During a Friday appearance on CNN’s The Arena with Kasie Hunt, veteran Democratic strategist Mo Elleithee warned his party against aligning too closely with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran deported last month and described by the Trump administration as an MS-13 member and violent domestic abuser.
The strategist cautioned Democrats that they “don’t know all of the details about this guy,” and warned against treating him like a “martyr.” Instead, he recommended party members to focus on how President Donald Trump is purportedly “chipping away at our rights.”
“Let us not make him a martyr. Let’s make this about how Donald Trump and his administration are eroding our rights on a daily basis,” Elleithee remarked during a panel discussion.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) held a press conference on Friday to discuss his recent meeting with Abrego Garcia in El Salvador. He pledged to continue advocating for his release from the country’s largest jail.
Elleithee pushed back, doubting that Van Hollen’s message would “resonate with the rest of the country.”
“Look, I think everyone in the White House are giving each other high-fives, and everyone who supports the guy in El Salvador are giving each other high-fives, right? Both sides have kind of gone to their corners and are saying this is the fight we want to have. Whereas I don’t necessarily know it’s the conversation that would actually resonate with the rest of the country,” Elleithee said.
The strategist urged Democrats to shift the focus away from Abrego Garcia himself and toward the broader national implications of his case, Fox News reported.
“It’s less about him, as it is about all of us,” Elleithee said. “And if he [Van Hollen] were to have focused on that — he did it a little bit, he did it a little bit there about a third of the way through, right? — Where he said, ‘Taking away his constitutional rights takes away all of our constitutional rights.’ That’s the place to take this.”
The Trump government claims that Abrego Garcia was a member of the MS-13 gang headquartered in El Salvador, as confirmed by two separate immigration judges and officials from his home country. In addition, Trump has labeled the MS-13 gang as a foreign terrorist organization, with its members automatically deportable under the Alien Enemies Act.
However, the United States Supreme Court has temporarily prohibited the administration from hastily deporting illegal immigrants under the pretext of the act until lower courts have had a chance to evaluate its application.
