Trump calls Sen. Van Hollen 'grandstander' for Kilmar Abrego Garcia meeting

Dave Goldiner, New York Daily News on Apr 18, 2025

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President Donald Trump trashed Sen. Chris Van Hollen as a “fool” and a “grandstander” on Friday for meeting with wrongly deported immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia in his homeland of El Salvador.

The president called out the Maryland Democrat for negotiating an attention-grabbing sit-down with Abrego Garcia after delicate talks with the government of pro-Trump Salvadoran strongman Nayib Bukele.

“Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland looked like a fool yesterday standing in El Salvador begging for attention,” Trump wrote on his social media site. “Grandstander.”

Van Hollen, who flew home on Friday, accused Trump of lying about Abrego Garcia and defying a Supreme Court ruling to “facilitate” his return.

“We need to end the illegal abduction of Kilmar Abrego Garcia and bring him home too,” Van Hollen said. “This case is about protecting the constitutional rights of everyone residing in the United States.”

Abrego Garcia told Van Hollen he’d been moved from a notorious megaprison to another prison in the Salvadoran town of Santa Ana and had no other contact with the outside world.

Van Hollen tweeted a photo of the meeting with Abrego Garcia, which came after the lawmaker journeyed to San Salvador and met with El Salvador’s vice president.

Abrego Garcia’s wife said in a statement that she was relieved to find out her husband was alive and well but “we still have so many questions, hopes and fears.”

“The most important thing for me, my children, his mom, brothers was to see him alive, and we saw him alive” Jennifer Vasquez Sura told ABC News.

At a chummy White House meeting, Trump and Bukele both said they wouldn’t facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S., despite the Supreme Court’s order to do so.

The Maryland sheet metal apprentice was wrongly sent to El Salvador in March despite an immigration court order barring his deportation to his home country where he faces potential threats from gangs in his hometown.

It’s not clear what will happen now to Abrego Garcia, who had been held at CECOT, a notorious Salvadoran megaprison known for harsh conditions.

Bukele, who brands himself as the “world’s coolest dictator,” mocked Abrego Garcia for sharing “margaritas” with Van Hollen.

“Now that he’s been confirmed healthy, he gets the honor of staying in El Salvador’s custody,” Bukele tweeted.

Van Hollen called the “margaritas” claim a lie and accused Salvadoran officials of placing the drinks on the table as a stunt to embarrass himself and Abrego Garcia.

The case has become an unlikely political lightning rod as Democrats seize on Abrego Garcia’s Kafkaesque situation as a cruel consequence of Trump’s mass deportations and disregard for the courts.

Republicans hit back at Democrats for defending an undocumented immigrant who they claim is a gang member, allegations he denies.

A three-judge panel from the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously backed a district court judge’s decision to order sworn testimony by Trump administration officials detailing what if anything they have done to implement the Supreme Court’s order.

Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, a conservative who was nominated by Republican President Ronald Reagan, wrote that he and his two colleagues “cling to the hope that it is not naive to believe our good brethren in the Executive Branch perceive the rule of law as vital to the American ethos.”

The U.S. has agreed to pay El Salvador millions of dollars to imprison hundreds of deportees, including more than 200 Venezuelan immigrants whom Trump administration officials accuse of gang activity and violent crimes.

A second federal appeals court judge has moved to hold officials in contempt for defying his original order to refrain from deporting the immigrants without any due process under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act.

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