Suspected MS-13 gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia — whose deportation to El Salvador by the Trump administration triggered a meltdown by Democrats — reportedly bragged he could kill his wife and get away with it.
Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, wrote in an August 3, 2020 request for a motion for a protective order against him, “I also have a [recording] that [he] told my ex-mother-in-law that even if he kills me no one can do anything to him,” The New York Post <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/04/30/us-news/kilmar-abrego-garcia-bragged-he-could-kill-his-wife-and-get-away-with-it-court-docs/">reported</a>. The document reportedly revolved around a fight over a phone Garcia took from her, during which he locked their children in their bedroom and locked her out of the house.
“Me and my kids are afraid now. He kicked me, pushed me, slapped me in the face and threatened me,” she reportedly stated in the document.
New bodycam footage has been released showing a Tennessee state trooper in 2022 stopping Garcia and openly suspecting him of human trafficking.
The footage acquired by Fox News Digital revealed that when law enforcement stopped Garcia for speeding, he had eight people in the car. “You’ve got a bunch of people here, don’t you?” the trooper said to Garcia. “Where you workin’ at?”
“St. Louis, Missouri,” Garcia answered. “Where do you live at?” the trooper asked. “I live in Maryland,” Garcia replied.
“You know what you got here,” the trooper stated after the confrontation. “He’s hauling these people for money. You got an 8-hauler, is what he’s doing. &#8230; He’s getting paid to haul these people, probably to Maryland, I would say.” One of the officers stopping Garcia could be seen making a phone call; a source told Fox News that on the call, the officer spoke to someone at the FBI who advised police not to detain Garcia. The source also said officers spoke to ICE, but they never showed up.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
BREAKING: We just got our hands on the bodycam footage of the “Maryland dad.” Kilmar Abrego Garcia was a suspect in a human trafficking operation in 2022. WATCH WHAT HAPPENED… <a href="https://t.co/Cot5ZHTUGz">pic.twitter.com/Cot5ZHTUGz</a>
&mdash; Jesse Watters (@JesseBWatters) <a href="https://twitter.com/JesseBWatters/status/1918115606345257219?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 2, 2025</a></blockquote>
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Attorney General Pam Bondi has said that multiple courts have concluded that Garcia was a member of the deadly MS-13 gang.
“He was illegally in our country … and in 2019, two courts, an immigration court and an appellate immigration court, ruled that he was a member of MS-13,” Bondi said. “That’s up to El Salvador if they want to return him, that’s not up to us.&#8221;
President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, has said he will not release Garcia.

Hispanic Caucus Members Demand Return Of Immigrant Deported To El Salvador Prison

Dem Darling ‘Maryland Man’s’ Wife: He Bragged He Could Kill Me And Get Away With It

Democrats

Donald Trump

El Salvador

Immigration

Kilmar Abrego Garcia

MS-13 Gang

Nayib Bukele

Politics

Democrats Rallied Around A Dangerous Criminal Alien. Now They’re Paying The Price.

Democrats Rallied Around A Dangerous Criminal Alien. Now They're Paying The Price.

