Maryland Democrat Sen. Chris Van Hollen’s staff says he misspoke when referring to a deported illegal migrant as a United States citizen.
Van Hollen called Kilmar Abrego Garcia — an illegal migrant and alleged MS-13 gang member deported to his home country of El Salvador — an American citizen when declaring that he would travel to the Central American country to try and check on his status. The senior Maryland senator has vehemently objected to the Trump administration’s removal of Abrego Garcia and has referred to his arrest as an “abduction.”
“My hope is to visit Kilmar and check on his wellbeing and to hold constructive conversations with government officials around his release,” Van Hollen said Tuesday, according to NBC News. The senator, who is pushing for a meeting with El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, believes the Central American leader “will reconsider when he understands the full story of this illegal detention.”
“I don’t think he wants to essentially be the president who’s kidnapped the United States citizen,” Van Hollen told reporters, referring to Abrego Garcia’s detention in El Salvador.
However, Abrego Garcia never had legal status while living in the United States, much less American citizenship.
After illegally crossing into the U.S. in 2011, Abrego Garcia eventually settled in Maryland and married an American citizen. In 2019, the Salvadoran national was arrested by the Prince George’s County Police Department and accused by an informant of having MS-13 gang member ties. Abrego Garcia was given a deportation order, but was later successful in obtaining a withholding of removal, a benefit similar to asylum that barred his deportation to El Salvador and allowed him to work in the U.S.
“The Senator intended to say husband of a U.S. citizen,” a spokesman for Van Hollen’s office told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested Abrego Garcia on March 12 in the Baltimore area. On March 15, he informed his wife that he would be transferred to the the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), a maximum security mega-prison in El Salvador that was built to hold documented MS-13 gangbangers and other members of notorious crime syndicates.
Abrego Garcia’s deportation caused uproar from Democrats after the Trump administration acknowledged in court documents that his removal to El Salvador was the result of a clerical error — an immigration judge’s withholding of removal order prohibited deportation to El Salvador because he agreed with Abrego Garcia’s claim that he would likely face persecution from gang members.
However, the White House has stood strongly by Abrego Garcia’s deportation, arguing that he is a credibly accused MS-13 gang member who was living unlawfully in the U.S. The administration also notes that he is a citizen of El Salvador currently under Salvadoran custody, meaning neither they nor the courts have jurisdiction to bring him back into the U.S.
During a meeting Monday with top White House officials, Bukele confirmed that he would not be transferring Abrego Garcia back to the U.S.
Undeterred, Van Hollen formally requested the Salvadoran government to arrange a meeting with Bukele. In his letter to the El Salvador embassy, the senator confirmed that he has met with Abrego Garcia’s wife, mother and brother. He is now landing in the Central American country in hopes of highlighting Abrego Garcia’s predicament, regardless if Bukele’s government gives him the time of day.
On Tuesday, the day Van Hollen confirmed he would be visiting a foreign country on behalf of an illegal migrant, the accused killer of Rachel Morin was found guilty of her rape and murder. Like Abrego Garcia, Morin was a Maryland resident. Unlike Abrego Garcia, she was an American citizen.
Morin’s mother, Patty Morin, confirmed in an interview that Van Hollen has never reached out to her or any member of the Morin family since her daughter was brutally murdered by an illegal migrant from El Salvador.
“He did not call our family, he did not give condolences,” Patty said Tuesday night on Fox News. “There was no action [by the] Democratic Party in any way.”
“In Maryland, none of the Senators did anything to help search for the murderer of my daughter,” Patty continued.
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