Dem Senator Reveals How Far El Salvador Went to Lie About Meeting

Senator Chris Van Hollen set the record straight Friday on the shameless lies about his meeting with the Maryland man wrongly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador. 

During a press conference, Van Hollen put to rest right-wing rumors started by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who claimed that Van Hollen and Abrego Garcia were “sipping margaritas” and shared a photo on X of the two men at a table with drinks topped with maraschino cherries. 

The Maryland Democrat said that when they sat down to talk at his hotel, “one of the government people came over and deposited two other glasses on the table with ice, and I don’t know if it was salt or sugar around the top, but they looked like margaritas.”

“If you look at the one they put in front of Kilmar, it actually had a little less liquid than the one in front of me, to try to make it look, I assume, like he drank out of it,” Van Hollen said.  

“Let me just be very clear, neither of us touched the drinks that were in front of us. And if you want to play a little Sherlock Holmes, I’ll tell you how you could know that,” he continued. 

Van Hollen explained that if either of the men had sipped from the cups, there would be a gap in the dressing around the rims. 

“There’s no gap. Nobody drank any margaritas or sugar water or whatever it is,” he said. “But this is a lesson. It’s the lengths that President Bukele will do to deceive people about what’s going on.” 

Van Hollen said that when Donald Trump was asked later Friday about the photograph, “he just went along for the ride.” 

Van Hollen also said that the so-called “margarita-gate” could have been even worse. 

“I should also just say, you know I mentioned the fake margarita scandal, they actually wanted to have the meeting by the side of the pool, right? In the hotel,” Van Hollen said. “I mean this is a guy in CECOT, this is a guy who has been detained. They wanted to create this appearance that life was just lovely for Kilmar, which of course is a big, fat lie.”

Abrego Garcia’s experience in CECOT was anything but luxurious: the senator said he’d been kept in a cell with 25 other prisoners. 

Abrego Garcia “said he was not afraid of the other prisoners in his immediate cell but he was traumatized by being at CECOT and fearful of many of the prisoners in other cellblocks who called out to him and taunted him in various ways,” Van Hollen explained.

Nine days prior, Abrego Garcia had been moved to another detention facility in Santa Ana, where the conditions were better. But Van Hollen stressed that Abrego Garcia had been given no contact with the outside world, and no opportunity to communicate with a lawyer or his loved ones since he was “abducted.”

“His conversation with me was the first communication he’d had with anybody outside of prison since he was abducted,” Van Hollen said. 

The Trump administration continues to flout orders from a federal court, an appeals court, and the Supreme Court ordering it to facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia, who was deported due to an “administrative error.”

Elon Musk’s latest pick to lead the Internal Revenue Service is being forced out after less than 72 hours, The New York Times reported Friday.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reportedly complained to Donald Trump that Musk went behind his back to appoint Gary Shapley, a former supervisor at the agency who garnered attention for blowing the whistle on Hunter Biden’s tax investigation, without his knowledge. Trump gave Bessent the go-ahead to oust him from the IRS, which falls under Bessent’s jurisdiction as head of the Treasury Department.

Shapley’s meagre three-day tenure beats that of Anthony Scaramucci, who was famously booted from his role as Trump’s communications director after just 10 days during the president’s first term. It’s also yet another change in leadership for the IRS, which has now lost its fourth commissioner in three months.

Melanie Krause, the IRS acting commissioner before Shapley, was appointed in February but resigned earlier this month after the Treasury Department allowed Immigrations and Customs Enforcement access to IRS data to help deport immigrants. Doug O’Donnell retired amid agency cutbacks and chaos, and Danny Werfel, Joe Biden’s appointed IRS commissioner, resigned on Trump’s Inauguration Day. The agency is facing so much turbulence, it’s starting to become known as a “zombie agency” among tax attorneys, CNBC reported Thursday.

While Trump’s official pick to lead the IRS, Representative Billy Long (who suspiciously just had a six-figure debt paid off by campaign donors), awaits Senate confirmation, Musk and Bessent continue to publicly butt heads.

On Thursday, Musk shared a tweet from far-right activist Laura Loomer slamming Bessent for his reported association with a Trump hater. “Troubling,” Musk replied. It’s a sign that much of the Trump administration is not on the same page, as federal agencies fall apart at the seams.

Friday was not a good day in court for the Trump administration.