Leftists

Matt Walsh

Opinion

President Trump

Violent Crime

Patty Morin, whose daughter Rachel, a mother of five, was raped and murdered by El Salvadoran illegal immigrant Victor Martinez-Hernandez in 2023, condemned Democrats for championing the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an alleged MS-13 member whom the Trump administration deported to El Salvador, while ignoring her pain and never reaching out to her.
Morin spoke of the White House press briefing last week at which she spoke, telling <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/video/6371804501112">Fox News Digital</a>, “People were literally shoulder to shoulder cameras, microphones everything going and as soon as I get up to the podium, everyone shut off their cameras; everyone shut off their microphones.”
“People don’t realize what actually happened to my daughter,” she said. “And during the trial, and before the investigation, they only gave us an outline; they didn’t give us details. And during the trial, we actually saw the crime scene photos and the autopsy photos and they had so many expert witnesses come in and testify to this horrendous, gruesome brutal murder, this thing that happened to my daughter. And so I went in and I described, summarized, what had happened to her. She was dragged 150 feet; they followed a 150-foot blood trail to the culvert where her body was. Her body was outlined in blood. The silhouette of her body is against the tunnel ball outlined in the blood that was gushing from her head. She was raped. She was strangled. There wasn’t a part of her body that didn’t have some kind of bruise, abrasion, cut some kind of abuse to it.”
“And none of them had their recorders on or their cameras on because they didn’t want the American people to know how violent these crimes are and how rampant they are,” she stated. “There’s only one or two maybe three that have hit the headlines, but there are thousands of these stories all over America that aren’t being covered because either 1) the family is ashamed; 2) law-enforcement doesn’t wanna cause a panic, and 3) it’s usually blue states or Democrats that wanna downplay it because for some reason, they are profiting in some way from having these 20 million illegal immigrants in our country.”
“I had somebody just this past weekend come up to me and said that there has been migrant crime going on in Maryland and in our county for decades,” she recalled. “He cited one that happened 20 years ago and he said people don’t realize that that was a migrant crime because media and law enforcement kind of played it down.”
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) flew to El Salvador last week and met with Garcia. Democrat Reps. Robert Garcia of California, Maxwell Frost of Florida, Yassamin Ansari of Arizona and Maxine Dexter of Oregon flew there on Monday.
“It’s been about 20 months since my daughter was murdered; it’s been about ten months that we’ve known it’s been an illegal immigrant, and in all this time, President Biden never reached out; Kamala Harris never reached out; Mayorkas never reached out,” Morin said. “Senators here in Maryland have not reached out at all. And it’s been almost 20 months, total. So their silence and their actions or lack of actions speak volumes to their character and the values that they hold. And as an American citizen, as a Maryland citizen, and as a mom, it tells me that I‘m not important or valuable, and that an illegal immigrant — that means he’s broken federal law by coming into the country and staying here, has broken state law by coming to the country and staying here, and then beating his wife, it’s in court; he’s broken other state laws — they would rather champion his cause, a criminal, than the victim. I think it is utterly despicable.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
🚨 BREAKING STUDY: The anti-American media obsessed over illegal &#8220;Maryland man&#8221; for over 143 minutes and only spent 12 seconds covering the trial of Rachel Morin&#8217;s killer.
The leftist media are America last! <a href="https://t.co/4TFpbxbupq">https://t.co/4TFpbxbupq</a>
— MRC NewsBusters (@newsbusters) <a href="https://twitter.com/newsbusters/status/1915048523613024302?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 23, 2025</a></blockquote>
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MixCollage-23-Apr-2025-11-10-AM-8007

‘Utterly Despicable’: Rachel Morin’s Mom Slams Dems Visiting MS-13 Member In El Salvador

