During a Friday appearance on CNN’s The Arena with Kasie Hunt, veteran Democratic strategist Mo Elleithee warned his party against aligning too closely with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran deported last month, whom the Trump administration describes as an MS‑13 member and violent domestic abuser.
The strategist reminded Democrats that they “don’t know all of the details about this guy,” and warned against making him a “martyr.” Rather, he advised party members to focus more on how President Donald Trump is allegedly “chipping away at our rights.”
“Let’s not make him a martyr. Let’s make this about the fact that Donald Trump and his administration are chipping away at our rights on a daily basis,” Elleithee said during a panel discussion.
At a Friday press conference, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D‑Md.) detailed his recent meeting with Abrego Garcia in El Salvador and vowed to keep pressing for his release from the country’s mega‑prison.
Elleithee pushed back, doubting that Van Hollen’s message would “resonate with the rest of the country.”
“Look, I think everyone in the White House are giving each other high-fives, and everyone who supports the guy in El Salvador are giving each other high-fives, right? Both sides have kind of gone to their corners and are saying this is the fight we want to have. Whereas I don’t necessarily know it’s the conversation that would actually resonate with the rest of the country,” Elleithee said.
The strategist urged Democrats to shift the focus away from Abrego Garcia himself and toward the broader national implications of his case, Fox News reported.
“It’s less about him, as it is about all of us,” Elleithee said. “And if he [Van Hollen] were to have focused on that — he did it a little bit, he did it a little bit there about a third of the way through, right? — Where he said, ‘Taking away his constitutional rights takes away all of our constitutional rights.’ That’s the place to take this.”
The Trump administration argues that two separate immigration judges have affirmed that Abrego Garcia was indeed a member of the El Salvador-based MS-13 gang, as have officials from his home country. In addition, Trump has designated the MS-13 gang to be a foreign terrorist organization and its members foreign combatants, immediately deportable under the Alien Enemies Act.
That said, the U.S. Supreme Court has temporarily banned the administration from quickly deporting illegal immigrants under the guise of the act until lower courts have had a chance to examine its use.
This, in spite of a 1948 Supreme Court ruling regarding the Act — Ludecke v. Watkins — which found, among other things, that “The Alien Enemy Act precludes judicial review of the removal order,” meaning federal courts do not have the authority to question a president’s use of the law.
Meanwhile, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller shredded Van Hollen after the senator made the trip to the Central American nation.
“I’m almost at a loss for words for how outrageous it is. Here’s an individual—the man who has been deported to his home country of El Salvador—who has been repeatedly documented by multiple federal and state authorities to be a member of MS-13, one of the most violent and ruthless criminal organizations on planet Earth, which is now a designated foreign terrorist organization,” Miller told reporters outside the White House on Friday.
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“An individual who has been involved in human smuggling and human trafficking. An individual who is a documented woman-beater—somebody who has viciously attacked a woman in ways that shock the human conscience. That is who the Democrat Party is going to provide aid, solace, and comfort to—not to Senator Van Hollen’s own constituents, like the Morin family,” Miller continued.
“Rachel Morin was viciously beaten, brutally raped, and murdered—and her mother never even got a phone call from Senator Van Hollen. Or Kayla Hamilton, a young girl who was attacked in a public restaurant, raped in the bathroom, and beaten to death—murdered by an illegal alien that Joe Biden set free into the country,” he said.
“None of those people elicit human sympathy from Senator Van Hollen. How broken is that man’s heart? How broken is his conscience, that he doesn’t have even an ounce of empathy, or time, or concern to share with those families?” Miller asked.