The White House suffered not one but two federal court setbacks: Judges paused President Trump’s plan for mass layoffs at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and halted the administration’s deportation of immigrants to countries other than their place of origin without due process.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said she was “deeply concerned” about Trump’s attempt Thursday to fire nearly everyone at the CFPB, saying it would violate her earlier court order against the administration’s attempt to shut down the agency. Jackson has scheduled a hearing for April 28 to hear testimony from the officials behind the CFPB’s reduction in force.

“I’m willing to resolve it quickly, but I’m not going to let this [reduction in force] go forward until I have,” said Jackson.

The CFPB’s union estimated Trump’s layoffs could hit as many as 1,700 workers. The layoffs would result in the CFPB’s enforcement division being cut from 248 employees to just 50. The supervision division would go from 487 to 50 and be relocated from Washington, D.C., to the southeastern United States. In some cases, some of the agency’s legally required functions would only have one person assigned to them.

Hours before Jackson’s ruling, U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy issued a separate injunction against the Trump administration’s deportation of immigrants to countries such as El Salvador, regardless of where those immigrants are from.

“Defendants argue that the United States may send a deportable alien to a country not of their origin, not where an immigration judge has ordered, where they may be immediately tortured and killed, without providing that person any opportunity to tell the deporting authorities that they face grave danger or death because of such a deportation,” Murphy wrote in his ruling.

“All nine sitting justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, the Assistant Solicitor General of the United States, Congress, common sense, basic decency, and this Court all disagree,” Murphy added.

Last month, the White House cited the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelan immigrants that it claims are gang members to the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, a Salvadoran prison known for human rights abuses, without court hearings for the accused. Many of the immigrants didn’t have criminal records and were considered gang members merely for having tattoos, which isn’t even a clear indicator of gang affiliation in Venezuela.

Trump won’t react positively to the rulings, and may even defy them, as he has done with other court orders. It’s another example of how recklessly his administration operates, taking action without any regard for legality or constitutionality. The question is whether Congress or the Supreme Court will eventually limit his authority as the Constitution demands.

Dr. Mehmet Oz made a particularly useless comment Friday, after being sworn in as Donald Trump’s administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

“It is your patriotic duty, I’ll say it again, the patriotic duty of all Americans to take care of themselves because it is important for serving in the military, but it is also important because healthy people don’t consume health care resources,” Oz said during a ceremony at the White House.

“The best way to reduce drug spending is to use less drugs ’cause you don’t need them, ’cause you’re healthy. And it feels a lot better, as well.”

Oz’s suggestion that Americans stay healthy is so simple, it might just be work—oh wait, no!

The health care programs that Oz now oversees provide coverage for about half of the U.S. population. During his confirmation hearing, Oz refused to say that he would oppose cuts to Medicaid that Trump and Republicans are intending to force through in order to fund an extension on the president’s 2017 tax plan.

Earlier this week, Trump signed an executive order promising to lower drug prices, but in fact handed a huge win to pharmaceutical companies, which will be permitted to set their own drug prices for an additional four years before they can be reduced as part of Medicare’s negotiation program.

Behind Oz stood Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s secretary of health and human services, who is spearheading the administration’s efforts to “Make America Healthy Again”—and folding his crusade against conventional medicine into the government’s health recommendations.

After Donald Trump has spent months promising to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, Secretary of State Marco Rubio just admitted that might not be possible.

“So we came here yesterday to sort of, begin to talk about more specific outlines of what it might take to end a war,” Rubio told reporters Friday in Paris, where he met with European and Ukrainian officials. “To try to figure out very soon—and I’m talking about a matter of days—not a matter of weeks, whether or not this is a war that can be ended.… If it’s not possible, if we’re so far apart that it’s not going to happen, then I think the president’s probably at a point where he’s going to say, ‘Well, we’re done.’”

A reminder: Before he was elected, Trump said he would have the war “settled in one day.”

But in his first three months as president, Trump and Vice President JD Vance have done little to help the situation. They’ve instead cut millions in military aid to Ukraine and berated the country’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for his supposed lack of allegiance to the United States.

The Trump administration is discovering that putting a stop to Europe’s largest war in decades is harder than it thought, and it’s growing impatient.

“We’re not going to continue with this endeavour for weeks and months on end,” Rubio told reporters. “We need to determine very quickly now, and I’m talking about a matter of days, whether or not this is doable. If it is, we’re in, if it’s not, we have other things to focus on as well.”

The president echoed Rubio’s message from the White House Friday, telling reporters he wants to “get it done.”

