Mark Halperin ‘baffled’ by Democrats’ ‘choice’ to defend Abrego Garcia

Political analyst Mark Halperin on Monday expressed confusion about Democrats choosing to fight for deported alleged MS-13 member Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

Several Democrats have flown to El Salvador to demand the return of Abrego Garcia, who is also accused of abusing his wife. Halperin, on “2WAY TONIGHT,” said the alleged MS-13 member’s past makes it extremely harmful politically to advocate for him, regardless of whether Democrats have a point regarding “due process.”

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“This guy is not the poster child for due process. Not just because he came to the country illegally and not just because he seems to have done some bad things, but the history of his case is … there’s stuff that cuts both ways,” Halperin said. “So if they want to have a big due process fight, I just can’t imagine why they’d want it to be around this guy.”

“I will never understand this choice. And I wrote in my newsletter this morning that the only thing I can think of was when [former Vice President] Kamala Harris refused to repudiate her decision to a previous enunciated position that she supports — it’s almost impossible to say this with a straight face: she supported government-funded transition gender transition surgeries and treatments for incarcerated people in this country illegally,” he added. “Like, the quintessence of ridiculousness in terms of the politics. And this seems to me to be the same thing.”

Harris detailed how she worked “behind the scenes” to provide prisoners access to sex-change procedures at taxpayer expense during a 2019 press conference. She also called for providing sex-change procedures for transgender illegal immigrants at taxpayer expense in a 2019 questionnaire from the American Civil Liberties Union during her 2020 presidential campaign that CNN resurfaced.

President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign ran ads featuring Harris discussing how she pushed for transgender prisoners to receive sex changes. Harris called the ads “a bunch of disinformation and misinformation” in October, but did not renounce her prior stance.

“You’ll never, ever — if you’re the Democratic Party —  you’ll never win the fight on your principle because you’ll never separate it from the guy,” Halperin said. “It’s just never gonna happen, and I can’t understand it.”

“I’m just so baffled by the Democratic Party’s position to make this guy the place they want to fight whether Donald Trump is causing a constitutional crisis or not,” he added.

Democratic Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen was the first in his party to visit El Salvador attempting to meet with Abrego Garcia. Van Hollen was eventually granted a meeting with Abrego Garcia on Thursday. Four Democrats subsequently landed Monday in El Salvador to support the alleged MS-13 gang member.

Despite an immigration judge ordering Abrego García deported in 2019, a second judge subsequently issued a withholding of removal order, which blocked his deportation to his home nation of El Salvador and allowed him to work in the U.S. The Trump administration acknowledged it had made an “administrative error” when deporting him.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) also confirmed to the Daily Caller Thursday that the alleged MS-13 member was stopped in Tennessee in December 2022 on suspicion of human trafficking after being discovered to be transporting eight passengers across the U.S., as previously reported by the Tennessee Star.

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