Top Democrats continue to beclown themselves on the immigration issue in demanding that El Salvador return a deported illegal alien, suspected of membership in the savage MS-13 murder gang, back to the United States.
U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland wrote to the ambassador of El Salvador, Milena Mayorga, to ask for a meeting with President Nayib Bukele, who has said Kilmar Abrego Garcia won’t be returned. Hollen also vows to lead a delegation of pro-illegal-alien Democrats on a trip to El Salvador to retrieve him.
Democrat House Minority Hakeem Jeffries of New York told MSNBC talker Jen Psaki that the federal courts must hold one or more Trump administration in contempt of court if Garcia is not returned. A far-left federal district court judge ordered the return, but the U.S. Supreme Court only said the administration must “facilitate it,” adding that federal courts have no jurisdiction over U.S. foreign policy.
But again, whether Garcia returns is up to Bukele, not the Trump administration. Garcia is a Salvadoran, not an American.
All in all, the Democrat concern about Garcia proves one thing. Democrats consider illegals their constituents — the “people we care about most.”
Booted Out
The latest illegal-alien drama began on March 15, when Trump booted Garcia back where he belonged: to El Salvador. He is imprisoned in the nation’s Terrorist Confinement Center.
Garcia sued, and because a Department of Justice lawyer and other Trump officials wrongly said that he was deported because of an “administrative error,” U.S. District Judge Paul Xinis of the district court in Maryland — appointed by former President Barack Obama — ruled that he must be returned to the United States.
The Trump administration appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. It ruled 9-0 that the administration must “facilitate his return.”
As White House aide Stephen Miller told Fox News, the ruling was a victory for the administration.
“[The court] said the most a court could ever compel you to do would be to facilitate return, which would basically mean if El Salvador voluntarily sends him back we wouldn’t block him at the airport,” Miller said. “We would put him back into ICE detention and then he would be deported either back to El Salvador or somewhere else.”
Miller also noted that Garcia received a final order of removal in 2019.
No Withholding Order
“Now some have said, well, but he had a thing called a ‘withholding order’” that would stop the deportation, Miller continued:
A withholding order means you’ve been ordered deported, but an immigration judge is saying you cannot go back to a particular country. Here’s the thing: if you are a member of a foreign terrorist organization, you cannot have a withholding order.
Since he’s in MS-13, there is no withholding order. Furthermore, that gang he is accused of being persecuted by doesn’t exist anymore in El Salvador! The 18th Street gang is gone.
Miller explained to reporters during a Trump-Bukele powwow at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue that “two immigration courts declared Garcia an MS-13 member.”
And because Trump declared MS-13 a terrorist organization, Miller said, Garcia “was no longer eligible for any form of immigration relief.… We had a deportation order that was valid, which means under our law, he’s not even allowed to be present in the United States and had to be returned because of the foreign terrorist designation.”
At the same meeting, Bukele said that Garcia won’t be returned because such a proposal is “preposterous.”
“How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States?” Bukele asked. “I don’t have the power to return him to the United States.”
Democrats: The People We Care About Most
Enter Van Hollen and the Democrats.
“I write to urgently request a meeting with President Bukele during his current visit to the United States to discuss the illegal detention of my constituent, Kilmar Abrego Garcia,” Van Hollen began his letter of Mayorga:
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Mr. Abrego Garcia was wrongly deported to a prison in El Salvador. On Saturday evening in a court filing to a federal judge in Maryland, the Trump Administration confirmed that Kilmar Abrego Garcia is being held in El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center…. However, they did not detail steps that have been taken to facilitate his return, as mandated by the Supreme Court.
Democrat Representative Maxwell Frost of Florida chimed in on X:
We must all stand as a united front against the kidnapping and illegal detention of Kilmar Abrego Garcia in El Salvador.
Senator, I am willing to join you and help Organize other members of the House to do the same.
“We need answers now,” wrote Democrat Representative Yassamin Ansari of Arizona. “I’m ready to join Sen. @VanHollenForMD and my colleagues @MaxwellFrostFL, @RobertGarcia in El Salvador to demand Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s release and get him safely back to his family.”
Garcia’s fans on Capitol Hill apparently don’t know that the U.S. Supreme Court has no authority in El Salvador.
Jeffries wants “to intensify the pressure on the Trump Administration to comply with the Supreme Court’s directive,” he told Psaki.
SCOTUS and the district must enforce orders to return Garcia with contempt citations for the secretaries of state and homeland security, Jeffries said.
And Van Hollen has said either “either his constituent is returned or he plans to go to El Salvador himself,” Jeffries explained:
And that’s exactly the type of action that, as members of Congress, we can do to highlight the injustice, dramatize and amplify and force the administration to comply.
All of which means U.S. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut spoke for the party when he told MSNBC talker Chris Hayes that illegal aliens are “the people we care about most.”
H/T: NBC News
