Van Hollen’s shame: Defending MS-13’s Abrego Garcia over constituents’ safety

OPINION:

Sen. Chris Van Hollen should be ashamed of himself.

Last week, the Maryland Democrat descended on El Salvador to seek the return of an MS-13 gang member he claimed the Trump administration kidnapped and illegally deported. Like other liberal Democrats, Mr. Van Hollen claims Kilmar Abrego Garcia, though illegally in the U.S., is an innocent resident of his state whom the president and his team have mistreated.

Mr. Van Hollen can’t be naive enough to believe such nonsense. The senator has access to information proving that Mr. Abrego Garcia is just what President Trump’s team says he is: an MS-13 gang member and abuser of women who was in Maryland illegally. Mr. Van Hollen should have applauded his capture and deportation because Mr. Abrego Garcia and his fellow MS-13 thugs routinely victimize the senator’s constituents.

As a congressman before ascending to the Senate, Mr. Van Hollen participated as long ago as 2006 in a House Government Reform Committee hearing in Maryland to dramatize the growing gang violence traceable to this same Salvadoran gang. He was there when Prince George’s County police Capt. Bill Lynn testified: “As we are well aware, the most notable gang in our area is MS-13. This group has been active throughout the region, in D.C., Virginia and Maryland. No community has escaped its influence, burden and violence, and no one community is the central hub for its occupation.” Mr. Van Hollen expressed concern about MS-13 violence in Maryland at the time and supported measures to deal with it.

Then, Mr. Trump declared MS-13 a terrorist organization and targeted gang members for prosecution and deportation. When liberals decided to make Mr. Abrego Garcia a hero, a “Maryland father” who was an innocent victim of the Trump administration’s overreach, the senator went all in.

MS-13 gang members have committed multiple violent rapes and murders in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia. They have killed and terrorized Americans nationwide. Law enforcement at the local, state and federal levels has been targeting them and spending millions of dollars pursuing them to protect the innocent for years. They prefer machetes and seem to enjoy dismembering their victims. Although membership is secretive, their penchant for symbolic tattoos and wardrobe gives them away.

Law enforcement confidential informants help identify them, which is how police came to arrest Mr. Abrego Garcia and three other suspected gang members in the parking lot of the Hyattsville Home Depot in 2019. One of those arrested was later released because the police determined he was not, in fact, an MS-13 member. The other three, including Mr. Abrego Garcia, were held, and a judge later found that the evidence justified their arrest. In rushing to Mr. Abrego Garcia’s defense, Mr. Van Hollen had to ignore that Maryland judge’s ruling as well as a Prince George’s County judge’s 2021 restraining order to keep Mr. Abrego Garcia from abusing his wife and an immigration hearing conclusion that classifying Mr. Abrego Garcia as an MS-13 member was justified.

The threat MS-13 poses to Mr. Van Hollen’s Maryland constituents is apparently less important to the senator than scoring points against a Republican president. For a while, liberals were able to gaslight the American public into thinking that Mr. Abrego Garcia was an innocent person picked up and deported illegally. That narrative was inadvertently aided by the Trump administration’s “admission” of an administrative error and failure to release details of Mr. Abrego Garcia’s background in a timely manner.

The administrative error was sending Mr. Abrego Garcia back to his home country, where gangs are at war over money, drugs, turf and power. There, the judge speculated, Mr. Abrego Garcia could be at risk from other gangs because the government might not protect him. That raised the question of where he might be deported, and the problem of protecting him has been solved by the Salvadorans, who have him in a maximum-security prison.

The senator, obsessed with joining a crusade that has become a rallying cry on the left, rushed to El Salvador without realizing that even before the Justice Department released its file on Mr. Abrego Garcia, Maryland authorities had enough information on the man to tell him that Mr. Abrego Garcia is neither an innocent nor a man who should be brought back to Maryland.

As a candidate for the presidency, Mr. Trump pledged to get control of our borders and to send illegals with gang ties and criminal backgrounds back to where they came from as soon as possible. Mr. Abrego Garcia was one of those who belonged in El Salvador rather than the United States.

El Salvador’s president has said he won’t release a terrorist like Mr. Abrego Garcia from jail. Whose prison he occupies may be a legitimate topic for debate, but there is little question that Mr. Abrego Garcia should remain behind bars.