Chris Van Hollen

illegal immigrant

Joe Biden

Murder

Rachel Morin

On January 24, 2017, just four days after Donald Trump was inaugurated for his first term in office, the FBI sent two agents to the White House to interrogate Trump&#8217;s national security adviser, Michael Flynn. It wasn&#8217;t billed as an interrogation at the time; they convinced Flynn that it was just an opportunity for a friendly chat. But in retrospect, their goal could not have been any more clear: They wanted to manufacture a pretext to secure Flynn&#8217;s termination. Getting rid of Flynn would enable the FBI to continue to conduct a series of fraudulent investigations into the Trump administration. It would insulate the bureau from any kind of large-scale reform. And it would help the FBI spread the narrative that the Trump administration was secretly working for Russia in some way.
Therefore, the FBI asked Flynn a few questions in the White House. Then they convinced Mike Pence that Flynn had lied to them — even though to this day, no one can explain what exactly Flynn said, because the conversation wasn&#8217;t recorded. In any event, Pence took the FBI&#8217;s word for it. Michael Flynn was fired after less than a month. His tenure as national security advisor was the shortest in American history.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1580-the-coordinated-hit-job-on-pete-hegseth-must-be-exposed-and-defeated-member-exclusive?elementPosition=0&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h3>
What happened to Michael Flynn is worth recalling this week because it was not a one-off. This wasn&#8217;t a random act of sabotage by some unelected, shadowy officials. It was, in fact, standard operating procedure. It is the default response of a bureaucracy that feels threatened. They will come up with a smear campaign, launder it through sympathetic media outlets, and ultimately pressure the decision-makers to get rid of their target. Eight years ago, this is precisely how they got rid of Michael Flynn. And right now, it&#8217;s how they&#8217;re trying to destroy Donald Trump&#8217;s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth.
From the moment Hegseth was nominated, there was a concerted effort to smear him as an alcoholic who was too inexperienced to do the job. It was almost like the Brett Kavanaugh hearings all over again. Anonymous accusations began surfacing every other day. We were even told, if you can believe it, that Pete Hegseth once celebrated St. Patrick&#8217;s Day, live on the air on &#8220;Fox &amp; Friends.&#8221; That was supposed to be profoundly scandalous. In reality, the point of that fake scandal was never to convince anyone of anything. Instead, the point was to send a message to the incoming Trump administration. The message was that the most powerful forces in Washington did not want Pete Hegseth to be confirmed. They wanted Donald Trump to pull his nomination and select someone more conventional — someone who would be more responsive to the needs of defense contractors, for example.
But Trump didn&#8217;t abandon Hegseth&#8217;s nomination. He decided, after what happened in his first term, to trust his own instincts and stand by his selection. The result has been predictable. Just a few months into Donald Trump&#8217;s term, Hegseth&#8217;s enemies have begun yet another smear campaign. And like the campaign to oust Michael Flynn, it&#8217;s not meant to withstand any kind of scrutiny. The point is to move quickly, create panic, and ultimately pressure the White House to fire Hegseth.
It&#8217;s not exactly a subtle operation. Yesterday morning, NPR came out with this story, which directly states the outcome they want to achieve: 
<blockquote>Exclusive: The White House is looking to replace Pete Hegseth as defense secretary.</blockquote>
According to NPR:
<blockquote>The White House has begun the process of looking for a new leader at the Pentagon to replace Pete Hegseth, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to speak publicly. This comes as Hegseth is again mired in controversy over sharing military operational details in a group chat.</blockquote>
So here we have an unnamed source — just one person, who&#8217;s described only as a &#8220;U.S. official&#8221; — stating that the White House is planning to fire Pete Hegseth. And based on this one nameless official, who supposedly serves somewhere in the United States government, the narrative has been set. Pretty much every outlet picked up this story: They&#8217;re all trying to convey the perception that Hegseth&#8217;s removal is a foregone conclusion.
Meanwhile, there&#8217;s a steady drip of new information that&#8217;s supposedly even more damning than the last hit piece. Tune into CNN, and they&#8217;ll tell you that Hegseth needs to be removed because of a new Signal chat that&#8217;s suddenly been uncovered. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="004 Ex Hegseth aide" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NWXmVI-Ge94?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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Before we go into the specifics, I need to make it clear that I was a fan of the Hegseth pick when it was initially announced. But after seeing this unrelenting smear campaign that started before he was confirmed and hasn&#8217;t let up since, I am now an even bigger fan of the pick. It&#8217;s clear that the establishment sees this guy as a threat to their agenda. He&#8217;s in a position to do extraordinary damage to their interests. And it seems like he&#8217;s already doing a lot of damage — which is why he needs to stay in his position at all costs.
And as you saw, Donald Trump doesn&#8217;t need to be told that. He understands exactly what CNN and the rest of the corporate press are doing. The coverage is breathless and fast-moving because you&#8217;re not supposed to scrutinize it. If you think about it for five seconds, you&#8217;ll realize that — as was the case with Michael Flynn — the hysteria makes absolutely no sense.
