Chris Van Hollen has spent nearly a decade as an under-the-radar lawmaker. But the Maryland Democrat, who gave up a leadership trajectory in the House to serve in the Senate, may now finally be meeting his moment.

Van Hollen has grabbed the national spotlight amid a two-day trip to El Salvador to meet with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident who was mistakenly deported by the Trump administration on erroneous charges of gang membership. After being initially blocked from entering a maximum-security prison by the Salvadoran government, Van Hollen ultimately succeeded in sitting down Thursday with his constituent, who had since been transferred to another detention facility.

“If you deny the constitutional rights of one man, you threaten the constitutional rights and due process for everyone else in America,” Van Hollen said Friday at a press conference at Dulles International Airport, shortly after returning from El Salvador.

He was flanked by advocates holding signs emblazoned with the words, “Thank you Senator Van Hollen.”

The episode has vaulted Van Hollen into a new hero of the so-called resistance, with some progressives now seeing the 66-year-old lawmaker as someone who can provide a roadmap for how to fight President Donald Trump and effectively message about the human consequences of the administration’s immigration crackdown.

“We’re not in the majority, and we don’t control the legislative agenda on the floor; we have to take whatever creative steps we can outside of the normal course of business to influence events,” said House Judiciary ranking member Jamie Raskin, Van Hollen’s successor in representing the suburban Washington district that’s home to a sizable Salvadoran population. “Van Hollen’s trip down there definitely helped to galvanize people’s attention and to keep it in the front of everybody’s mind.”

It’s also the latest leg of a long journey for Van Hollen that could now change the course of his career at a moment when Democrats are just starting to discuss the need for generational change atop the leadership ladder.

“We’ve been flailing since Trump won. I’d be lying if I said morale wasn’t shot over here,” said one Democratic aide for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, of which Van Hollen is a member.

“The Dems really need something to rally the troops,” said the aide, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “[Sen. Cory] Booker’s floor speech did that. Van Hollen’s trip is doing that.”

Democrats have found unity in opposing many of Trump’s policy priorities, but they’ve also struggled to get on the same page on a variety of issues since losing the White House, including immigration. They’ve also privately and publicly griped over their party’s inability to tamp down the lighting speed at which Trump’s MAGA agenda has upended norms while flouting Congress and the courts.

Van Hollen’s moves to defy the president — and take on a personal safety risk by going to El Salvador — have handed Democrats an antidote to some of their doom and gloom. Many progressives also consider Van Hollen’s framing of Abrego Garcia’s plight an example of the type of the principled stand on immigration that could help win back disaffected voters.

“If ever Democrats were looking for a strong place to pick a fight on immigration — the whisking people off the streets without due process … [this] is the place to pick the fight,” said Adam Green, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

Leah Greenberg, the cofounder of the anti-Trump advocacy group Indivisible, echoed the sentiment.

“This demonstrates that Democrats are moving to an alternate position, which is that, if you take a clear stance and you robustly defend it, you bring people along with you,” said Greenberg, whose group has been pushing Democrats to be more aggressive in their opposition to Trump.

Abrego Garcia was deported last month despite a judge’s ruling that he be allowed to remain in the United States because he faced a risk of being targeted by a gang in his homeland. A federal judge has since ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return and the Supreme Court has upheld the order.

But while Trump administration officials have acknowledged their error, they are refusing take steps to rectify the situation and have since doubled down in saying Abrego Garcia must remain in El Salvador. The episode has erupted in a political firestorm, with Van Hollen now in the eye.

“By the way, @ChrisVanHollen — he’s NOT coming back,” the White House posted Friday on social media.

El Salvador’s president and a staunch Trump ally, Nayib Bukele, also piled on.

“Kilmar Abrego Garcia, miraculously risen from the ‘death camps’ & ‘torture’, now sipping margaritas with Sen. Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador!” he posted on X with photos of the two meeting at a restaurant. There is no evidence that Van Hollen and Abrego Garcia were drinking cocktails.

Van Hollen was elected to the House in 2003, where he rose through the ranks to lead the party campaign arm through top cycles and serve as the senior Democrat on the Budget Committee — both positions to which he was appointed by Nancy Pelosi, then the House Democratic leader.

He was a member of Pelosi’s extended leadership circle for years, and there was extensive reporting about the Californian’s interest in positioning Van Hollen to succeed her when the time came to step aside. But when then-Sen. Barbara Mikulski announced she would retire in 2016, Van Hollen chose the comfort of a Senate seat over the gamble of remaining in the House with no guarantee of a promotion.

