Maryland Democratic U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen’s embarrassing theatrics have been hard to miss, even for people who don’t watch the news much.
The Maryland Democrat has made himself the face of the party’s Resistance movement against President Donald Trump’s deportation policies after Kilmar Abrego Garcia, 29, an illegal immigrant who resided in the Old Line State, was deported to El Salvador in mid-March due to alleged ties to the violent MS-13 gang.
Upon arrival, he was promptly put in its CECOT (Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo) mega-prison.
A 2019 court order reportedly protected him from being sent to El Salvador, allegedly on grounds that rival Salvadoran gangs could target him.
Though the Trump administration has admitted sending him to El Salvador was due to an “administrative error,” it has maintained he is an MS-13 gang member and also a domestic abuser.
As this situation has played out in the courts, with at least one ordering the Trump administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return, the DOJ has said he won’t return to America in part because the original protective order, which didn’t grant asylum, noted that “withholding from removal, in contrast to asylum, confers only the right not to be deported to a particular country rather than the right to remain in the U.S.”
In other words, the Trump administration is saying it had the right to deport him, just not to El Salvador.
Because Abrego Garcia was living in Maryland and has been falsely portrayed by the press as a “wrongly deported man,” Van Hollen has been trying to play the hero, even going so far as to travel to El Salvador to talk to Abrego Garcia. During the trip, the cameras rolled, and both were seen with margaritas on the table as they conferred.
Van Hollen has said they never drank them.
“As we were talking, one of the government people came over and deposited two other glasses on the table with ice, and I don’t know if it was salt or sugar around the top,” he said.
Whether they sipped the margaritas or not, watching the scene play out was a bitter pill for Maryland resident Patty Morin to swallow.
Her daughter, 37-year-old mother of five Rachel Morin, was brutalized, sexually assaulted and murdered on a Maryland walking trail in August 2023 by an illegal immigrant who came to the United States from El Salvador.
Her rapist and killer, Victor Martinez-Hernandez, illegally entered the country under the Biden-Harris administration. Martinez-Hernandez was found guilty earlier this month by a jury, so it’s already been an emotional time for the Morin family.
In an interview that same week, Morin shared that not a single Democrat from Van Hollen up to Biden himself ever reached out to her family.
“(Van Hollen) did not call our family. He did not give condolences. There was no action on the Democratic Party in any way, from Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, (former Homeland Security Director Alejandro) Mayorkas, anyone here in Maryland,” she told Fox News’ Sean Hannity. “None of the senators did anything to help search for the murderer of my daughter.”
That same week, she spoke to reporters in the White House press briefing room and revealed the horrifying details of what happened to her daughter that previously had not been reported. She also begged reporters to “tell the truth” about victims of illegal immigrant crime.
“It’s about national security, protecting Americans, protecting our children,” she told them.
Van Hollen wasn’t there for Rachel Morin’s family despite all the innocent young mother endured. But he’s been bending over backward for an illegal immigrant, suspected gang member and alleged domestic abuser.
As far as I’m concerned, that says all we need to know about him, with none of it being good.
North Carolina native Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym Sister Toldjah and is a media analyst and regular contributor to RedState and Legal Insurrection.