To recap: The case against Pete Hegseth is that the national security adviser, Mike Waltz, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-national-security-story?author=Ben+Shapiro&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=The+National+Security+Story" target="_blank" rel="noopener">mistakenly added</a> Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic, to a classified group chat about a U.S. military strike. Even if this is true — even if we pretend for a moment that a rabidly anti-Trump journalist, with extensive ties to the deep state was somehow &#8220;accidentally&#8221; added to a highly sensitive group chat — it&#8217;s still not remotely clear why Pete Hegseth should be fired as a result. He&#8217;s not the one who made the mistake.
The next alleged scandal, as <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/22/us/politics/hegseth-signal-chat.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> by The New York Times, concerns a Signal chat that involved Hegseth and a dozen other people, including his lawyer, his wife Jennifer and his brother Phil, who works at the Pentagon. The chat, which was called &#8220;Defense Team Huddle,&#8221; also reportedly included Dan Caldwell and Darin Selnick, two former Hegseth advisers who were just fired after a leak investigation. Supposedly, during this chat, Hegseth again discussed war plans involving Yemen, although no one&#8217;s sure exactly what was communicated.
Now, under the circumstances, it would be reasonable to wonder if Dan Caldwell or Darin Selnick might have had a role in placing this story in the New York Times. After all, they were just fired from the Pentagon for leaking. They were both members of this group chat. And now they&#8217;re publicly attacking Pete Hegseth&#8217;s Defense Department, and implying that the Pentagon wants to pursue a reckless war with Iran.
As it relates to unelected operatives in the Pentagon, that may be true. I&#8217;m not in a position to dispute that claim. But anyone who&#8217;s paying attention to what Pete Hegseth is doing, both in public and in private, knows that he&#8217;s going to do everything he can to prevent that outcome.
Here&#8217;s what <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QTwlqbkbos" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Hegseth told</a> Fox News earlier this month:
<blockquote>[Trump] is dead serious that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. &#8230; He&#8217;s said that for 20 years, he&#8217;s been consistent, that is clear. He&#8217;s dead serious that he wants it done at the negotiating table, he wants it done peacefully, and that&#8217;s why he&#8217;s going straight to these talks, he&#8217;s set that deadline. &#8230; But he&#8217;s also dead serious that if we can&#8217;t figure this out at the negotiating table then there are other options, to include my department to ensure that Iran never has a nuclear bomb.</blockquote>
In other words, his primary objective is not to attack Iran. It&#8217;s a peaceful, diplomatic resolution.
A couple of days later, The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/16/us/politics/trump-israel-iran-nuclear.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">confirmed</a> that, in private, Hegseth had personally helped avert a military strike on Iran that could&#8217;ve spiraled into World War III:
<blockquote>Israel had planned to strike Iranian nuclear sites as soon as next month but was waved off by President Trump in recent weeks in favor of negotiating a deal with Tehran to limit its nuclear program, according to administration officials and others briefed on the discussions. &#8230; Inside the Trump administration, some officials were becoming skeptical of the Israeli plan. In a meeting this month — one of several discussions about the Israeli plan — Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, presented a new intelligence assessment that said the buildup of American weaponry could potentially spark a wider conflict with Iran that the United States did not want. A range of officials echoed Ms. Gabbard’s concerns in the various meetings. Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff; Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth; and Vice President JD Vance all voiced doubts about the attack</blockquote>
That report was published on April 16. It states, very clearly, that Hegseth had helped stop a military attack on Iran, which could&#8217;ve easily devolved into all-out warfare.
Four days later, on April 20, the Times published <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/20/us/politics/hegseth-yemen-attack-second-signal-chat.html">a story</a> outlining Hegseth&#8217;s second Signal chat, which is supposedly grounds for his termination. In other words, we get a new scandal, right after Hegseth enrages the defense contractors that would&#8217;ve made many millions of dollars, if not more, from an all-out conflict with Iran. And then, hot on the heels of the new scandal, we get an unverified, barely-sourced report about how the White House is looking to replace Hegseth.
At this point, I can only assume that&#8217;s another fake smear. It would be a disastrous mistake for Trump to cave to the pressure and offer up his Defense Secretary as a sacrifice. It&#8217;s the kind of mistake that could derail his entire presidency. And it would be a major victory for establishment Washington, which is becoming increasingly desperate by the day.
You can see the signs everywhere. Here&#8217;s one of them: On Monday, four more Democrat lawmakers made a <a href="https://thepostmillennial.com/four-dems-denied-meeting-with-kilmar-abrego-garcia-after-flying-to-el-salvador#google_vignette" target="_blank" rel="noopener">pilgrimage</a> to El Salvador to visit that MS-13 gangbanger, following the visit by Senator Chris Van Hollen that we discussed last week. The lawmakers were Robert Garcia of California, Maxwell Frost of Florida, Yassamin Ansari of Arizona, and Maxine Dexter of Oregon. These politicians, like the rest of the Washington establishment, are pulling out all the stops to defend their open borders, globalist agenda. Making a martyr out of Abrego Garcia, and a scapegoat out of Hegseth, is all part of that plan.
To be clear, I see no indication that this is going to work. It doesn&#8217;t look like this MS-13 gangbanger is going to be returned to the United States, any more than it looks like Pete Hegseth is about to be replaced by another Raytheon board member. The idea that the White House is planning to cave to the demands of establishment Washington, at the moment, seems like yet another fabrication from the corporate press. For the sake of the world, which wouldn&#8217;t exactly benefit from nuclear armageddon, it should remain a fabrication and nothing more.

