The “Faces of Justice”: Sen. Chris Van Hollen’s Attempt to Seek the Return of Abrego Garcia
It goes on with no resolution. Sen. Chris Van Hollen was trying to figure out what was happening to a man in El Salvadoran. He was initially denied the ability to see or talk to him. Later, he posted a photo of him with Abrego Garcia. By mid week, the White House was saying definitively that Abrego Garcia would never be allowed back into the country.
On the other side, Abrego Garcia has legal status in the U.S.; his wife is an American citizen and has pleaded for his return; stories have noted that he is the father to a son on the autism spectrum; that he has no criminal record and that his family sent him to the United States in the first place as a teenager because a gang in El Salvador (not MS-13) was trying to coerce him to join.
Van Hollen personally attempted to visit Abrego’s mother in a notorious mega-prison known as CECOT.
“The goal of this mission is to let the Trump administration, to let the government of El Salvador, know that we are going to keep fighting to bring Abrego Garcia home until he returns to his family,” Van Hollen said from the airport. “This is a farce of justice and we are going to fight for it.”
Van Hollen said Ulloa could not arrange a phone or video call with Abrego Garcia, but told him the American embassy might be able to. He said he plans to ask the embassy to do so, as he continues the fight for Abrego Garcia’s return.
She accused Van Hollen of using taxpayer dollars to fund his trip and bashed Democrats for not improving border security, which she said would make Americans safer.
Leavitt was joined at the press briefing by Maryland resident Patty Morin, whose daughter Rachel was raped and murdered in 2023 by a fugitive from El Salvador, Victor Martinez-Hernandez, 24, who was convicted of the crime on Monday. Van Hollen was also mentioned by Morin as a person who spoke critically.
My daughter and her five children were left without a mother because of the Senate from Maryland who didn’t acknowledge or even acknowledge the brutal death that she suffered.
Van Hollen’s office thanked the people who made the verdict possible on Monday. He said the country can improve public safety and border security “while also supporting our immigrant communities and respecting the rights of individuals who are here legally.”
A Democratic Leader of the House Oversight Committee is Trying to Get a Congressional Representative to Vote for a Closer Look at CECOT
A couple of Republicans, like West Virginia Representative Riley Moore, posted photos of themselves on social media. They both agreed with Moore that he leaves “even more determined” to support the President’s efforts to deport illegal immigrants.
In two separate letters this week, Reps. Robert Garcia of California, Maxwell Frost of Florida and Delia Ramirez of Illinois, asked the chair of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., to authorize a Congressional Member Delegation to visit CECOT.
The Congressional delegation would allow Committee Members to perform a welfare check on Mr. Abrego, among others held atCECOT.
“The president’s recent comments about wanting to send homegrown criminals to this facility warrants congressional oversight, along with the fact that they would include Republicans on their trip,” they said.
President Trump is criticizing the Federal Reserve for not cutting interest rates, even as his tariffs make that more difficult. While speaking with reporters in the Oval Office, Trump said that there was a groundswell of people demanding lower rates. Most of the pressure has come from the president. In a social media post, Trump said that Powell’s termination cannot come fast enough.
The deportation of a Maryland man and the response of the U.S. Supreme Court to “French criminals in El Salvador”
He said that if the Trump Justice Department did not pursue contempt charges, he would recommend appointing an outside prosecutor to do so. The judge presiding over the specific Abrego Garcia case, Paula Xinis, said she’s “gotten nothing” from the administration, which she ordered to show evidence of what it’s doing to bring the man back. An appeals court unanimously denied the government’s request for a stay of Xinis ordering sworn testimony from government officials about what they have or haven’t done to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S.
So which one of those winds up weighing out? If the Supreme Court rules against the Trump administration, there will be a constitutional crisis. Maybe that would come if Trump follows through on his musings about sending “homegrown” criminals, in other words, U.S. citizens, to El Salvador.
The judges said that the refusal to bring the man back should be a shock to judges and Americans far away from courthouses. It also accused the administration of “asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order.”
“No court in the United States has a right to conduct the foreign policy of the United States,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters during that meeting in the Oval Office with Bukele. I don’t know what the confusion is. This individual is a citizen of El Rica. He was illegally in the United States and was returned to his country.”
The week was dominated by news about President Trump, as well as the struggle over the narrative around the Maryland man who had been deported to El Salvador. There was concern regarding Trump’s tariffs and tension between the scientific establishment and Robert Kennedy, Jr., who made some bold statements at his first news conference as health and human services.
