‘Maryland Father’ Indicted for Smuggling Drugs, Weapons, Illegals and Kids– www.dailysignal.com Source Link Excerpt:
A federal grand jury in Nashville has issued a searing criminal indictment of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the El Salvadoran in the U.S. illegally whom Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., referred to as “his constituent” and a “Maryland father.”
Garcia may be a Maryland constituent, but he won’t win any Father of the Year awards, according to the indictment. He is accused of being involved for almost a decade in organized human trafficking and arms and narcotics smuggling. This is the person whom Van Hollen went all the way to El Salvador to visit over his “illegal detention” and to demand his return to Maryland.
Garcia was, according to the indictment, a member of MS-13 who conspired with six others to “transport and move aliens” illegally into and throughout the country starting in 2016. These conspirators “facilitated the travel” of illegal aliens from “El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Ecuador, Mexico, and elsewhere” and many of those individuals “included MS-13 members and associates.”
Garcia’s job, apparently, was to pick up illegal aliens and gang members in Houston and then move them, which is what he was doing when he got stopped by the Tennessee State Patrol in 2022 while driving a Chevrolet Suburban he did not own. He had an expired driver’s license and there were nine other unrelated male Hispanics with no IDs and no luggage in the car.
The Trump administration asked a federal court late Tuesday to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national and suspected MS-13 gang member deported earlier this year under disputed circumstances, arguing the court has no jurisdiction to force his return to the United States.
Abrego Garcia and his family sued after he was removed from the U.S. despite a prior immigration court order granting him withholding of removal to El Salvador due to what Abrego Garcia claimed were gang-related threats to his safety in his home country. He is now detained there anyway and is seeking emergency relief to be brought back to the U.S.
Wife of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, second from left, joins a rally outside the U.S. Courthouse in Greenbelt, Maryland, where a federal judge will hear arguments Friday, May 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-MD) said he was denied access in El Salvador to visit Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the suspected MS-13 gang member mistakenly deported by the Trump administration.
Ivey, who represents the congressional district in which Abrego Garcia lived, said he contacted a Salvadoran ambassador to make a request to their government before his trip. Despite that outreach, he added, he was denied access to the prison where Abrego Garcia is being held.
“They knew we were coming, they knew why we were coming, and they know we have the right to do this,” Ivey said in a video posted on X on Monday. “So, they need to just cut the crap, let us get in there and have a chance to see him and talk with him.”
Ivey noted he was told to travel to San Salvador to obtain a permit before he could visit Abrego Garcia. He appeared in the video alongside Abrego Garcia’s attorney and a member of CASA, the Maryland-based union he was part of.
On Monday, Memorial Day, many in the U.S. remembered those who gave the ultimate sacrifice.
Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-MD) did a Memorial Day post on X.
This Memorial Day, we honor the brave men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice for our country. Let us remember their courage, their service, and the freedoms they preserved for us all. #MemorialDay#HonorAndRememberpic.twitter.com/T2aUISdUjb
But his next X post revealed that he won the award for the “next Democrat to embarrass himself by going to El Salvador.” He was in El Salvador, trying to see Kilmar Abrego Garcia on Memorial Day.
Ivey posted a video giving an update on their effort to see Abrego Garcia, saying he was the “Congressman who represents Kilmar.”
Today, I was denied access to seeing my constituent, Mr. Kilmar Abrego Garcia. If there is nothing to hide, cut the crap. Let his lawyer and I check on him. @CASAforallpic.twitter.com/V310GDmIc4
Democrats might want to rethink making Kilmar Abrego-Garcia the face of their movement if newly released body cam footage is any indication of where things are headed. And to be clear, that’s rhetorical, because it’s absolutely an indication of where things are headed.
For those unfamiliar with the Abrego-Garcia saga, the illegal immigrant was recently deported back to his home country of El Salvador. Because he was sent to CECOT, the Central American nation’s gang prison (mostly made up of MS-13 members), controversy broke out about whether sufficient due process was given. Multiple judges have been involved, and the Trump administration has been ordered to “facilitate” Abrego-Garcia’s return to the United States.
