A conservative watchdog is demanding an ethics probe into Sen. Chris Van Hollen for allegedly “assisting a foreign terrorist organization” by going to El Salvador to attempt to assist free an accused MS-13 gangbanger.
The American Accountability Basis fired off a letter to Senate leaders Thursday underscoring the Trump administration’s accusations about Kilmar Abrego Garcia having ties to the barbaric transnational gang and demanding that the Senate refuse to pay for the journey by Van Hollen (D-Md.).
“Mr. Abrego-Garcia is essentially an enemy combatant in the ongoing invasion of the United States by transnational gangs,” AAF President Thomas Jones wrote to the heads of the Senate Ethics Committee and Majority Chief John Thune (R-SD) in a letter obtained by The Submit.
“Despite the overwhelming evidence, Senator Van Hollen decided that he would use Senate funds to fly to El Salvador and advocate for an enemy of the United States,” the letter stated.
It isn’t absolutely clear how a lot in Senate funds Van Hollen used on his journey Wednesday to El Salvador. The Dem flew to the Latin American nation in a bid to push for the discharge of Abrego Garcia, an unlawful migrant had been residing in Maryland earlier than his deportation.
AFF is asking for Thune to instruct the secretary of the Senate to not foot the invoice for Van Hollen’s journey and desires the Senate Ethics Committee to probe the senator for potential violations of the Logan Act, which makes it unlawful for unauthorized residents to barter with international governments.
“Van Hollen was in El Salvador meeting with leaders of the Salvadorian government to attempt to secure Mr. Garcia’s release,” Jones wrote within the letter. “It is hard to imagine a more hostile intrusion into U.S. foreign policy than attempting to smuggle a foreign enemy combatant into the United States.”
Abrego Garcia, 29, lived in Maryland earlier than being deported to El Salvador final month alongside about 260 different alleged gangbangers beneath President Trump’s use of battle powers within the 18th century Alien and Enemies Act. Related Trump efforts have been placed on pause, pending litigation.
Abrego Garcia entered the US illegally in 2011.
Van Hollen beforehand met with Abrego Garcia’s spouse, Jennifer Vasquez, who’s an American citizen and who was revealed to have filed a short lived protecting order towards him in 2021, alleging he “punched and scratched” her, “grabbed and bruised” her, and “ripped off” her shirt.
The Maryland senator claims he made a promise to Vasquez that he would combat to deliver again Abrego Garcia.
Throughout his journey Wednesday, the senator was turned away from visiting the Terrorism Confinement Middle (CECOT) megaprison complicated and wasn’t in a position to talk straight with Abrego Garcia in any respect throughout the journey, although he met with El Salvador Vice President Félix Ulloa.
Abrego Garcia’s deportation final month got here regardless of a 2019 courtroom order proscribing the US authorities from sending him to El Salvador on account of fears that he may face persecution from teams together with the Barrio 18 gang.
Initially, in a March 31 submitting, the Trump administration said that Abrego Garcia’s elimination was on account of an “administrative error” and a “clerical error.” Publicly, high Trump administration officers have since faulted attorneys for making that declare.
The Trump administration additionally claimed in courtroom paperwork that the 29-year-old is “confirmed to be a ranking member of the MS-13 gang by a proven and reliable source.” On Wednesday, the Justice Division launched a police report additionally suggesting Abrego Garcia was a member of MS-13.
The Trump administration alleges that Abrego Garcia was found having “rolls of cash and drugs” when he was detained and that he had been “arrested with two other members of MS-13.”
The Submit has reached out to reps for Thune, Van Hollen and the Senate Ethics Committee for remark.
“I won’t stop trying,” Van Hollen declared throughout his journey to El Salvador. “This is an unsustainable and unjust moment. So it cannot continue this way.”
“I want to emphasize that President Trump and our attorney general Pam Bondi and the vice president of the United States are lying when they say that Abrego Garcia has been charged with a crime or is part of MS-13,” the senator continued. “That is a lie.”
White Home press secretary Karolin Leavitt ripped Van Hollen’s actions as “appalling” throughout a press occasion Wednesday and launched Patty Morin, whose daughter Rachel was savagely raped and murdered by an unlawful migrant in 2023. Rachel Morin was a Maryland constituent.
“To have a senator from Maryland who didn’t even acknowledge or barely acknowledged my daughter and the brutal death that she endured, leaving her five children without a mother, to use my tax money to fly to El Salvador to bring back a person … I just don’t understand this,” Patty Morin lamented throughout her somber remarks.
El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, has known as calls for that the Latin American nation return Abrego Garcia to the US “preposterous.”
Extra congressional Democrats have expressed curiosity in heading to El Salvador, comparable to Reps. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) and Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ).
Final week, the US Supreme Courtroom ordered the Trump administration to take steps “to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent” there.
