Democrats Say They Will Keep Going To El Salvador To Advocate For Due Process And The Release of Abrego Garcia?

Sen. Chris Van Hollen traveled to El Salvador to meet with Kilmar Abrego García—a Salvadoran national living in Maryland who was wrongfully deported by the Trump administration in March— last week. Now, four Democratic lawmakers have followed suit, traveling to the Central American country to keep tabs on Abrego García's condition and to advocate for due process for all in the U.S.

The lawmakers in question are Yassamin Ansari of Arizona, Maxine Dexter of Oregon, Maxwell Frost of Florida and Robert Garcia of California.

Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador on March 15 despite an order protecting him from deportation. According to his lawyers, he fled his country at age 16 due to gang-related violence and has never been charged with or convicted of any crime neither in El Salvador nor the U.S.

Abrego Garcia's case made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which directed the Trump administration to facilitate his return after federal immigration agencies confirmed he was deported due to an administrative error.

"He is being held in violation of a Supreme Court order," Dexter Said said. "This is not just a threat to all people in the United States who could be illegally adducted, detained and transported internationally against their will, but it is a fact that our president does not recognize the branches of government and the balances of power," she added.

Similarly, Rep. Garcia said he and his colleague Rep. Frost sent out a letter last week to House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer requesting an official delegation to go to El Salvador and investigate Abrego Garcia's condition but received no response.

"While Donald Trump continues to defy the Supreme Court, Kilmar Abrego Garcia is being held illegally in El Salvador after being wrongfully deported," Garcia said in a statement. "That is why we're here — to remind the American people that kidnapping immigrants and deporting them without due process is not how we do things in America."

As Garcia stated, Democratic lawmakers are focusing on the issue of due process. For Rep. Ansari of Arizona, who was among the four Democratic lawmakers that traveled to El Salvador on April 20, it is "extremely alarming" that the Trump administration does not seem to care about due process.

"Even with all of the illegal actions we've seen over the last couple of months, I think this is the one that terrifies me the most when it comes to the future of our democracy," she said in an interview, as reported by the Associated Press.

Similarly, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in the court's ruling regarding Abrego García's case that the government's stance "implies that it could deport and incarcerate any person, including U. S. citizens, without legal consequence, so long as it does so before a court can intervene."

Ansari added that Democrats "have the power to draw attention to this issue, to keep the pressure up" and revealed that many other Democratic colleagues will be making the trip to El Salvador in the upcoming weeks. "This is about the future of our democracy and the future of due process as American citizens," she added.