Paid subscribers have been getting updates on the ongoing saga of MS-13 gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s deportation to El Salvador and the ensuing trip Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) made to the country to see him.
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Quick recap:
The media and Democrats have been referring to Garcia as a “Maryland man” who was wrongly deported. He wasn’t wrongly deported, he had an active immigration removal order and he was sent back to his country of origin. The hair being split here is that Garcia had left El Salvador as a teen and the argument has been made he was deported to the wrong country.
Ample evidence has been provided by multiple law enforcement agencies, including the DOJ, that Garcia is an active MS-13 gang member, as well as his own wife filed for a domestic abuse restraining order on him in 2021.
Yet here we are, with a sitting Maryland senator attempting to bring Garcia back to the U.S., where he’ll be immediately re-deported.
To be clear, while visiting President Trump this week, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele told media present during their Oval Office meeting that he has no intention of sending Garcia back.
"How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? I don’t have the power to return him to the United States. We’re not very fond of releasing terrorists into our country," Bukele told CNN’s Caitlin Collins. "But you just turned the murder capital of the world to the safest country of the western hemisphere and you want us to go back into releasing criminals so we can go back to being the murder capital of the world? That’s not gonna happen.”
In other words, the portion of the U.S. Supreme Court’s order directing the Trump administration to “effectuate” Garcia’s return is useless, but also correct in that lower courts have no business dictating foreign policy to the executive branch.
Here’s how Trump adviser Stephen Miller put it during the Oval Office meeting between Trump and Bukele:
“The Supreme Court said the district court order was unlawful and its main components were unlawful and reversed 9-0 unanimously, stating clearly that neither the Secretary of State or President could be compelled by anybody to forcibly retrieve a citizen of El Salvador from El Salvador who, again, is a member of MS-13, which—as I’m sure you understand—rapes little girls, murders women, murders children, is engaged in barbaric activities in the world. And I can promise you if he was your neighbor, you would move right away.”
Miller also further educated reporters on the matter outside the White House.
Van Hollen meets with Garcia
After NBC News reported that El Salvador's Vice President Félix Ulloa met with Van Hollen and rejected his request to release Garcia or even see him, yet somehow the two were able to meet - for cocktails.
Van Hollen has framed Garcia's deportation as an ‘illegal abduction’.
Here’s what El Salvador’s President had to say.
And here’s one of Van Hollen’s posts about the meeting, sans margaritas, referring to Garcia by his first name like they’re old pals.
Garcia isn’t even housed in the CECOT detention center anymore where the majority of gang members are; it looks like he was transferred out within a day of arriving in the country to a facility in Santa Ana.
Some of the notable responses to Van Hollen’s post included elected Democrats from Maryland and the National Democratic Party chair. Van Hollen’s Maryland colleagues both said what he had done constitutes “leadership.”
Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD):
This is what leadership looks like. I’m proud of my partner and our senior Senator,@ChrisVanHollen. We won’t stop until we bring Kilmar home.Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD):
I’m relieved to see Abrego Garcia is alive, and I’m grateful for Senator@ChrisVanHollen’s leadership and moral clarity. The Supreme Court has spoken unanimously: Abrego Garcia must be brought home. Trump’s disregard for this ruling goes against the Constitution and our ideals.National Democratic Party Chair Ken Martin:
Thank you, Senator.
My reaction was more along the lines of “we’re looking at a future campaign attack ad being made in real time.”
The reaction of Patty Morin, the mother of Rachel Morin who was brutally raped and murdered by an illegal alien, was much different.
More To The Story
Since that last time MTTS wrote about Garcia just a day ago, the Democrats and the national media have shifted their talking points from calling Garcia a "Maryland man" to calling him a "wrongly" or "mistakenly" deported man.
This language shift coincides with the White House, ICE and the DOJ releasing background on Garcia, including the domestic abuse restraining order Garcia's wife filed for in 2021, as well as the court and immigration documents showing Garcia is an MS-13 member and had a deportation order filed on him that the Biden administration never executed.
Then there's the "due process" talking point, which Scott Jennings and Batya Ungar-Sargon sent up in flames on CNN last night.
Jennings and Ungar-Sargon are correct and it should be restated that two federal judges, ICE, a police department and the El Salvadorian government have documented and said Garcia is an active MS-13 member.
Democrats are also using the talking point that Garcia was "disappeared" by the government. Here's an example of that from Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
And Tim Walz defended Garcia as a "constituent" of Van Hollen's while invoking Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemöller's "First they came," in order to set the tone that deporting MS-13 gang members is just like the Nazi's "disappearing" groups of people.
By the way, Niemöller's remarks came after the war and have mutated over time depending on who is quoting him and he was a Hitler supporter right up until he wasn't and was imprisoned for his change in stance.
This is the kind of thinking that is being inspired by “Maryland man” narratives and Warren’s “disappeared” rhetoric: When must we kill them?
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