“People are dying. We’re gonna get it stopped ideally now,” Trump said before flipping the script. “If for some reason one of the two parties makes it very difficult, we’re just gonna say, You’re foolish, you’re fools, you’re horrible people, and we’re just going to take a pass, but hopefully we won’t have to do that.”

Both Rubio and Trump clearly think it’s time to move onto more important things; there are visas to revoke and citizens to deport.

Donald Trump revoked a U.S. citizen’s Social Security benefits in the hopes he would leave the country.

A man who became a naturalized citizen shortly before Trump took office received a letter on February 13 from the Social Security Administration informing him that he was losing his Social Security and Medicare benefits, The Bulwark reported Friday.

“We cannot pay you benefits because you are not lawfully present in the U.S.,” the letter obtained by The Bulwark reads. The man’s English-speaking family appealed the letter, reversing the decision, but his case is yet another reminder that the president isn’t afraid to weaponize the federal programs in his war on immigrants … or really anybody he wants out of the country.

Last week, multiple news outlets reported that the Trump administration entered the names of more than 6,000 immigrants into the SSA’s “death master file,” stripping them of their legal ability to work and receive benefits in the U.S. (Meanwhile, Elon Musk continues to claim federal safety net programs are rampant with fraudulent information, such as incorrect death dates.)

“This is an outrageous abuse of power. It will not only create extreme hardship, but kill people,” Nancy Altman, the president of the advocacy organization Social Security Works said in a statement. “Imagine, in one Trump administration keystroke, losing your income, your health insurance, access to your bank account, your credit cards, your home, and more.… When Social Security incorrectly declares someone dead, it ruins their lives.”

The Bulwark’s report comes as Trump takes his deportation threats to a new level. The Department of Homeland Security is sending letters to U.S.-born immigration attorneys telling them to leave the country immediately, and last week, Trump mused about the possibility of sending American citizens to megaprisons in El Salvador, a stark reminder the president will stop at nothing to rid the country of his adversaries.

Donald Trump is once again sourcing administration officials from the talent pool at Fox News.

The president announced Thursday night that he had formed a “revamped” Homeland Security Advisory Council, including the likes of Fox News host Mark Levin and former Fox News contributor Bo Dietl.

The council would also include South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster and Florida state Senator Joseph Gruters, who serves on the Republican National Committee and is a close ally of Trump’s.

“Under Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem’s leadership, HSAC will work hard on developing new Policies and Strategies that will help us secure our Border, deport Illegal Criminal Thugs, stop the flow of Fentanyl and other illegal drugs that are killing our Citizens, and MAKE AMERICA SAFE AGAIN,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

It’s not exactly clear how the “revamped” group will differ from past iterations of HSAC, which has been a fixture of administrations since George W. Bush announced its creation in 2002, to generate counterterrorism strategy and oversee a reorganized department.

Joe Biden’s iteration of the same group had a whopping 33 members, from the private sector and law enforcement groups—but none from TV. The DHS website, which was last updated in January, lists no current members of the group.

Trump has been known to tune into Levin’s show Life, Liberty & Levin, where the ultraconservative attacks the president’s enemies and regularly makes recommendations for his administration. Now he will make those same recommendations in an official capacity.

In November, Levin suggested to border czar Tom Homan that the Trump administration should withhold federal funding from states that failed to comply with its draconian immigration policies. Levin was once described by Rolling Stone as a “bomb-throwing Trump sycophant.”

Bo Dietl is a former detective with the New York Police Department and actor, who served as a contributor on Fox News until 2016, when he it was revealed that he’d been hired to dig up dirt on Andrea Mackris and Gretchen Carlson in an attempt to discredit their sexual harassment allegations against former Fox CEO Roger Ailes.

The State Department under Marco Rubio seems to think little of human rights and seeks to change the term’s definition.

NPR reports that the department will no longer include criticisms of poor prison conditions, government corruption, or political processes that are restrictive, in its reports on international human rights. That means government repression, such as restricting peaceful assembly or preventing free and fair elections, will no longer be documented by the agency.

The news outlet cited an editing memo and other documents showing that department employees have been ordered to “streamline” the reports to meet the minimum legal requirements. State Department reports are required by law to be a “full and complete report regarding the status of internationally recognized human rights” for every country.

The reports are usually released every year in March or April, and 2024’s reports were completed this year in January but are now being re-edited by the Trump administration, delaying them until May, sources in the department told NPR. Last month, Politico reported that references to diversity, equity, and inclusion, as well as violence and discrimination against LGBTQ+ people, would be removed from the reports.

