While testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations committee on Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was involved in a tense exchange with Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) concerning his meeting with a suspected human trafficker and MS-13 gang member in El Salvador.
Van Hollen and fellow Democrats have extensively lobbied for the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national who was deported to his native El Salvador earlier this year. The senator had the distinction of being the first Democrat lawmaker to visit Garcia when he sipped margaritas with him inside a fancy hotel.
During a tense exchange in Tuesday’s hearing, Van Hollen told Secretary Rubio that he regretted his vote to confirm his nomination earlier this year. “Well, first of all, your regret for voting for me confirms I’m doing a good job. Based on what I know about your record and what you’ve been doing,” Rubio shot back.
A visibly enraged Van Hollen then demanded that he given a chance to respond to the “flippant statement,” at which point he was reminded that he used his time and the floor now belonged to Secretary Rubio.
The secretary went on to express his satisfaction with the cuts made to a number of bizarre social programs under the purview of the State Department, many of which fell under the USAID umbrella. “We spent $14 million for social cohesion in Mali, whatever the hell that means. So I can go on and on, I’ve got the list here and there’s more that I didn’t even bring up,” he said.
In the case of El Salvador, Rubio affirmed that he was “absolutely” satisfied with the department’s work. “We deported gang members, gang members, including the one you had a margarita with. And that guy is a human trafficker, and that guy is a gangbanger and — the evidence is going to be clear in the days to come.”
At that point, Van Hollen began shouting about how Rubio should not be allowed to make “unsubstantiated claims” but was again silenced Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Jim Risch (R-ID).
“Here’s another point, okay. There is a division in our government between the federal branch and the judicial branch. No judge in the judicial branch cannot tell me or the president how to conduct foreign policy. No judge can tell me how I have to outreach to a foreign partner or what I need to say to them,” Rubio continued.
“And if I do reach that foreign partner and talk to them, I have under no obligation to share that with a judiciary branch. Just like a judge cannot order me to negotiate with a foreign minister of Russia, they cannot order me to negotiate with a foreign minister or the president of El Salvador. And if I did negotiate with them, which we have responded to them, and we’ve told them we’ve had communications with the president of El Salvador. I am under no obligation under our division of powers in this country to share with the judicial branch how I conduct the diplomacy of the United States.”
Van Hollen meets with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an illegal alien who has been described as a “Maryland man” by Democrats. The “Maryland man” needed a translator to communicate with the senator
Documents from an immigration hearing in 2019 reveal that Abrego Garcia met with senior members of a local MS-13 set, which resulted in an immigration judge concluding that he represented a flight risk and danger to the community, citing his repeated failure to appear in court over traffic violations and his lack of credible asylum eligibility.
In 2022, the Biden Administration flagged Abrego Garcia as a “suspect alien” after he was found to be transporting a car load filled with fellow illegal aliens from Houston, Texas to Maryland. Abrego Garcia told a Tennessee state trooper that he was taking the illegal aliens to Maryland for construction work, though the officer noted that the car did not contain any luggage.
At the time of the stop, Abrego Garcia was behind the wheel of a car belonging to Jose Ramon Hernandez Reyes, who was previously convicted of human smuggling. After telling officers that Hernandez Reyes was his boss, Abrego Garcia was released without incident, though the interaction was reported to the Department of Homeland Security.
