Big Update After Dem Senator Visits Alleged MS-13 Gang Member In El Salvador

A seasoned Democratic political strategist is cautioning his party about getting too closely tied to Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man recently deported and labeled by the Trump administration as both an MS-13 gang member and a violent abuser.

Appearing on CNN’s The Arena with Kasie Hunt on Friday, Mo Elleithee urged Democrats to tread carefully. “We don’t know all of the details about this guy,” he said, warning against portraying Abrego Garcia as a “martyr.” Instead, Elleithee encouraged his party to direct their energy toward highlighting how former President Donald Trump is “chipping away at our rights.”

“Let’s not make him a martyr,” Elleithee emphasized during the segment. “Let’s make this about the fact that Donald Trump and his administration are chipping away at our rights on a daily basis.”

That same day, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) held a press conference to discuss his recent visit to El Salvador, where he met with Abrego Garcia. The senator pledged to continue advocating for his release from the country’s high-security prison.

Elleithee, however, questioned whether this focus would resonate with a wider audience. “Look, I think everyone in the White House are giving each other high-fives, and everyone who supports the guy in El Salvador are giving each other high-fives, right?” he said. “Both sides have kind of gone to their corners and are saying this is the fight we want to have. Whereas I don’t necessarily know it’s the conversation that would actually resonate with the rest of the country.”

Rather than centering the conversation on Abrego Garcia himself, Elleithee recommended that Democrats highlight the broader civil liberties issues at play.

“It’s less about him, as it is about all of us,” Elleithee said. “And if he [Van Hollen] were to have focused on that — he did it a little bit, he did it a little bit there about a third of the way through, right? — Where he said, ‘Taking away his constitutional rights takes away all of our constitutional rights.’ That’s the place to take this.”

The Trump administration contends that multiple immigration judges—and officials in El Salvador—have identified Abrego Garcia as an MS-13 member. Trump has also labeled the gang a foreign terrorist group, designating its members as enemy combatants subject to immediate deportation under the Alien Enemies Act.

However, the U.S. Supreme Court has issued a temporary block on the administration’s efforts to expedite such deportations under this legal provision, pending lower court review.

This delay comes despite a 1948 Supreme Court ruling, Ludecke v. Watkins, which stated that “The Alien Enemy Act precludes judicial review of the removal order,” effectively barring federal courts from intervening in the president’s use of the law.

In response to Van Hollen’s trip, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller launched a scathing rebuke, criticizing the senator for siding with someone he described as deeply dangerous.

“I’m almost at a loss for words for how outrageous it is,” Miller told reporters. “Here’s an individual—the man who has been deported to his home country of El Salvador—who has been repeatedly documented by multiple federal and state authorities to be a member of MS-13, one of the most violent and ruthless criminal organizations on planet Earth, which is now a designated foreign terrorist organization.”

Miller didn’t stop there.

“An individual who has been involved in human smuggling and human trafficking. An individual who is a documented woman-beater—somebody who has viciously attacked a woman in ways that shock the human conscience. That is who the Democrat Party is going to provide aid, solace, and comfort to—not to Senator Van Hollen’s own constituents, like the Morin family.”

He continued his criticism by invoking the tragic cases of Rachel Morin and Kayla Hamilton—both victims of violent crimes allegedly linked to undocumented immigrants.

“Rachel Morin was viciously beaten, brutally raped, and murdered—and her mother never even got a phone call from Senator Van Hollen,” Miller said. “Or Kayla Hamilton, a young girl who was attacked in a public restaurant, raped in the bathroom, and beaten to death—murdered by an illegal alien that Joe Biden set free into the country.”

“None of those people elicit human sympathy from Senator Van Hollen,” Miller said. “How broken is that man’s heart? How broken is his conscience, that he doesn’t have even an ounce of empathy, or time, or concern to share with those families?”