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Democratic members of Congress are continuing to fight for the release of Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia, even as Republicans cheer his wrongful detention in El Salvador.
A delegation of four House Democrats traveled to El Salvador on Monday. Reps. Robert Garcia of California, Maxwell Frost of Florida, Yassamin Ansari of Arizona, and Maxine Dexter of Oregon said in a joint release that they had done so to bring attention to “President Trump’s illegal defiance of the binding and unanimous Supreme Court decision” that ordered Abrego Garcia be returned.
“Donald Trump and his Administration are running a government-funded kidnapping program– illegally arresting, jailing, and deporting innocent people with zero due process. Kilmar Abrego Garcia is Trump’s latest victim,” Frost noted in the press release.
Ansari, who was first elected last year, compared Trump’s actions with those of the authoritarian regime in Iran, which her parents escaped.
“My parents fled an authoritarian regime in Iran where people were ‘disappeared’—I refuse to sit back and watch it happen here, too,” she said.
The trip is not an officially authorized congressional delegation. On April 15, Democrats requested that House Oversight Chair James Comer authorize a bipartisan delegation to secure Abrego Garcia’s release. This request was ignored by the Republicans in the House majority.
The House Democrats’ travels follow Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen’s successful trip to El Salvador, where he was allowed to meet with Abrego Garcia.
In an appearance on ABC News’ “This Week” on Sunday, Van Hollen explained that the case is about defending the universal right to due process. Abrego Garcia was sent to El Salvador without a case being presented in court.
“I am not defending the man. I’m defending the rights of this man to due process,” Van Hollen said. “The Trump administration has admitted in court that he was wrongfully detained and wrongfully deported. My mission and my purpose is to make sure that we uphold the rule of law, because if we take it away from him, we do jeopardize it for everybody else.”
In response to mounting criticism of the detention and Trump’s unwillingness to comply with court orders to return Abrego Garcia, the White House has engaged in childish insults. In one post, the White House posted a photoshopped New York Times front page falsely describing Abrego Garcia as an “MS-13 illegal alien” who is “never coming back.” However, there is no credible evidence that Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang. He also has no criminal record.
Nevertheless, in another post, Trump posed with a doctored photo purporting to be Abrego Garcia’s knuckles with the term “MS-13” tattooed on them. But it is a phony picture, and no such term is on the detained father of two’s knuckles.
The two responses stand in stark contrast. Democrats across the House and Senate are working at the request of a family to secure the return of a wrongfully detained man, and Republicans are making a mockery of the whole affair while being too weak to bring the man home.
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