Trump administration rips Sen. Van Hollen for traveling to El Salvador over 'sob story'

Jeff Barker, Baltimore Sun on Apr 16, 2025

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The Trump administration launched a verbal attack on Sen. Chris Van Hollen on Wednesday, saying the Maryland Democrat is aiding “a brutal MS-13 gang member” by traveling to El Salvador and trying to free a constituent who was mistakenly deported.

Van Hollen “is currently in El Salvador out of concern for an illegal immigrant MS-13 gang member and human trafficker for whom he ‘won’t stop fighting until he’s home,'” the White House said in a news release.

“The criminal illegal immigrant is already home — he’s a Salvadoran citizen,” said the White House release. It said the second-term senator should be more concerned “for Americans brutalized by illegal immigrant crime.”

The White House press release listed nine people it says were arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Maryland, asking of Van Hollen: “Where was his concern for Maryland constituents put at risk … ?”

Van Hollen says he planned the trip Wednesday because the Trump administration denied Kilmar Abrego Garcia due process, won’t own up to its error and has defied court orders to try to bring him home. Van Hollen has accused the administration of “lies” about Abrego Garcia that cast him as a gang member or terrorist.

The Trump administration says it lacks jurisdiction to bring Abrego Garcia home, and El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele has told the White House he won’t help.

The White House criticism, echoed on social media by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, further escalated a legal and political tussle over Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old Beltsville, Maryland, sheet metal apprentice deported to El Salvador due to an “administrative error.”

The sides in the debate — congressional Democrats on one side and the Republican Trump administration on the other — offer sharply divergent portraits of Abrego Garcia.

The administration and other Republicans have accused Abrego Garcia of being an MS-13 gang member. He has not been convicted of any related crimes in the United States or El Salvador, according to court records.

Abrego Garcia is an El Salvadoran national and has been in the United States legally since 2019, according to online records of his case in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Last week, the Supreme Court voted 9-0 to uphold a lower court ruling stating the Trump administration must “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S.

He has no criminal history, according to court records, which concluded that agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement had no authority to take him into custody and tell him incorrectly that “his status had changed.”

Though Garcia is not a U.S. citizen, a federal judge had granted him a protective order to remain in the country.

In a recent letter demanding his release, Van Hollen and fellow Maryland Sen. Angela Alsobrooks said gang members had been trying to recruit Abrego Garcia and his brother, “forcing his family to move multiple times, ultimately compelling both him and his brother to flee to the United States out of fear.”

But the Department of Homeland Security posted on X Wednesday that Van Hollen “has done more to bring a MS-13 gang member, human trafficker and illegal alien back to Maryland than he has to help keep his American constituents safe or advocate for the victims of these vicious gangs like MS-13.”

The post continued: “While Senator Van Hollen and the mainstream media peddle a sob story about a brutal MS-13 gang member, Secretary Noem stands with the victims of illegal alien crime, like Maryland mom Rachel Morin.”

The post referenced a Harford County woman murdered in August 2023. An El Salvador man suspected of raping and killing her on the Ma & Pa Heritage Trail was found guilty on all charges after a nine-day jury trial ended Monday.

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