In the Senate, Van Hollen spent one term as chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee but has otherwise served more quietly in the rank-and-file, his options limited in a caucus that frequently rewards seniority over ambition.

However, Van Hollen has also long been a champion of a human rights-centered foreign policy platform, even when it’s meant breaking with his own party or challenging U.S. allies. For instance, he emerged as a leading Senate critic of the Israeli government’s conduct during the war in Gaza, accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of committing war crimes and urging then-President Joe Biden to withhold aid.

“If you know Senator Van Hollen, you know he is particularly passionate about international issues,” said fellow Maryland Democratic Rep. Sarah Elfreth. Separately, Raskin floated the possibility that Van Hollen could have been on “a very short list” to be Secretary of State if former Vice President Kamala Harris had won the presidency.

At the airport press conference Friday, Van Hollen nodded to his colleagues who were also exploring visits to El Salvador — and perhaps their own moments in the spotlight.

“I’ve told the vice president of El Salvador but I might be the first senator — the first member of Congress — to come down to El Salvador, but I won’t be the last,” he said. “There are others coming.”

Booker, who captured the nation’s attention when he recently broke the record for the longest talking filibuster on the Senate floor to protest Trump’s agenda, has said he is planning his own trip. Democratic Reps. Delia Ramirez of Illinois, Maxwell Frost of Florida and Robert Garcia of California have asked Republican committee chairs to organize official delegations, but Mark Green of Homeland Security and James Comer of Oversight have declined.

In a sign of how much the episode has become a partisan flashpoint, Ramirez said in a statement that her “Republican colleagues have continued to reinforce their complicity,” while Comer told Frost and Garcia in a letter they were welcome to “spend your own money” to drink “margaritas garnished with cherry slices with a foreign gang member.”

Van Hollen, at the press conference, dismissed accusations of “Margaritagate,” saying, “nobody drank any margaritas, or sugar water, or whatever,” and that prop drinks were placed on the table by Salvadoran government officials to create an a false impression.

In prepared remarks he said he drafted on the airplane home, he emphasized the legal rights that had not been afforded to Abrego Garcia and pledged to continue the fight to bring him back to Maryland, and that both the Trump administration and the government of El Salvador are complicit in an “illegal scheme.”

“This should not be an issue for Republicans or Democrats,” Van Hollen said. “This is an issue for every American who cares about our constitution, who cares about individual liberty, who cares about due process and who cares about what makes America so different, which is adherence to all these things. This is an American issue.”

Connor O’Brien, Joe Gould, Robbie Gramer and Ali Bianco contributed to this report.

Democrats are celebrating Sen. Chris Van Hollen’s meeting with Kilmar Abrego Garcia as a victory in their fight to secure the wrongfully deported man’s release.

But President Donald Trump is claiming the meeting as a win, too.

The two parties are locked into warring narratives on Abrego Garcia’s case, which has taken center stage amid an escalating battle between Trump and the courts over the administration’s mass deportation policy.

Van Hollen on Thursday secured a face-to-face meeting with Abrego Garcia, who was illegally deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador and held in the country’s CECOT mega-prison for the past month. The Maryland senator has led the charge for Democrats pushing for accountability from the administration.

After the Salvadoran government initially blocked his attempt to visit the notorious prison, the senator succeeded in his mission to meet Abrego Garcia — a Salvadoran native who lived in Maryland until his deportation — on Thursday, writing in a post to X: “I said my main goal of this trip was to meet with Kilmar. Tonight I had that chance.”

Democrats immediately branded the meeting a success, lauding Van Hollen for his leadership and perseverance in pushing to see Abrego Garcia.

“This is what leadership looks like. I’m proud of my partner and our senior Senator,” Van Hollen’s fellow Maryland Sen. Angela Alsobrooks wrote on X. “We won’t stop until we bring Kilmar home.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Friday also thanked Van Hollen for his trip, writing on X: “Mr. Abrego Garcia was wrongfully imprisoned. As the Supreme Court indicated, there was no basis for his warrantless arrest. The Trump admin must obey the law. He must be returned home.”

But President Donald Trump and top administration officials say Van Hollen’s visit played right into their hands.

Trump bashed Van Hollen on Truth Social Friday morning, writing: “Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland looked like a fool yesterday standing in El Salvador begging for attention from the Fake News Media, or anyone. GRANDSTANDER!!!”

The official White House account on X posted side-by-side photographs of Van Hollen’s meeting with Abrego Garcia and Trump’s Oval Office conversation with the mother of Rachel Morin, a Maryland woman whose killer — who was convicted this week — was an undocumented immigrant, drawing a comparison between the two visits.