Defense Sec. Pete Hegseth Meets With El Salvador Minister Of National Defense Rene Merino Monroy At The Pentagon

The Coordinated Hit Job On Pete Hegseth Must Be Exposed And Defeated

Michael Flynn

New York Times

Pete Hegseth

The Swamp

Washington D.C.

President Trump’s signal policy — and the one that is working the best for him — is immigration.
Polling shows that President Trump&#8217;s immigration policy is highly popular. It&#8217;s not just because Americans are sick and tired of the open borders policy of the Biden administration. It&#8217;s also because Democrats continue to take the worst possible tack when it comes to this sort of stuff.
The tack they should be taking on immigration right now is that President Trump is right to close the border, that he is correct to unleash ICE, to go find criminal illegal immigrants and deport them — but we need to obey the law.
That would be the intelligent approach to this particular issue. But Democrats have decided that the smart approach is to shove their heads directly up their own a**es. What that means is that they are instead going out of their way to praise MS-13 members and suggest that President Trump is wrong to try and deport all of those people.
This led to the awkward situation of absolute dolt Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland — who has the IQ of a turnip — going down to El Salvador to meet with a man named Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who is a suspected MS-13 member and whose wife accused him of allegedly beating her.
Garcia was deported to El Salvador, but the Trump DOJ said it was a processing issue mistake. Thus, Democrats should have said, “Listen, everyone deserves due process. If you are here on a green card, you deserve whatever the due process is for a green card holder. If you are here as an illegal immigrant, you deserve whatever due process is available to you under the law. Due process shouldn&#8217;t be violated; it&#8217;s sacrosanct in the United States.”
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-2183-pope-francis-dead-what-comes-next-member-exclusive?elementPosition=2&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h3>
That&#8217;s the argument they should have made. Instead, because they have an internal emotional necessity to valorize people who are “victims” of the Trump administration, they&#8217;ve decided to treat people who are actually quite bad with Sympathy. This led to the awkward spectacle of Chris Van Hollen being asked if the person he visited down in El Salvador and had drinks with was a member of MS-13.
And he couldn’t answer the question.
“What Donald Trump is trying to do here is change the subject,” Van Hollen <a href="https://www.mediaite.com/tv/van-hollen-deflects-twice-after-cnns-dana-bash-asks-point-blank-if-abrego-garcia-is-a-member-of-ms-13/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told CNN’s Dana Bash</a>. “The subject at hand is that he and his administration are defying a court order 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.”
“But since you were the one person to have met with him and since this is a thing, you say, on social media, it&#8217;s what we hear from Donald Trump and Republicans every day all day long, you didn&#8217;t ask him?” Bash asked.
“I didn&#8217;t ask him that because I know what his answer is,” Van Hollen answered. “What he told me was he was sad and traumatized that he was being imprisoned because he has committed no crimes.”
“Sad and traumatized,” says the likely MS-13 member. You can see Van Hollen trying to backtrack and turn it into a due process argument, which is a better argument for Democrats. 
The Supreme Court, over the course of the last 72 hours, handed out <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/19/politics/supreme-court-alien-enemies-act-order/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">an order</a> for the Trump administration to respond to an emergency appeal and stated, “The government is directed not to remove any members of the putative class detainees from the United States until further order of this Court.”
Those would be the people being detained under the so-called Alien Enemies Act, which is an 18th-century law designed to allow the expeditious removal of people who are declared wartime enemies by the executive branch of the government.
There was <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a1007_22p3.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a dissent</a> by Justices Alito and Justice Thomas, saying:
<blockquote>Shortly after midnight yesterday, the Court hastily and prematurely granted unprecedented emergency relief. &#8230; Although the order does not define the “putative class,” it appears the Court means all members of the class that the habeas petitioners sought to have certified, namely “all non-citizens in custody in the Northern District of Texas who were, are, or would be subject to the March 2025 Presidential Proclamation entitled “Invocation of the Alien Enemies Act Regarding the Invasion of the United States by Tren de Aragua and/or its implementation.</blockquote>
Alito and Thomas criticized the Court for doing all this by saying that even though it&#8217;s not clear the court had jurisdiction, it&#8217;s questionable whether the applicants complied with their obligation to seek emergency injunctive relief in the district court, and that the Court of Appeals is already considering the issue of emergency relief.
They wrote:
<blockquote>The papers before us, while alleging that the applicants were in imminent danger of removal, provided little concrete support for that allegation. …In sum, literally in the middle of the night, the Court issued unprecedented and legally questionable relief without giving the lower courts a chance to rule, without hearing from the opposing party, within eight hours of receiving the application, with dubious factual support for its order, and without providing any explanation for its order. I refused to join the Court’s order because we had no good reason to think that, under the circumstances, issuing an order at midnight was necessary or appropriate. </blockquote>
I think what the rest of the Court would say is, “We wouldn&#8217;t think that was necessary or appropriate either, except for the fact that we&#8217;ve now had situations in which the Trump administration has allegedly ignored the orders of lower courts not to do a deportation and, instead, went ahead with the deportation.”
That&#8217;s the argument being made on the other side of the aisle.
One of the things that should become clear to Republicans at this point is that doing things in meticulous fashion is likely to lead to longer-lasting victories than doing them as one-offs and in quick fashion. That’s because, when it comes to morality, the Trump administration is not only correct, they are unbelievably correct.
Tom Homan, our bulldog border czar, slammed Van Hollen for his sympathy for MS-13 members, <a href="https://grabien.com/story?id=523850" target="_blank" rel="noopener">saying</a>, “What shocks me is that he’s remained silent on the travesty that happened on our southern border. Many people die. Thousands of people die. I met with hundreds of angel moms and dads who buried their children that were murdered by an illegal alien. How many angel moms and dads has he met in the state of Maryland? That&#8217;s what concerns me.”
When it comes to the politics of immigration, Republicans are absolutely right.
But, in addition, if they practice the law correctly, they’ll have longer-lasting victories, because otherwise many of the things they are trying to do might get reversed on appeal, and that would be bad for the Trump administration.
I&#8217;m rooting for the Trump administration to do everything correctly so its policies work to their utmost.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen Meets With Wrongly Imprisoned Man Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia in El Salvador