President Trump met with El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele at the White House on Monday. The president’s inner circle played a blame game on the deported Maryland man.
The same federal judge, who has now bucked the Trump administration over its deportation policies multiple times, James Boasberg, this week said there was “probable cause” for contempt charges against the administration. He’s giving the Trump team, which he said has shown a “willful disregard” for his orders, until Wednesday to give some real answers about why they defied his court order to turn around a plane that brought migrants to the Salvadoran prison.
Source: 5 takeaways from the week: Nearing a constitutional crisis?
Why’s the autism epidemic happening? When science meets science, not politics: re-examining Kennedy’s theory and Powell’s comment on “Trump week: a constitutional crisis?”
Environmental causes other than vaccines could be the reason. That’s Kennedy’s theory. But science is about dispassionately letting evidence dictate answers, not letting preconceived answers dictate science.
There’s an irony in RFK Jr. claiming that “ideology” is contributing to the CDC’s conclusions when he is saying definitively that “environmental exposures” is “where we’re going to find the answer” and appointed someone who promoted the discredited vaccine link to autism to lead HHS’ effort to identify a cause.
“One of the things I think we need to move away from today is this ideology that this diagnosis, rather the relentless increases, are simply artifacts of better diagnoses, better recognition,” Kennedy said. He also said that therapists in the past were not missing all the cases. The epidemic is definitely happening. We’re going to find the answer with external factors and environmental exposures.
He’s also contradicting his own Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which said this week that part of the increase in the number of children found to have autism is likely because of increased diagnoses and better diagnostic tools.
So, for now, he said, the Fed will wait and watch. It could be that it is waiting and watching for something since Trump has been changing his mind quickly.
Powell said the tariffs were bigger than he thought and that they were likely to lead to higher inflation.
Source: 5 takeaways from the week: Nearing a constitutional crisis?
“Abrego’s cap and hoodie” and “the Western” group of MS-13″: the man who shot and killed two people
She said there was nothing more to the case than Abrego’s cap and hoodie and a vague, uncorroborated accusation that he was a member of the “Western” group of MS-13.
He was found to be at risk of death by an immigration court in the year 2019. Xinis, the judge overseeing his case, called the evidence that he’s a gang member flimsy.
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Two people are dead and six others are hospitalized after a shooting at a Florida State University, according to law enforcement. The son of a Leon County deputy is accused of being the man who shot and killed one person. Sheriff Walter McNeil says he had access to his mother’s gun in the shooting.
Sudan’s civil war ended April 20, 2020: The United States and its armed forces clashed with Sudan, the United Nations High Commission on Human Rights and Freedoms
Sudan’s devastating civil war entered its third year this week. Since the fighting began in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group in the capital, Khartoum, tens of thousands have lost their lives. Hundreds of thousands of people are suffering from famine, which is the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, according to the United Nations. Foreign ministers from 20 countries met in London on Tuesday to restart peace talks. “Many have given up on Sudan,” the host of the conference stated during his opening remarks. That is not correct. We simply cannot look away.” Check out these photos documenting the crisis.
🍿 Movies: Michael B. Jordan stars as twin brothers in the supernatural thriller Sinners, who return to their hometown to set up a juke joint. However, they are warned by a spiritual healer about people who make music so true it conjures spirits and pierces the veil between life and death. You can check out the trailer here.
Jon Hamm plays a wealthy guy who becomes less rich in Your Friends and Neighbors because he wants to be known as a criminal. This week there is more on from a comedy to a documentary.
In Japan, conception via artificial insemination is the norm, as well as physical sex, in the book Vanishing World. There were four notable new reads this week.
🎵 Music: At midnight, new albums by one-third of boygenius, two-thirds of Carolina Chocolate Drops, and one-quarter of TV on the Radio were released. You can listen to the best tracks from every album on NPR Music.
Source: FSU shooting leaves two dead. And, Trump criticizes Fed chairman over interest rates
Introducing Malai, an Ice Cream Queen in Washington, D.C. (with an excerpt from the published work of A.E.D. Leila)
🍦 Food: Her cookbook, Malai, is about changing how ice cream is thought of in the U.S. Morning Edition’s Leila kicked off her visit to D.C. by sampling ice cream from Bavish’s shop and discussing how to turn her passion into a career.