There’s just one problem: El Salvador said no, and since he’s their citizen, the United States has no ability to undo his deportation. That’s left the two sides of the issue in a stalemate.
It’s unclear if many on the left realize the point of running for office is to represent the American people and not foreign nationals, but actions speak louder than words.
Several Democrats have arrived in El Salvador with the intent of bringing back alleged MS-13 gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
It’s factually incorrect to claim that deporting an alleged gang member is a threat to Americans in the United States, but it’s not like these people are working with facts here. And LOL to the “illegally abducted” term, as the man was sent back to his home country after breaking federal immigration laws. Additionally, she has got some nerve claiming Trump does not respect the branches of government when all he’s trying to do is enforce the rule of law, but what do you expect from the most lawless political party in American history?
Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen was unanimously rebuked by a group of Maryland residents who were disgusted after learning of his taxpayer-funded boondoggle to bring back an illegal alien who had been deported by the Trump administration.
Van Hollen — a senator from Maryland — has been widely criticized for ignoring his own constituents and wasting tax money to fly to El Salvador in a bid to retrieve a foreign national.
On Monday, a group of Maryland residents torched their senator — and the Democratic Party — for wasting taxpayer resources by prioritizing an illegal alien over American citizens.
The unanimous condemnation occurred during a “man on the street interview” conducted by Johnny Belisario, a producer with “Jesse Watters Primetime.”
How committed are Democrats to going off the tracks, aligning themselves with illegal alien and alleged MS-13 gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia?
Apparently so committed on the train wreck path that they went to El Salvador anyway, even though they were denied Congressional money and American taxpayer dollars to support their trip by House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer in a very blunt statement.
We had quite a lot to say earlier about Politico’s obsequious coverage of Sen. Chris Van Hollen, who has been milking the ‘Maryland Father’ storyline for as much attention and publicity as he can get. The trouble he’s had, though, is in facing even the slightest bit of pushback on his preferred narrative, in which his favored poster child’s actual record is an irrelevant ‘distraction.’ When unhappy facts are presented to him, he treats them as irrelevant deflections, while himself…deflecting to yet another attack on the Trump administration. I tacked this clip from CNN onto the earlier post, but it’s important to watch. The Senator doesn’t want to grapple with the question of whether his “constituent” — on whom he’s lavished great attention and effort — is in fact a criminal gang member, in addition to being an illegal immigrant. Neither, it seems, does the gaggle of additional Congressional Democrats who’ve made the same pilgrimage to El Salvador.
Chris Van Hollen has spent nearly a decade as an under-the-radar lawmaker. But the Maryland Democrat, who gave up a leadership trajectory in the House to serve in the Senate, may now finally be meeting his moment.
Van Hollen has grabbed the national spotlight amid a two-day trip to El Salvador to meet with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident who was mistakenly deported by the Trump administration on erroneous charges of gang membership. After being initially blocked from entering a maximum-security prison by the Salvadoran government, Van Hollen ultimately succeeded in sitting down Thursday with his constituent, who had since been transferred to another detention facility.
“If you deny the constitutional rights of one man, you threaten the constitutional rights and due process for everyone else in America,” Van Hollen said Friday at a press conference at Dulles International Airport, shortly after returning from El Salvador.
He was flanked by advocates holding signs emblazoned with the words, “Thank you Senator Van Hollen.”
Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen returned from his trip to El Salvador Friday after meeting with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man who was deported due to an administrative error.
Van Hollen traveled to El Salvador on Wednesday, April 16, to check on Abrego Garcia’s health and well-being, a month after he was deported to a Salvadoran supermax prison known as CECOT.
“His conversation with me was the first communication that he had with anybody outside of prison since he was abducted. He said he felt very sad about being in a prison because he had not committed any crimes,” Van Hollen said.
