{"id":8358,"date":"2025-04-18T22:32:09","date_gmt":"2025-04-18T22:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/van-hollens-big-moment-defending-a-constituent-and-defying-trump\/"},"modified":"2025-04-18T22:32:09","modified_gmt":"2025-04-18T22:32:09","slug":"van-hollens-big-moment-defending-a-constituent-and-defying-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/van-hollens-big-moment-defending-a-constituent-and-defying-trump\/","title":{"rendered":"Van Hollen\u2019s big moment: Defending a constituent and defying Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

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.<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf you deny the constitutional rights of one man, you threaten the constitutional rights and due process for everyone else in America,\u201d Van Hollen said Friday at a press conference at Dulles International Airport, shortly after returning from El Salvador.<\/p>\n

He was flanked by advocates holding signs emblazoned with the words, \u201cThank you Senator Van Hollen.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019s immigration crackdown.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not in the majority, and we don\u2019t 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,\u201d said House Judiciary ranking member Jamie Raskin, Van Hollen\u2019s successor in representing the suburban Washington district that\u2019s home to a sizable Salvadoran population. \u201cVan Hollen\u2019s trip down there definitely helped to galvanize people\u2019s attention and to keep it in the front of everybody\u2019s mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been flailing since Trump won. I\u2019d be lying if I said morale wasn\u2019t shot over here,\u201d said one Democratic aide for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, of which Van Hollen is a member.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Dems really need something to rally the troops,\u201d said the aide, granted anonymity to speak candidly. \u201c[Sen. Cory] Booker\u2019s floor speech did that. Van Hollen\u2019s trip is doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Democrats have found unity in opposing many of Trump\u2019s policy priorities, but they\u2019ve also struggled to get on the same page on a variety of issues since losing the White House, including immigration. They\u2019ve also privately and publicly griped over their party\u2019s inability to tamp down the lighting speed at which Trump\u2019s MAGA agenda has upended norms while flouting Congress and the courts.<\/p>\n

Van Hollen\u2019s moves to defy the president \u2014 and take on a personal safety risk by going to El Salvador \u2014 have handed Democrats an antidote to some of their doom and gloom. Many progressives also consider Van Hollen\u2019s framing of Abrego Garcia\u2019s plight an example of the type of the principled stand on immigration that could help win back disaffected voters.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf ever Democrats were looking for a strong place to pick a fight on immigration \u2014 the whisking people off the streets without due process … [this] is the place to pick the fight,\u201d said Adam Green, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.<\/p>\n

Leah Greenberg, the cofounder of the anti-Trump advocacy group Indivisible, echoed the sentiment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis 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,\u201d said Greenberg, whose group has been pushing Democrats to be more aggressive in their opposition to Trump.<\/p>\n

Abrego Garcia was deported last month despite a judge\u2019s 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 \u201cfacilitate\u201d Abrego Garcia\u2019s return and the Supreme Court has upheld the order.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy the way, @ChrisVanHollen \u2014 he\u2019s NOT coming back,\u201d the White House posted Friday on social media.<\/p>\n

El Salvador\u2019s president and a staunch Trump ally, Nayib Bukele, also piled on.<\/p>\n

\u201cKilmar Abrego Garcia, miraculously risen from the \u2018death camps\u2019 & \u2018torture\u2019, now sipping margaritas with Sen. Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador!\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 both positions to which he was appointed by Nancy Pelosi, then the House Democratic leader.<\/p>\n

He was a member of Pelosi\u2019s extended leadership circle for years, and there was extensive reporting about the Californian\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

However, Van Hollen has also long been a champion of a human rights-centered foreign policy platform, even when it\u2019s meant breaking with his own party or challenging U.S. allies. For instance, he emerged as a leading Senate critic of the Israeli government\u2019s conduct during the war in Gaza, accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of committing war crimes and urging then-President Joe Biden to withhold aid.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you know Senator Van Hollen, you know he is particularly passionate about international issues,\u201d said fellow Maryland Democratic Rep. Sarah Elfreth. Separately, Raskin floated the possibility that Van Hollen could have been on \u201ca very short list\u201d to be Secretary of State if former Vice President Kamala Harris had won the presidency.<\/p>\n

At the airport press conference Friday, Van Hollen nodded to his colleagues who were also exploring visits to El Salvador \u2014 and perhaps their own moments in the spotlight.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve told the vice president of El Salvador but I might be the first senator \u2014 the first member of Congress \u2014 to come down to El Salvador, but I won\u2019t be the last,\u201d he said. \u201cThere are others coming.\u201d<\/p>\n

Booker, who captured the nation\u2019s attention when he recently broke the record for the longest talking filibuster on the Senate floor to protest Trump\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

In a sign of how much the episode has become a partisan flashpoint, Ramirez said in a statement that her \u201cRepublican colleagues have continued to reinforce their complicity,\u201d while Comer told Frost and Garcia in a letter they were welcome to \u201cspend your own money\u201d to drink \u201cmargaritas garnished with cherry slices with a foreign gang member.\u201d<\/p>\n

Van Hollen, at the press conference, dismissed accusations of \u201cMargaritagate,\u201d saying, \u201cnobody drank any margaritas, or sugar water, or whatever,\u201d and that prop drinks were placed on the table by Salvadoran government officials to create an a false impression.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cillegal scheme.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis should not be an issue for Republicans or Democrats,\u201d Van Hollen said. \u201cThis 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Connor O\u2019Brien, Joe Gould, Robbie Gramer and Ali Bianco contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8358\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}