BREAKING: Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen puts his money where his mouth is and flies to El Salvador to aggressively push for the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the innocent man who was mistakenly deported to a brutal fascist prison.
We’ll soon know exactly what’s going on down there…
“I just landed at the airport in San Salvador a little while ago. I’m now en route into the city, looking forward to meeting with the team from the American embassy,” Van Hollen said in a video posted to X.
“And I do want to thank our foreign service officers and the whole team at this embassy and embassies around the world for all of the good work they do on behalf of our country,” he continued.
“I’m proud to co-chair the bipartisan foreign service caucus that stands up for the men and women who are serving our country overseas and at home in the State Department,” he went on.
“After that I hope to meet with some high level government officials from El Salvador,” he went on. “As I’ve said before, the goal of my visit is to talk to people here about the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. I told his wife and his family I would do everything possible to bring him home and we’re going to keep working at this until we’re successful.”
“I also hope to have the chance to meet with him but we’ll have a better idea if that works out a little later on,” he added.
Senator Van Hollen also recorded a video at the airport before departing for El Salvador in which he stated that the Trump administration’s defiance of the Supreme Court’s order to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return is a “miscarriage of justice” and this is about “due process” and the “rule of law.”
“What bullies do is they begin by picking on the most vulnerable,” he said. “But if we get rid of the rule of law and due process in the United States, it’s a short road from there to tyranny.”
The senator represents Maryland, which is where Abrego Garcia lives.
The Trump administration has already admitted in court that Abrego Garcia should have never been removed from the country and blamed it on an “administrative error.”
El Salvador’s far-right President Nayib Bukele has remained lockstep with Trump and claims that it’s “preposterous” to suggest that he should return Abrego Garcia who he has falsely smeared as a “terrorist.”
The refusal from Trump and Bukele to return Abrego Garcia to the United States despite an order from the Supreme Court has raised concerns that he has been lost in the brutal mega prison complex or possibly even been killed.
If he is alive and well and his location is known, Trump and Bukele are refusing to return him simply as a show of authoritarian force. Power-hungry men like this never admit that they’re wrong and they don’t care how much suffering they inflict on innocent people.
An immigration judge ruled back in 2019 that Abrego Garcia could not be deported back to El Salvador because a gang in his native country was “targeting him and threatening him with death because of his family’s pupusa business.”
If and when Abrego Garcia is freed and returned to his family he should hit the Trump administration with the biggest lawsuit in history and squeeze them for every penny he can.