However, he said, Abrego Garcia has since been moved to another prison where he says the conditions are better.
“He told me, and this was yesterday, eight days ago, so nine days ago from today, he was moved to another detention center in Santa Ana, where the conditions are better. But he said, despite the better conditions, he still has no access to any news from the outside world and no ability to communicate with anybody in the outside world,” Van Hollen said.
President Donald Trump argued Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s tattoos prove he is a MS-13 gang member who should not be allowed back into the United States.
On Friday evening, Trump highlighted a photo of Abrego Garcia’s hand that appeared to contain “MS-13” tattooed on his knuckles. MS-13 is a Salvadoran-native gang that the U.S. has designated a terrorist organization.
“This is the hand of the man that the Democrats feel should be brought back to the United States, because he is such ‘a fine and innocent person.’ They said he is not a member of MS-13, even though he’s got MS-13 tattooed onto his knuckles, and two Highly Respected Courts found that he was a member of MS-13, beat up his wife, etc,” the president wrote in a post to Truth Social.
The photo Trump showed included labels claiming to identify what the tattoos, each on one knuckle, represented. “M” was supposedly represented by a marijuana leaf, “S” was represented by a smiley face, “1” was represented by a cross, and “3” was a skull, according to the legend, with the latter two images possibly being to cover up the two numbers.
The Democratic Party faces a growing rift over how to take on President Donald Trump. On one side, younger, more defiant members are pushing for generational change and a harder line. On the other? Moderates and institutionalists who seem pretty comfortable clinging to the status quo.
Democrats like Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen have been on the front lines, demanding accountability and treating the case like the crisis it is. Others, such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom, are dismissing the party’s focus on Garcia as a “distraction,” urging Democrats to hit Trump on tariffs and trade instead.
Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, right, speaks with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man whom the Trump administration wrongly deported El Salvador, in a hotel restaurant in San Salvador, El Salvador, on April 17.
“This is the hand of the man that the Democrats feel should be brought back to the United States, because he is such a ‘fine and innocent person,'” President Trump wrote.
On Friday, President Donald Trump released a photo of the tattoos belonging to MS-13 gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was recently deported to El Salvador after unlawfully residing in the United States. The tattoos on his knuckles are affiliated with the MS-13 gang, which include a marijuana leaf, a smiley face, a cross, and a skull. These symbols are intended to spell out “MS-13.”
The photo evidence comes after Democratic lawmakers claimed that the Trump administration unlawfully deported illegal immigrant Abrego Garcia to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CEDOT), who had been residing in the United States with his wife in Maryland. This resulted in Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) travelling to El Salvador in an attempt to bring the foreign terrorist back to the US.
“This is the hand of the man that the Democrats feel should be brought back to the United States, because he is such a ‘fine and innocent person,'” President Trump wrote on X. “They said he is not a member of MS-13, even though he’s got MS-13 tattooed onto his knuckles, and two Highly Respected Courts found that he was a member of MS-13, beat up his wife, etc. I was elected to take bad people out of the United States, among other things. I must be allowed to do my job. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
The clash over President Donald Trump’s bid to exercise unprecedented powers in deporting migrants deepened Sunday as he again bashed the judiciary, while a top Democrat warned the country was “closer and closer” to a constitutional crisis.
The latest events followed a dramatic intervention by the Supreme Court in the pre-dawn hours of Saturday to temporarily block Trump’s use of an obscure law to deport Venezuelan migrants without due process.
Trump lashed out Sunday on his Truth Social platform, not specifically naming the high court but slamming the “WEAK and INEFFECTIVE Judges and Law Enforcement Officials who are allowing this sinister attack on our Nation to continue, an attack so violent that it will never be forgotten!”
Samuel Alito, one of two conservative high-court justices to vote against the halt, called the emergency ruling by the court’s majority “legally questionable.”
