It makes “no sense at all” for Democrats to be fighting for the return of El Salvador national Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States, as he was not denied due process before his extradition, Rep. Beth Van Duyne insisted on Newsmax Wednesday.
“The whole purpose of having laws is that they are followed, you know, that they are enforced, and we are the rulemakers, right?” the Texas Republican said on Newsmax’s “Wake Up America.” “We’re the lawmakers, and then we complain when our agencies are trying to do that.”
Her comments come after Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said earlier this week that he will fly to El Salvador to secure the release of Garcia from the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (Terrorism Confinement Center), a maximum security prison in El Salvador.
The White House is insisting that Garcia is an alleged member of the MS-13 gang, while the Supreme Court has ruled that the administration must facilitate his return to the United States. But Van Duyne told Newsmax that Garcia “got to go through the court process. He got to appeal it, this appeal was denied, and he’s being sent back to El Salvador.”
She added that Garcia did not go through the official asylum process to enter the United States, even while the Justice Department has acknowledged that he was deported by mistake.
Van Duyne accused Democrats of using Garcia as an example to “cast a shadow” on the Trump administration’s “entire effort” on deporting migrants.
“Where were they the last four years when you had over 20 million people enter our country illegally?” she said. “How many gang members, how many people from the terrorist watch list how many murderers, how many drug dealers and human traffickers [came in]? Where was this outrage then? You’re seeing it now, one example, and it’s a poor example at best.”
Meanwhile, Van Duyne said that Trump’s immigration strategy is working and has brought illegal crossings to “a halt.”
“You see a 95% decrease in the number of illegal crossings,” she said. “You’re seeing our local elected officials working with our federal elected officials.”
Gov. Greg Abbott has formed a “remarkable” partnership with President Trump, said Van Duyne.
“It’s amazing that they were able to do it without any new bills coming through Congress. You just needed a president who took it seriously.”
Van Duyne lauded Trump’s border czar Tom Homan as a “rock star” who has the respect, work ethic, and experience to know how to work partnerships to get “maximum effectiveness.”
The lawmaker also discussed on Wednesday the House Republicans’ passage of the SAVE Act, which mandates that only U.S. citizens can vote.
“Texas had a great initiative of cleaning up its voter rolls,” she said. “It got over 350,000 people that were never supposed to be on the rolls. They found these people had moved, they had died, they were illegally here, and they had been given voting rights.”
And now, other states must pass laws to follow the law, said Van Duyne.
“We don’t ever want to take over the rights of states to run their own elections,” she said. “I know in Texas we don’t want D.C. telling us how to do that, but you’ve got to use common sense here.”
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