Deportation, Due Process, And Democrat Delusions

Ben Shapiro

Due Process

Maryland

Supreme Court

U.S. Senate

The political and legal battle escalates over an alleged member of a violent gang deported to El Salvador. RFK Jr. launches a series of studies into the causes of autism, prompting both condemnation and praise. And, Democrats take aim at President Donald Trump over his call for the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates, while Trump touts key economic wins.
It’s Monday, April 21, and this is the news you need to know to start your day. If you’d rather listen to your news, today’s edition of the Morning Wire podcast can be heard below:
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<h2>Deportation Debate Continues</h2>
<div id="attachment_909961" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-909961" class="size-large wp-image-909961" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/GettyImages-2210280248-864x576.jpg" alt="Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D) takes questions during a press conference after returning from El Salvador, where he met with wrongly deported Maryland man Kilmar Abrego Garcia, on April 18, 2025 at Dulles International Airport in Dulles, VA." width="864" height="576" />(Photo by Pete Kiehart for The Washington Post via Getty Images)</div>
Topline: Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) is back stateside after visiting suspected gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia in El Salvador.
Van Hollen returned from El Salvador over the weekend after meeting with suspected MS-13 gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia in El Salvador last week. Garcia was detained and deported to a megaprison there along with more than 200 other suspected gang members last month. Critics have argued that Garcia’s due process rights were violated, and a federal judge has ordered that he be brought back to the United States immediately. The Trump administration has insisted that the matter is out of its hands – and that, gang member or not, Garcia is an illegal alien and should have been deported anyway.
“My goal was to meet with [Abrego Garcia] and make sure I could tell his wife and family he was OK,” Van Hollen told ABC.
When questioned about Garcia’s alleged connection to MS-13, Van Hollen deflected.
“What Donald Trump is trying to do here is change the subject,” Van Hollen <a href="https://x.com/westernlensman/status/1913945751824240693">said</a>. “The subject at hand is that he and his administration are defying a court order to give Abrego Garcia his due process rights. They are trying to litigate on social media what they should be doing in the courts… What [Garcia] told me was he was sad and traumatized that he was being imprisoned because he has committed no crimes, and that goes to the heart of this issue.”
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<h2>RFK Commissions New Studies of Autism &#8216;Epidemic&#8217; </h2>
<div id="attachment_910057" style="width: 880px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-910057" class="size-large wp-image-910057" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Autism-870x576.jpg" alt="" width="870" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Autism-870x576.jpg 870w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Autism-300x199.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Autism-768x508.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Autism-1536x1017.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Autism-2048x1356.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 870px) 100vw, 870px" />(Photo by Nora Carol Photography via Getty Images)</div>
Topline: HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is commissioning a series of studies to investigate potential environmental factors that might contribute to autism.
RFK Jr. commissioned the new studies shortly after previous data were released indicating a surge in autism diagnoses in recent years.
“The autism epidemic is running rampant,” Kennedy <a href="https://www.hhs.gov/press-room/autism-epidemic-runs-rampant-new-data-shows-grants.html">said</a>.  “One in 31 American children born in 2014 are disabled by autism. That’s up significantly from two years earlier and nearly five times higher than when the CDC first started running autism surveys<a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5601a1.htm"> in children born in 1992</a>.. Prevalence for boys is an astounding 1 in 20 and in California it’s 1 in 12.5.”
