Say what?
Shot:
Four House Democrats were scheduled to land in El Salvador Monday to demand the release and return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran citizen who lived in Maryland and was deported by the administration to a prison in El Salvador due to what the Trump administration an “administrative error.”
The group — Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., Rep. Yassamin Ansari, D-Ariz., and Rep. Maxine Dexter, D-Ore. — said in a statement they hope “to pressure” the White House “to abide by a Supreme Court order.”
“While Donald Trump continues to defy the Supreme Court, Kilmar Abrego Garcia is being held illegally in El Salvador after being wrongfully deported,” Rep. Garcia said. “That is why we’re here — to remind the American people that kidnapping immigrants and deporting them without due process is not how we do things in America.”
Chaser:
🚨GASLIGHTING: Amy Klobuchar makes the absurd claim that the Trump administration chose to single out Abrego-Garcia —
— “as a case they want to keep in the news to distract from the economy.”
Meanwhile Dems are on a PR rampage/media blitz…to keep the story in the news.
She… pic.twitter.com/IDdtGO8l9t
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) April 20, 2025
Ahem. The only people who want the Abrego Garcia case in the media are Democrats, who keep traveling to El Salvador for publicity stunts to promote the case. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) has used Abrego Garcia to get more national media attention in the last couple of weeks than Van Hollen has received his entire career. Duane has a great post up about that this morning, in fact.
That has been so successful for Van Hollen that House Democrats now want in on the action. They don’t want to pay for it out of their own pockets, however. On Friday, House Oversight chair James Comer ripped two Democrats on the panel for attempting to use taxpayer funds to tour the Salvadoran prison where Abrego Garcia and other MS-13 deportees have been housed:
Reps. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) and Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) on Tuesday asked for Comer to approve funding for flights down to CECOT, the massive prison that began housing thousands of gang members apprehended in the Central American nation amid a sweeping crime crackdown in 2022 — and has since begun holding accused criminal migrant deportees from the US.
But the GOP Oversight chairman denied their request to meet with the purported MS-13 gangbanger Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Friday letter obtained by The Post shows.
“It is absurd that you both displayed active hostility for over two years toward the Committee’s oversight of the Biden Border Crisis and the consequences of millions of illegal aliens entering the country, yet now, you are seeking travel at Committee expense to meet with foreign gang members,” Comer said.
“You may be pleased to know that a Democrat senator, Chris Van Hollen, was photographed just yesterday in El Salvador enjoying margaritas garnished with cherry slices with the foreign gang member your letter references,” he added.
Even to the extent that Donald Trump and his team are talking about deportations, it’s hardly a distraction. One of the central planks in Trump’s 2024 platform was mass deportations, especially of criminal illegal aliens, and especially especially those affiliated with MS-13 and Tren de Aragua trafficking organizations. Usually, though, their “publicity” has just been to show that they are working to fulfill that campaign promise, and have quit talking about any specific cases once deportation has taken place.
Democrats want to turn every deportation into a cause celebre, in a classic case of grasping the 20% position in an 80/20 issue. The same Democrats who offered no response at all to the victims of illegal-alien criminals now want to make them into victims instead. It’s politically preposterous, and yet Democrats insist on doubling down while blaming Trump for the publicity they generate.
The point about the Supreme Court is almost as incoherent. Trump isn’t defying the Supreme Court by not bringing Abrego Garcia back, because the Supreme Court (correctly) ruled that the judiciary couldn’t order Trump to do so. They told the lower court to amend its order to require the administration to demonstrate what they had done to “facilitate” his return, which the lower court ignored in demanding action from the White House in a subsequent order. Both the executive and judicial branches are being too cute by half over this case, but the bottom line is that Abrego Garcia is an El Salvador national now under the sovereignty of his country of origin, and who has no right to be in the US at all.
Klobuchar is flat-out lying about the Supreme Court ruling and Abrego-Garcia’s status. Why? Because she wants in on that sweet, sweet, Van Hollen publicity in advance of the 2028 Democrat primary.
