gang affiliations and demanding that he be returned to the United States. Sympathetic news stories have described Abrego Garcia, who entered the country illegally, as a “Maryland man,” devoted husband, and loving father who was “wrongly deported.”
That narrative is notably already beginning to fall apart, as the Department of Homeland Security revealed that Abrego Garcia “has a history of violence and was not the upstanding ‘Maryland Man’ the media has portrayed him as.” The Department of Justice has also released evidence that Abrego Garcia was hanging around with multiple confirmed MS-13 members when he was arrested and wearing clothing affiliated with the gang.
As for the “wrongly deported” charge, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller has confirmed that court filings suggesting Abrego Garcia’s deportation was an “administrative error” were themselves erroneous, written by “a DOJ lawyer who has since been relieved of duty, a saboteur, a Democrat.”
Meanwhile, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has confirmed that Abrego Garcia had a lawful deportation order against him. This means that even if he were returned to the United States, as Democrats wish, he would immediately be detained and deported right back to El Salvador.
Democrats have also pointed to a 2019 court order that appears to protect Abrego Garcia from deportation to El Salvador over claims that he was in fear for his life from the 18th Street gang, a rival of MS-13. But as Leavitt pointed out, thanks to Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, the 18th Street gang no longer exists in El Salvador. Moreover, Trump’s designation of MS-13 as a foreign terrorist organization automatically makes Abrego Garcia ineligible for protected status.
As Miller succinctly put it, Abrego Garcia’s “only options in life are to be deported to El Salvador or to be deported to some other country. That’s it.”
But the facts haven’t stopped Van Hollen from seizing on this story to grab some attention for himself. The second-term senator, who normally doesn’t make many headlines, has become the talk of Washington this week, culminating in a trip to San Salvador on Wednesday to ostensibly spring Abrego Garcia from prison and bring him back to the United States.
The trip made for a bizarre spectacle, as Van Hollen demanded to speak with both Bukele and Abrego Garcia, whom he kept referring to as his “constituent.” Those demands were quickly denied. Instead, Van Hollen settled for Vice President Félix Ulloa, who explained (correctly) to the American politician that Abrego Garcia is a citizen of El Salvador, not the United States.
It’s worth taking a moment to consider what exactly Van Hollen hoped to accomplish through the trip. There are two distinct possibilities, neither reflecting well on Van Hollen or the Democratic Party he represents.
First, Van Hollen could have legitimately expected that his mere presence in El Salvador, where he has absolutely no authority, would coerce Bukele into releasing Abrego Garcia and presumably taking some action to illegally smuggle him back to Maryland. If this is the case, Van Hollen is either incredibly arrogant or delusional, or both.
Second, and more likely, Van Hollen could have viewed this as an opportunity to score points with his far-left base by making a big show of rushing to Dulles airport, possibly on the taxpayers’ dime, to fly to a foreign country and generate some media buzz.
But while all of this was occurring, Van Hollen, his Democrat colleagues, and the corporate media callously ignored an actual U.S. citizen and Maryland resident who is far more deserving of sympathy: Rachel Morin, who was brutally raped and slaughtered by an illegal alien. On Monday, a jury convicted Victor Martinez-Hernandez from (you guessed it) El Salvador of the crime. While Van Hollen has worked himself into a frenzy over the Trump administration deporting an illegal alien and suspected terrorist, he has said nothing about Morin’s murder.
Morin’s mother, Patty, was at the White House on Wednesday to describe in gruesome detail what happened to her daughter and blast the media and Democrats for ignoring it.
“Victor Martinez, he waited for her,” Morin said. “He waited for her to come closer. He saw her. He saw that there was nobody around. He attacked her. He dragged her 150 feet, blood gushing from her head. It left 150-foot trail of her blood to the culverts, where he took – he picked her up, he threw her against the wall of the tunnel, and he raped her. But before he did that, he stopped on that trail and rocks, still stained with her blood – he used them to hammer her head against those rocks, they say, 20 – at least 20 times. They could count the cuts in her head.”
“And 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 and now a grandbaby without a grandmother, so that he can use my taxpayer money to fly to El Salvador to bring back someone that’s not even an American citizen. Why does that person have more of a right than I do, or my daughter, or my grandchildren? I don’t understand this.”
Patty Morin’s heartbreaking remarks contained the pain of every American who has been victimized by Democrat open borders policies – and the outrage of every American who is fed up with liberal politicians who put the interests of illegal aliens ahead of the American people.
Democrats felt that outrage at the ballot box last year. But if Van Hollen’s antics are any indication, they haven’t learned their lesson.
Shane Harris is the Editor-in-Chief of AMAC Newsline. You can follow him on X @shaneharris513.
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