Van Hollen Defends His Fight for Abrego Garcia’s Constitutional Rights

Sen. Chris Van Hollen defended the Constitution and fired back at California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a fellow Democrat, who said that the wrongful deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident, to El Salvador was “the distraction of the day.”

“I don’t think it’s ever wrong to fight for the constitutional rights of one person because if we give up on one person’s rights, we threaten everybody’s rights. I think a lot of voters, both Republican and Democrat, are tired of elected officials and politicians who just put their finger to the wind… Anyone who is not prepared to stand up and fight for the Constitution doesn’t deserve to lead,” Van Hollen said in a Sunday interview on CNN’s State of the Union.

The senator last week traveled to El Salvador and its infamous Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) — one of the harshest prisons in the world — to speak with Abrego Garcia, his constituent, whom the Trump administration has admitted should not have been deported. The administration has admitted multiple times in court that Abrego Garcia’s detention was an “administrative error.”

While El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele initially denied Van Hollen’s attempts to speak with Abrego Garcia, he ultimately caved, and allowed Van Hollen to meet his constituent.

“What [Abrego Garcia] told me was he was sad and traumatized that he was being imprisoned because he has committed no crimes,” Van Hollen said.

Van Hollen demanded the Trump administration must “put up or shut up in court” regarding Abrego Garcia’s case. The administration is currently defying a court order — upheld in a unanimous Supreme Court ruling — to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S. A lower court has also rejected the administration’s attempt not to comply with the Supreme Court’s ruling. Abrego Garcia has not been convicted of a crime or proven in court to be a member of any gang. Despite that, the administration continues to claim he is a member of MS-13.

“The subject at hand is that he and his administration are defying a court order to give people, to give Abrego Garcia his due process rights,” Van Hollen said. “They are trying to litigate on social media what they should be doing in the courts.”

He went on to quote U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, who said, “No evidence linking Abrego Garcia to MS-13 or any terrorist activity has been presented to the court.”

“He’s here legally now, he has a work permit, he’s a sheet metal worker, he has a family, he has three kids,” Van Hollen said.

Van Hollen was denied entry to CECOT and initially was not allowed to see Abrego Garcia. Bukele and Trump “had no intention of letting me meet with Abrego Garcia until they felt the pressure” from public outcry the senator said. Following Van Hollen’s visit, Abrego Garcia was moved to a different detention facility where “conditions are better,” the senator said Friday.

Van Hollen also gave a peek behind the scenes of his meeting with Abrego Garcia, saying that the Salvadoran government staged the scene to look like the two of them were drinking margaritas.

“The lengths that both the El Salvadorian President Bukele and Donald Trump will go to deceive people are boundless,” he said, adding that waiters brought to the table two glasses that “appear to be margaritas.”

“We didn’t touch them, and they tried to manipulate it to make it look like Mr. Abrego Garcia’s margarita had been drunk. In other words, the liquid was lower,” he continued. “But they screwed up in their scheme because if you look at the rims of the glasses, I don’t know if it was salt or sugar, but there’s no gap in them. So, nobody touched the margaritas.”

“They want to pretend that this is some sort of tropical paradise when he was in one of the most notorious prisons in the world,” the senator added.

Van Hollen stressed the urgency of the issue of Abrego Garcia’s deportation and the necessity of defending his constitutional rights to protect those same rights for everyone in the U.S.

“Right now, we have a lawless president… who is ignoring the order of the Supreme Court of the United States to facilitate [Abrego Garcia’s] return,” Van Hollen said. “That’s what’s going on right now. That is a risk to all of us.”