Democrats are celebrating Sen. Chris Van Hollen’s meeting with Kilmar Abrego Garcia as a victory in their fight to secure the wrongfully deported man’s release.
But President Donald Trump is claiming the meeting as a win, too.
The two parties are locked into warring narratives on Abrego Garcia’s case, which has taken center stage amid an escalating battle between Trump and the courts over the administration’s mass deportation policy.
Van Hollen on Thursday secured a face-to-face meeting with Abrego Garcia, who was illegally deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador and held in the country’s CECOT mega-prison for the past month. The Maryland senator has led the charge for Democrats pushing for accountability from the administration.
After the Salvadoran government initially blocked his attempt to visit the notorious prison, the senator succeeded in his mission to meet Abrego Garcia — a Salvadoran native who lived in Maryland until his deportation — on Thursday, writing in a post to X: “I said my main goal of this trip was to meet with Kilmar. Tonight I had that chance.”
Democrats immediately branded the meeting a success, lauding Van Hollen for his leadership and perseverance in pushing to see Abrego Garcia.
“This is what leadership looks like. I’m proud of my partner and our senior Senator,” Van Hollen’s fellow Maryland Sen. Angela Alsobrooks wrote on X. “We won’t stop until we bring Kilmar home.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Friday also thanked Van Hollen for his trip, writing on X: “Mr. Abrego Garcia was wrongfully imprisoned. As the Supreme Court indicated, there was no basis for his warrantless arrest. The Trump admin must obey the law. He must be returned home.”
But President Donald Trump and top administration officials say Van Hollen’s visit played right into their hands.
Trump bashed Van Hollen on Truth Social Friday morning, writing: “Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland looked like a fool yesterday standing in El Salvador begging for attention from the Fake News Media, or anyone. GRANDSTANDER!!!”
The official White House account on X posted side-by-side photographs of Van Hollen’s meeting with Abrego Garcia and Trump’s Oval Office conversation with the mother of Rachel Morin, a Maryland woman whose killer — who was convicted this week — was an undocumented immigrant, drawing a comparison between the two visits.
“We are not the same,” read the post, which is now pinned atop the White House’s profile.
White House deputy press secretary Kush Desai took aim at Van Hollen in a post Thursday night, emphasizing the administration’s line on the contrast between the two parties’ priorities, writing: “Chris Van Hollen has firmly established Democrats as the party whose top priority is the welfare of an illegal alien MS-13 terrorist. It is truly disgusting. President Trump will continue to stand on the side of law-abiding Americans.”
The White House has for days sought to frame Democrats’ advocacy for Abrego Garcia as the rival party working on behalf of someone who the administration has branded an MS-13 gang member and terrorist, even as a federal judge has said the evidence presented by the administration is weak.
By contrast, the administration has projected itself as a champion for justice for the Morin family as they reel from the loss of their daughter.
Trump has resisted efforts to bring back Abrego Garcia despite repeated orders from the courts to do so. U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ordered the administration to “facilitate” his return to the States after government lawyers admitted Abrego Garcia’s deportation was an “administrative error,” and has previously cast the evidence of gang affiliation presented by the government — a tip from an informant and the fact he has worn Chicago Bulls attire — as very flimsy.
The Supreme Court subsequently upheld Xinis’ order to facilitate his return. A federal appellate court opinion — authored by one of the nation’s most prominent conservative appellate judges — issued hours before Van Hollen’s meeting with Abrego Garica was made public also excoriated the Trump administration’s handling of the case.
“The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done,” 4th Circuit Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, a Reagan appointee, wrote.
He continued: “This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.”
The unanimous three-judge panel refused to lift Xinis’ order calling for the U.S. to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return.
The White House Friday posted an edited headline from The New York Times, calling Abrego Garcia an “MS-13 illegal alien” who is “never coming back.”
The administration has also found a willing partner in its intensifying messaging campaign on Abrego Garcia’s case: Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele.
Bukele has appeared to join forces with the Trump administration, claiming that his hands are tied, too. During a visit to the White House Monday, the Salvadoran president said he would not release Abrego Garcia — asking, “How can I return him to the United States? Am I going to smuggle him?” — granting Trump the leeway to claim that he was unable to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return.
Bukele also broke the news of Van Hollen’s meeting with Abrego Garcia Thursday night with a mocking tone.
“Kilmar Abrego Garcia, miraculously risen from the ‘death camps’ & ‘torture’, now sipping margaritas with Sen. Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador!,” Bukele said, appearing to take a jab at Democrats who had warned of the severity of the conditions in CECOT.
The El Salvadoran president also indicated that the fight over Abrego Garcia is far from over, writing that the Maryland man “gets the honor of staying in El Salvador’s custody.”
“I love chess,” Bukele wrote in a separate post as reactions to Van Hollen’s visit poured in. The Trump War Room, an account run by the president’s political operation, reposted the message.
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