As of Saturday morning, the White House had not immediately responded to a request from Reuters for comment. When President Trump was asked on Friday about the planned deportations of the Venezuelan men, he claimed he was unfamiliar with the particular case, but said that “if they’re bad people,” he would “certainly authorize it.”
The Trump administration—including the president, Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, and other immigration officials—have in the few months since taking office rolled out a coordinated onslaught against immigrants, both documented and not, across the country. This comes after Trump, when running for office, referred to immigrants as “animals” and said that they are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
In March, more than 130 men whom the Trump administration claimed were Tren de Aragua members were deported to El Salvador. Family members and lawyers for the men have said they were singled out because of tattoos that they have, but an expert on the gang told NBC that tattoos are not closely connected with affiliation to Tren de Aragua and that “Venezuelan gangs are not identified by tattoos.” (Immigration officials have maintained that they did not solely rely on tattoos to identify the deportees as alleged gang members.)
Speaking to reporters at Dulles airport in Washington on Friday afternoon, the senator Chris Van Hollen just accused the government of El Salvador of creating the hoax he called “Margarita-gate”, by placing a pair of cocktail glasses on the table between himself and Kilmar Ábrego García as they met the night before, to make it look as though they were enjoying drinks.
Those photographs were posted on X by El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, along with a caption that downplayed the seriousness of the situation by falsely claiming that the senator and the wrongly deported man had been “sipping margaritas” as they met on Thursday evening.
But the senator said that the drinks were placed there during the meeting by someone from the Salvadoran government before the photographs were taken and that neither he nor Ábrego García had touched them. Van Hollen pointed out that there was visual evidence for this in the photographs: the rims of both glasses were covered in salt or sugar, but it was clear from the images that neither glass had been drunk from, since the rims were undisturbed.
House Oversight Chairman James Comer has denied a request from two Democrat Representatives who sought approval of funds to visit Kilmar Abrego Garcia in El Salvador.
Reps. Robert Garcia and Maxwell Frost had asked to receive funds from the Congressional budget (that’s taxpayer money) to fly down to El Salvador and meet with alleged MS-13 gang member and wife-beater Abrego Garcia.
Comer bluntly shut down the request, telling the Democrat Congressmen that he will “not approve a single dime of taxpayer funds” to be used for such a purpose. He noted that Democrat Sen. Van Hollen already visited Abrego Garcia.
“If you also wish to meet with him, you can spend your own money,” he stated.
The clash over President Donald Trump‘s bid to exercise unprecedented powers in deporting migrants deepened Sunday as he again bashed the judiciary, while a top Democrat warned the country was “closer and closer” to a constitutional crisis.
The latest events followed a dramatic intervention by the Supreme Court in the pre-dawn hours of Saturday to temporarily block Trump‘s use of an obscure law to deport Venezuelan migrants without due process.
Trump lashed out Sunday on his Truth Social platform, not specifically naming the high court but slamming the “WEAK and INEFFECTIVE Judges and Law Enforcement Officials who are allowing this sinister attack on our Nation to continue, an attack so violent that it will never be forgotten!”
Samuel Alito, one of two conservative high-court justices to vote against the halt, called the emergency ruling by the court’s majority “legally questionable.”
“Literally in the middle of the night, the Court issued unprecedented and legally questionable relief… without hearing from the opposing party,” Alito wrote in his dissent.
Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen is vowing to travel to El Salvador to negotiate the release of a wrongly deported man after the Trump administration ignored a Supreme Court ruling to facilitate his return to the U.S.
In a letter sent to the El Salvadorian Ambassador on April 13 before Trump’s tête-à-tête with El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, Van Hollen requested a meeting with Bukele during his U.S. visit to discuss “the illegal detention of [his] constituent, Kilmar Abrego Garcia,” after the Supreme Court agreed on Thursday to unanimously uphold U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis’s ruling that he was wrongly deported and that the U.S. government was responsible for bringing him home.
(It’s unclear if Van Hollen ever got to meet with Bukele.)