“We are not the same,” read the post, which is now pinned atop the White House’s profile.
White House deputy press secretary Kush Desai took aim at Van Hollen in a post Thursday night, emphasizing the administration’s line on the contrast between the two parties’ priorities, writing: “Chris Van Hollen has firmly established Democrats as the party whose top priority is the welfare of an illegal alien MS-13 terrorist. It is truly disgusting. President Trump will continue to stand on the side of law-abiding Americans.”

The White House has for days sought to frame Democrats’ advocacy for Abrego Garcia as the rival party working on behalf of someone who the administration has branded an MS-13 gang member and terrorist, even as a federal judge has said the evidence presented by the administration is weak.

By contrast, the administration has projected itself as a champion for justice for the Morin family as they reel from the loss of their daughter.

Trump has resisted efforts to bring back Abrego Garcia despite repeated orders from the courts to do so. U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ordered the administration to “facilitate” his return to the States after government lawyers admitted Abrego Garcia’s deportation was an “administrative error,” and has previously cast the evidence of gang affiliation presented by the government — a tip from an informant and the fact he has worn Chicago Bulls attire — as very flimsy.

The Supreme Court subsequently upheld Xinis’ order to facilitate his return. A federal appellate court opinion — authored by one of the nation’s most prominent conservative appellate judges — issued hours before Van Hollen’s meeting with Abrego Garica was made public also excoriated the Trump administration’s handling of the case.

“The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done,” 4th Circuit Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, a Reagan appointee, wrote.

He continued: “This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.”

The unanimous three-judge panel refused to lift Xinis’ order calling for the U.S. to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return.

The White House Friday posted an edited headline from The New York Times, calling Abrego Garcia an “MS-13 illegal alien” who is “never coming back.”

The administration has also found a willing partner in its intensifying messaging campaign on Abrego Garcia’s case: Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele.

Bukele has appeared to join forces with the Trump administration, claiming that his hands are tied, too. During a visit to the White House Monday, the Salvadoran president said he would not release Abrego Garcia — asking, “How can I return him to the United States? Am I going to smuggle him?” — granting Trump the leeway to claim that he was unable to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return.

Bukele also broke the news of Van Hollen’s meeting with Abrego Garcia Thursday night with a mocking tone.

“Kilmar Abrego Garcia, miraculously risen from the ‘death camps’ & ‘torture’, now sipping margaritas with Sen. Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador!,” Bukele said, appearing to take a jab at Democrats who had warned of the severity of the conditions in CECOT.

The El Salvadoran president also indicated that the fight over Abrego Garcia is far from over, writing that the Maryland man “gets the honor of staying in El Salvador’s custody.”

“I love chess,” Bukele wrote in a separate post as reactions to Van Hollen’s visit poured in. The Trump War Room, an account run by the president’s political operation, reposted the message.

El Salvador refused Thursday to allow Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen to see the Maryland man who the Trump administration mistakenly whisked off to a notorious prison in his Central American homeland.

The Maryland senator said he traveled to El Salvador to check on the health condition of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who the administration sent to the prison despite a judge’s order that he be allowed to remain in the U.S. Van Hollen said soldiers blocked their approach.

“Nobody has had any communication with him since he was illegally abducted from Maryland,” he said in a video posted to social media.

The case has become a flashpoint for Democrats and other critics of the administration’s deportation efforts. The Supreme Court has directed the government to facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia, who had been allowed to remain in the U.S. after a judge determined he had a legitimate fear of persecution in El Salvador.

President Donald Trump and El Salvador’s leader, President Nayib Bukele, have said they have no basis to bring him back.

Van Hollen, who tried to visit Abrego Garcia with an attorney for the family, was denied access despite the fact that Republican members of Congress have been able to enter a facility that has drawn condemnation for the harsh conditions of confinement.

“Today’s purpose was just to see what his health condition is, and these soldiers were ordered to prevent us from going any farther from this spot,” the senator said in the video.

Democrats have taken on Abrego Garcia’s plight as part of what they’ve called a growing constitutional crisis under the Trump administration. In a press conference, Van Hollen said that his deportation should spark fears of a greater violation of due process rights.

Some House Democrats moved to arrange a Congressional visit to CECOT to see Abrego Garcia, where others like New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker have started planning their own visits to El Salvador.

House Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green, a Republican from Tennessee, shut down the idea of a Congressional sponsored trip to El Salvador in a statement Thursday.

“There is no excuse for Democrats to waste taxpayer dollars visiting and defending a transnational gang member and reported domestic abuser,” Green wrote. “If Democrats care so much about defending this individual, they can use their own personal credit cards—not taxpayers’ money—to virtue-signal to their radical base.”