The last few weeks have seen an outbreak of concern in the USA for Americans held against their will in foreign lands. The Trump administration has so far been very successful in returning many Americans, held for dubious reasons, in countries such as Afghanistan and Russia. The most recent initiative is to work with Venezuela to get back nine Americans, one of whom, Lucas Hunter, was in Columbia when he was arrested by Venezuelan border guards.
The previous administration mostly left our citizens to rot in prison, except for a couple of prisoners whom Russia traded for some seriously evil guys. After all, if you have an open border, as in the last four years of a Democrat administration, through which anyone could enter the US unvetted and be given an iPhone, living expenses and allowed to stay, it is difficult to spare the time for issues concerning your regular citizens. So we were all heartened by the fact that now the Democrat Party seems to be finally stepping up to the plate and is as determined as the rest of us in getting our folks back.
Except it isn’t.
Instead, five Democrat politicians went to El Salvador in the last two days to rescue Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who differs from the nine kept in Venezuela in that he is a recently deported illegal immigrant originally hailing from El Salvador.
First on the plane was one of those obscure Senators, unknown until they appear on TV bigged up by the mainstream media, Senator Van Hollen from Maryland. He was rather amusingly referred to initially as Van Halen by Cable News folks, an unintentional tribute maybe to his penchant for running with the devil on this one. Van Hollen was supposedly incensed that his “constituent” Garcia had been deported because, apart from being an illegal, he is a member of a violent transnational criminal gang MS-13 and is a thoroughly unpleasant fellow who beats his wife and has been suspected of slave trafficking. And he cited that this was a “Maryland Man”, a husband married to an American citizen, and a father. The mainstream media were very much on board with all this and deliriously used it as a stick to beat the Trump administration.
Van Hollen did not end there as he also stated that the illegal Garcia had been deported illegally. The Trump administration had deported him in error because although an immigration court had ordered him deported in 2019, the order had been put on hold as Garcia claimed he was not safe in El Salvador from a rival gang, 18th Street. This order was renewed every year during Biden’s administration, which never met an illegal it didn’t like. Until it was not, as the Trump administration had declared back in February that MS-13 was a transnational terrorist organisation, which made Garcia subject to immediate deportation under the Alien Enemies act of 1798. As with all other such cases under the Act, the illegals were deported to El Salvador as Bukele has made his prisons available to Trump to house transnational terrorists
A case on this subject was put in front of a the nearest far Left judge, based on a paperwork error, and then argued all the way up to the Supreme Court, who ruled on an appeal that Trump should try and “facilitate” the return of Garcia, not “effectuate,” as the lower court had ruled. This was answered by the President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele who, on a visit to the White House on April 14th, had said he had no intention of returning an El Salvador citizen, who faced justice in his own country as an MS-13 member, back to the US where he was not wanted.
Van Hollen came back defeated a few days ago. He did see Garcia in a photo op interview, but Bukele refused to meet him as he has more pressing business, such as cleaning up the massive crime wave in his country. Van Hollen had left for his El Salvador mission with criticism from his constituents ringing in his ears that he had not lifted a finger to concern himself with the murder and rape of a Maryland mother of five by an illegal. He returned to news that another murder of a mother had happened in his absence committed by two illegals, a.k.a. “Maryland Men”, and coincidentally in the same county where Garcia had lived.
But no matter what Van Hollen’s problems, help was on its way for Garcia. Unfortunately, the help was more Gary Cherone than David Lee Roth. The House of Representatives cut off funding after Van Hollen’s antics for any politician engaging in this type of nonsense in a foreign country, but four intrepid Congressional representatives stepped up and used their own campaign funds to visit El Salvador to bring back Garcia for another deportation. They arrived on April 21st, but have yet to meet anyone, let alone Garcia. Still this has not dampened their spirits. One of them, Rep. Maxine Dexter, has taken to social media claiming she was going to stay in El Salvador for as long as it takes to bring Garcia back home. Seeing as how Garcia is home right now, this performative nonsense has at least given us some cheap laughs.
What is surprising about the fact that the Democrat Party seems to have decided to appeal any and all illegal deportations, is that this is a somewhat recent phenomenon. For example, Obama deported more illegals (three million) as removals (once you’re gone you don’t come back) than any of his predecessors, and he did so using the strategy that Trump is deploying right now by focusing on getting criminals out of the country. Not a peep was heard from any Democrat elected official.
This demonstrates the incredible sea change that happened in the US under the ‘Biden’ administration. The shadowy cabal of Lefties and liberals who ran the country for four years used the power of the Federal Government to effect enormous and damaging change, the worst of which was in immigration policy. For four years they ran an open border designed to flood the country with 15 million illegals, apparently in an effort to remake the country into a Democrat-controlled one. As illegals can be counted in the census that is used to determine how many seats states will have in the House of Representatives, the Hill remarks that “undocumented migrants tend to settle in Democratically controlled cities that have adopted sanctuary policies that protect them from the threat of deportation, so any additional seats are likely to benefit the Democrats”. The problems that ordinary Americans faced with this policy – paying for them, enduring societal upheaval and experiencing outbreaks of very vicious crimes – was just considered collateral damage.
None of the Van Hollen nonsense has gone down too well with Americans who stopped listening as soon as it was mentioned in any story that Garcia was an illegal, let alone a gangbanger. Trump’s popularity has wavered somewhat over the last few weeks due to tariff-induced economic concerns, but support for his immigration policies remain high. In a recent poll 79% of likely American voters believe it is very important to deport illegals who commit crimes, while even 43% of likely Democrat voters believe it is important.
There is far more to come on this issue and unfortunately for all of us it won’t be as humorous as the events of the last few days. Democrats have signalled that they will fight any and all of Trump’s deportations with the cry of “due process”, while “he’s a Maryland Man” has now been retired from their arsenal. It is easy for any deportation to be challenged as long as you find the nearest Lefty liberal judge determined to prevent any removal for any reason and so tie up the administration in the federal court system one illegal at a time. Will this enable the 15 million illegals from the past four years to essentially stay here forever despite the will of the people as shown at the last presidential election? The lawfare, or weaponisation of the legal system, used against Trump for four years was not successful in the end. We’ll see how this one works out.
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