“President Trump has tasked me with identifying the root causes of the childhood chronic disease epidemic &#8212; including autism,” Secretary Kennedy continued. “We are assembling teams of world-class scientists to focus research on the origins of the epidemic, and we expect to begin to have answers by September.”
The Autism Society of America actually <a href="https://autismsociety.org/statement-on-robert-f-kennedy-jr-s-comments-regarding-the-cause-of-autism-and-misleading-deadline/">condemned</a> Kennedy for those remarks, calling them “harmful, misleading, and unrealistic.” The organization said that autism is a “complex developmental disability” and it’s “neither a chronic illness nor a contagion, that qualifies harmful language like ‘epidemic.’”
Another autism organization, <a href="https://www.autismspeaks.org/what-causes-autism">Autism Speaks</a>, has suggested that the rise in autism cases is largely due to better screening, better understanding of the disorder, and therefore a higher diagnosis rate. The organization said that other genetic and environmental factors are still being studied, but they likely account for only a small part of the increase. Kennedy believes that’s flipped, and that only a small portion of the increase can be attributed to a better diagnostic process.
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<h2>Economic Update</h2>
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-910059" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/The-Federal-Reserve-864x576.jpg" alt="" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/The-Federal-Reserve-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/The-Federal-Reserve-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/The-Federal-Reserve-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/The-Federal-Reserve-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/The-Federal-Reserve-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/The-Federal-Reserve-1800x1200.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/The-Federal-Reserve-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" /></div>
Topline: Democrats are up in arms about President Trump&#8217;s latest economic moves, but Team Trump says he&#8217;s doing exactly what Americans elected him to do.
Democrats are accusing Trump of crossing the line by pressuring the Fed Chair, Jerome Powell, to lower interest rates. Powell appears to be digging in, while the president is now openly saying his termination can’t come soon enough.  Powell’s term is scheduled to end May 15, 2026. Trump’s team is reportedly looking into whether there are ways to remove Powell early. Democrats argue that this is an unprecedented violation of the balance of powers.
“There’s a reason we have an independent Fed,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) told CNN. “It has served us well through many crises, through downturns, through depressions, through the pandemic. They’re able to respond and stabilize things. And what Jerome Powell is doing right now is warning that these tariffs are having a huge destabilizing effect on our economy and hurting everyday people. And that’s going to affect decisions that the Fed makes. That’s his job and he’s doing it.”
Meanwhile: Trump is maintaining his pause of higher tariffs for most countries – except China – for 90 days, and he’s set a 10% baseline tariff on imports to encourage negotiations. The Trump administration says at least 75 countries have reached out to negotiate at this point. As we’ve reported, the major outlier is China, which has escalated tariffs in response. A few days ago, Trump indicated an openness to making a deal to protect consumers, but no talks with Xi Jinping have been confirmed yet. 
Japanese negotiators met with U.S. officials recently, with Trump citing “big progress.” Toyota is considering shifting RAV4 production to the United States to mitigate the impact of tariffs. Likewise, Trump reported a “great call” with South Korea focusing on steel and automobiles. Vietnam has also offered to remove all tariffs on U.S. goods. Discussions with India are also in progress, with India angling for a bilateral trade agreement to boost trade to $500 billion by 2030.
The European Union has paused retaliatory tariffs on the U.S. and is advocating for a zero-tariff agreement. As for the UK, talks with Prime Minister Keir Starmer are ongoing, with Vice President JD Vance expressing optimism that any deal they reach will be mutually beneficial.

