Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland has refused to answer if he asked deported El Salvadoran national Kilmar Abrego Garcia if he is a member of the MS-13 gang. Van Hollen went to El Salvador to meet with the man after Abrego Garcia was deported to the CECOT prison in his home country. MS-13 has been designated a terrorist organization by the federal government.

“President Trump says that some of Abrego Garcia’s tattoos signify that he’s a member of MS-13,” CNN’s Dana Bash began. “In 2019, police alleged a confidential informant claimed that Abrego Garcia was an active MS-13 member. His wife and his attorney deny that. Of course, can you say with absolute certainty that he is not, nor has he ever been a member of the gang?”

“Well, Dana, what Donald Trump is trying to do here is change the subject,” said Van Hollen, changing the subject. “The subject at hand is that he and his administration have defied a court order to give people, to give Abrego Garcia his due process rights. They are trying to litigate on social media what they should be doing in the courts. They need to put up or shut up in the courts.”

Van Hollen quoted Maryland Judge Paula Xinis, who said that there is “‘no evidence linking Abrego Garcia to MS-13 or any terrorist activity has been presented to the court.’ That’s where to litigate this.”

Bash acknowledged that before asking her question again: “But since you were the one person to have met with him, and since this is a thing, you say, on social media, it’s what we hear from Donald Trump and Republicans every day, all day long, you didn’t ask him?”

“I didn’t ask him that, because I know what his answer is,” Van Hollen said, despite not having asked him. “What he told me was he was sad and traumatized that he was being in prison because he has committed no crimes, and that goes to the heart of this issue, because he’s being denied his due process rights, and Donald Trump is trying to change the subject.

“And you know,” Van Hollen went on, “when people start asking about asking that question, in my view, they’re falling into the President’s trap, because what the President wants to do is talk about that as if we can’t all fight gang violence, which I’ve been doing for much longer than Donald Trump. Right? His argument is you can’t fight that and the same time uphold people’s constitutional rights. That’s a very dangerous view, and if we deny the constitutional rights of this one man, it threatens their constitutional rights of everybody in America.”

El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele shared photos of Van Hollen’s visit with Abrego Garcia, along with the caption “sipping margaritas.” Bukele has also said that he would not be returning the man to the United States, as he is an El Salvadoran citizen with no legal standing in the US.

The Trump administration has alleged that Abrego Garcia is unequivocally a member of that gang, citing a 2019 arrest in which officers said that he was a member after picking him up while he was meeting with other members, as well as Abrego Garcia’s alleged gang tattoos. When posting a photo of herself with her husband, Jennifer Vasquez put cartoon hearts over his knuckles, hiding the tattoos in question.

President Donald Trump shared photos of Abrego Garcia’s knuckle tattoos, which consist of a marijuana leaf (M), a smiley face (S), a cross (1), and a curved skull (3). Attorney General Pam Bondi also released the records from the 2019 incident in which Abrego Garcia was picked up outside of a Maryland Home Depot, where police were conducting an investigation into gang activity.

Abrego Garcia came to the US illegally in 2012. He is married and until his arrest and deportation was living in Maryland with his wife and their children. In 2021, she contacted police to get an order of protection against him due to domestic violence. When she was recently asked if she was afraid of her husband, she told interviewer Michael Strahan, “My husband is alive, that’s all I can say.”