Some of the changes appear to reflect the Trump administration’s foreign relationships. For example, the report on El Salvador had its section on prison conditions erased, raising questions as to whether the administration’s deal with the country to send undocumented immigrants to Salvadoran prisons, which are accused of flagrant human rights abuses, had something to do with it.

The report on Hungary, whose President Viktor Orbán enjoys high esteem from President Trump and many leading conservatives, had its section on “Corruption in Government” crossed out. Orbán has restricted press freedoms and civil liberties in the country. Experts say that the changes to the reports will undermine the State Department’s credibility.

“You can’t overstate the value in the real world of the annual State Department human rights reports being credible and impartial,” said Christopher Le Mon, who worked in the agency’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor until January.

“You also can’t overstate the damage it will do to that credibility if the Trump administration’s edits are seen to diminish—not just the scope of what are defined as human rights, but also if those edits are seen to play favorites,” Le Mon added.

The Trump administration has already been disregarding human rights here in the U.S., whether it’s the lack of due process in its mass deportation efforts, its use of El Salvador’s questionable prisons to house deported immigrants (or possibly soon U.S. citizens), its use of masked, plainclothes officers to grab people off the street, its restrictions on the press, or its attacks on academic freedom or many other actions. Maybe the administration is realizing it can’t speak credibly when it comes to basic rights and freedoms.

Donald Trump’s administration won’t stop making horrific jokes about Senator Chris Van Hollen’s meeting with Kilmar Abrego Garica, whom the government wrongly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador last month.

Van Hollen was able to meet with Abrego Garcia Thursday, after El Salvador’s government refused to release him and the Maryland Democrat was initially denied access to the prison where he was being held.

In a post on X Friday, the White House wrote that it had “fixed” a New York Times headline about the meeting.

The original headline, “Senator Meets With Wrongly Deported Man in El Salvador” had been edited in red pen so that it read, “Senator Meets with Deported MS-13 Alien in El Salvador Who’s Never Coming Back.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi said Wednesday that it was up to El Salvador’s government to return or keep Abrego Garcia, but she was adamant that he was “not coming back to our country.”

Bondi also said that the media should apologize to Trump for calling Abrego Garcia a “Maryland man,” even though that’s just a simple description of who he is and where he lives.

This post follows another cruel joke from the White House earlier Friday, where Trump staff compared Van Hollen’s meeting with Abrego Garcia to a meeting between Trump and Patty Morin, the mother of Rachel Morin, a woman who was raped and killed by a Salvadoran man in 2023. The Trump administration has repeatedly trotted out Morin as a means of justifying its decision to send brown men who had nothing to do with that crime to a foreign prison.

The Trump administration has claimed that Abrego Garcia, who has no criminal record, was not only a member of MS-13, but that he was a “top leader” and “engaged in human trafficking,” while only providing thin evidence that he was even affiliated with the group.

This story has been updated.

Senator Chris Van Hollen’s meeting with wrongly deported immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia in El Salvador was stage-managed by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, right down to the table settings.

Bukele used the meeting to mount a propaganda campaign on X, posting photos from their meeting and claiming that “Kilmar Abrego Garcia, miraculously risen from the ‘death camps’ & ‘torture,’” was “now sipping margaritas with Sen. Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador!”

In reality, those “margaritas” were glasses with cherries and salted rims, placed on the table in front of Van Hollen and Abrego Garcia by a Bukele aide in the middle of their meeting to stage a photo. The photo was quite different from the one Van Hollen shared.

Abrego Garcia’s attire of a button-down shirt with jeans and a baseball cap was also different from what he was photographed wearing when he arrived at El Salvador’s Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, a prison known for human rights abuses. Gone were the white shirt and pants uniform of the prison’s inmates, and the cap covered Abrego Garcia’s newly shaved head, a practice that every inmate at the facility experiences.

It all seems to have been choreographed by Bukele to refute the reports of what life is really like in the prison, as well as the rumors that Abrego Garcia may have been in poor physical condition or deceased.

Clearly, El Salvador’s president is using the visit and propaganda photographs as proof that Abrego Garcia is safe in his government’s custody. But the facts are that the building trades worker was mistakenly deported and should be immediately returned to the U.S. as ordered by the Supreme Court and lower court judges. But both the White House and Bukele continue to ignore the rulings and the law.