US deports 17 gang-linked criminals in joint operation with El Salvador

Morning Brief: Deportee Battle Escalates, RFK Jr. Takes On Autism & Trump’s Fed Fight

Deportations

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Tariffs

The 24-year-old daughter of Minnesota Democrat governor and failed vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz released a TikTok video in which she claimed that if Jesus Christ lived in the United States, the Trump administration would deport him and claim he was part of a deadly gang.
Walz appeared to be making a reference to 29-year-old Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an illegal alien who was deported to El Salvador and is suspected of being a member of the violent MS-13 gang. Democrats have sought for Garcia to be sent back to the United States, claiming that he has been denied due process.
“If Jesus were alive today and in the United States, this administration would already have taken him and removed him from this country without due process, claimed he was a member of the MS-13 gang as a way to try to justify not giving him due process, as if there is any justifiable reason to not giving somebody due process,” Walz declared.
“Some people don’t want to talk about that,” she continued. “It truly is baffling how clear and laid out everything is and there is [sic] still people standing by it. I believe in the good of people, and like, humanity, humans, you know, deep down at our core, like, we care about each other. But that’s really being tested, because how anyone is OK with this is terrifying to me. But yeah, if you look like me, speak up, speak out, because we might be the only ones safe from what’s coming and some of the only people that are able to stop it.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Tim Walz’s daughter appears to compare alleged MS-13 gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Jesus, says Trump would have deported Jesus for being a gang member.
I see the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
“I believe in the good of people and like humanity, humans you know deep… <a href="https://t.co/zxjXJmlwFb">pic.twitter.com/zxjXJmlwFb</a>
&mdash; Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) <a href="https://twitter.com/CollinRugg/status/1913599911918211264?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 19, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The Department of Homeland Security has said it has evidence that Garcia was involved in MS-13.
“Two judges found that he was a member of MS-13. That finding has not been disturbed. Intelligence reports found that he was involved in human trafficking,&#8221; Homeland Security <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/04/16/kilmar-abrego-garcia-ms-13-gang-member-history-violence" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a>. &#8220;He is an illegal alien from El Salvador. He claimed fear of being returned to El Salvador because he would be persecuted by MS-13&#8217;s rival gang, Barrio-18. Jennifer Vasquez, Garcia’s wife, petitioned for an order of protection against him. She claimed he punched her, scratched her, and ripped off her shirt, and bruised her.”
According to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, MS-13 is well known for its extreme violence and brutality.
“One of the largest and most violent criminal organizations in the United States is MS-13, which has over 10,000 members in as many as 40 states,” ICE <a href="https://www.ice.gov/about-ice/hsi/investigate/transnational-gangs" target="_blank" rel="noopener">states</a>. “The gang is known for its extreme violence, including its brutal initiation rituals and acts of intimidation and retaliation against rival gangs, law enforcement officials and community members.”

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Tim Walz’s Daughter Says Trump Would Have Deported Jesus And Claimed He Was Part Of MS-13

Jesus Christ

Tim Walz

Trump Administration

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