Senate Democrat says he will go the literal extra mile to bring back illegal immigrant

Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) declared this week he intends to travel to El Salvador to advocate the release of an illegal alien since he was unable to secure a meeting with President Nayib Bukele while he was in Washington, D.C., on Monday.

Van Hollen says El Salvadoran citizen Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia was wrongly “abducted” and sent to the maximum-security prison in the Central American country. Van Hollen also claimed the recent Supreme Court ruling means the U.S has to bring Abrego Garcia back. The Supreme Court ruled that the U.S. would have to bring back Abrego Garcia if El Salvador were to hand him back over to U.S. authorities.

“I did request [a meeting]. I‘ve not heard back from the president of El Salvador. And as I said in that letter, if I don‘t hear from him and Abrego Garcia is not quickly returned, I do intend to go to El Salvador this week to show solidarity with his family. As you indicated, the Trump administration itself has admitted that he was abducted and sent to this prison in error, and he should get his due process,” Van Hollen told CNN on Tuesday.

‘How can I return him to the United States? Like, I smuggle him into the United States?’

“I hope to meet with officials of the government of El Salvador,” Van Hollen said about his upcoming trip. “I don‘t know if the president is going to be in country at that time. I also hope to visit this notorious prison to see Abrego Garcia, to let him know that his family and friends are very worried about him, as am I. I think that the situation for both the Trump administration and the president of El Salvador is unsustainable because the Supreme Court, as you reported, by 9-0 has said that Trump administration has to facilitate his return.”

The U.S. and El Salvador maintain that Abrego Garcia is a MS-13 gang member. Abrego Garcia claimed in 2019 while in the process of being deported that he was concerned about a rival gang in El Salvador killing him. The only “mistake” of deporting him back to El Salvador would be attributed to the stay he obtained because of the claimed threat, but both the MS-13 and 18th Street gangs are no longer a nationwide threat due to Bukele’s crackdown on crime.

Bukele made it clear during his White House visit that he does not intend to send Abrego Garcia back to the U.S., in part because in the U.S., he is still an illegal alien.

“How can I return him to the United States? Like, I smuggle him into the United States? Of course I’m not going to do it. It’s like … this, the question is preposterous. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? I don’t have the power to return him to the United States,” Bukele said.

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