What The Hell America!

HOUSE MINORITY LEADER Hakeem Jeffries was asked Monday whether Democrats should continue to advocate for the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and the other men wrongly shipped to El Salvador, by making the trip to the country to put a spotlight on the issue.

“Our reaction is that Donald Trump has the lowest approval rating of any president in modern American history,” Jeffries responded.

But while Jeffries may be publicly agnostic on El Salvador trips like the one Reps. Robert Garcia, Yassamin Ansari, Maxwell Frost, and Maxine Dexter recently took, privately he sees the trips as having run their course. Two Democratic aides and a lawmaker who spoke to The Bulwark said that the minority leader has discouraged further excursions to the country even as pressure mounts within the party to turn up the heat on Trump for sending 238 men to a notorious prison system known for human rights abuses.

“They want to let the El Salvador stuff slow down,” a senior House staffer said.

Jeffries’s office declined to comment.

The debate among Democrats over how aggressively they should engage the issue of mass deportations, and the use of El Salvador’s prison specifically, has been simmering for weeks now. And Jeffries’s eagerness to sidestep it suggests that the party is far from a consensus.

While leadership may be more eager to talk about the economy, other Democrats say that there is a moral obligation to spotlight cases like that of Abrego Garcia. And they believe the politics are already turning in their favor.

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Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) was the first to go to El Salvador, noting that Abrego Garcia is a Maryland resident. The senator managed to meet with Abrego Garcia and confirm his health after days of pressuring the Salvadoran government, and after that visit Abrego Garcia was moved from the CECOT prison to another facility. The four House Democrats followed Van Hollen’s lead, hoping to draw attention to the hundreds of other men deported along with Abrego Garcia. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) reportedly made plans to visit El Salvador to advocate for the detainees there. His office did not respond to a request for comment on whether the trip was still in the works.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) was also working on arranging a trip to El Salvador that would be led by the chair of the caucus, Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.). One House Democrat said Espaillat’s trip was going to piggyback off Booker’s trip, but it was contingent on being given access to Abrego Garcia.

“Adriano didn’t just want to do a trip like the other Democrats did,” the lawmaker said, noting that the Democratic delegation was not given access to Abrego Garcia or any other detainees.

A spokesperson for the CHC told The Bulwark it has been in active conversations with El Salvador about a trip for weeks. Espaillat also attended Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s second inauguration last June, along with CHC members Rep. Lou Correa (D-Calif.) and Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-Texas).

“The Congressional Hispanic Caucus is working all avenues to ensure Kilmar Abrego Garcia rejoins his family and receives his constitutional right to due process,” said Espaillat.

Espaillat, like other Democrats, has focused on the Trump administration’s assault on due process in sending deportees to El Salvador without any hearings. It’s a line of attack that polls have shown resonates with Americans, as the president’s numbers dive sharply at the 100-day marker of his term.

“For years, Republicans primed the system for abuse and cruelty,” Espaillat said, “and now the Trump administration is crossing every due-process line in the book. But they did not rewrite the United States Constitution—due process is an inalienable right, regardless of status, for anyone and everyone in the United States of America.”

But some Democrats worry about the party growing overly consumed by the Abrego Garcia case. If members in safe seats continue to flock to El Salvador, it could give ammunition to Republicans to use against more vulnerable Democrats.

“One trip was sufficient, it made sense that Van Hollen went, but when the safest possible members go, it gives fodder for the National Republican Campaign Committee to start using it against other Democrats,” a second House staffer said, criticizing the wisdom of the second trip. “They should understand that what they’re doing is going to be hurting us in the long run.”

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REP. GABE VASQUEZ’S OFFICE PROVIDED an example of how tricky the immigration issue can be for frontline Democrats. Vasquez represents a New Mexico district that includes a long span of the U.S.-Mexico border. The district’s Cook partisanship rating is even, indicating it’s neither significantly more Democratic nor more Republican than the country at large. In 2024, Vasquez won re-election by about 9,000 votes out of more than 265,000 cast. At a recent town hall he held, a tracker recorded Vasquez’s explanation of why he voted against the Laken Riley Act, a law that orders the detention by ICE of undocumented immigrants over even small violations like shoplifting, and his comments on Abrego Garcia and the violation of due process. Those comments quickly found their way into a Fox News story under the headline “Dem border rep brags about voting against Laken Riley Act,” with a quote from the NRCC.

Vasquez stands by his vote. And he noted that his message goes beyond Abrego Garcia. “We’re seeing innocent people, the spouses of military service members, kids being deported, authorities going into schools, military bases, hospitals, and arresting judges,” he told me. “Trump is taking a wrong turn on his mass deportation force and it’s going to make his position weaker.”

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But some Democrats also worry that Abrego Garcia has become a less-than-ideal poster child for opposition to Trump’s immigration policies after it was revealed that his wife sought a protective order against him. She recently said in a statement that she acted out of caution because she had suffered domestic violence in a previous relationship.

“This is not the right issue to talk about due process. This is not the right case. This is not the right person to be saying that we need to bring him back to the United States,” Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), one of the party’s more conservative members, told Fox News Radio.

Chris Newman, a lawyer for the Abrego Garcia family, fired back at Cuellar and Democrats who said they are worried about the politics of supporting men wrongly sent to El Salvador.

“The trips have proven effective both in the efforts to save Mr. Abrego Garcia’s life and to save Democrats from the quagmire they are in on the issue of immigration,” he told The Bulwark. “What’s needed now more than wrongheaded hot takes like those from Congressman Cuellar is action, and my hope is there will be more members of Congress following the lead of Sen. Van Hollen and Congressmen Garcia and Frost.”

A third Democratic staffer defended the benefits of the Democratic House delegation’s trip to El Salvador despite their inability to meet with detainees.

“While the second trip did not deliver an explicit positive like Van Hollen’s did, it was a reminder for El Salvador not to do anything crazy while they were in the country and the bigger reminder is Trump is not going to be there forever,” the staffer said. “No matter what his hat sales say, he’s not going to get a third term or live to be 100.”

As Democrats remain divided over how much to emphasize the Abrego Garcia case and the detentions in El Salvador more generally, they await firmer guidance from above. Other House Democrats are willing to listen to leadership, a member of Congress said, but if Jeffries has a preference on El Salvador trips, he needs to communicate and make it known.

“As a member of a party you need to be disciplined,” a Democratic lawmaker said. “They say, ‘Get on a plane,’ ‘Don’t get on a plane’—that’s what you do. Nine out ten times you do what they ask. But you can’t take that approach if you’re not having regular communications. . . . You have to be clear in messaging what the plan is and you have to do that regularly if you want to keep people in line.”

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First on The Bulwark: The Immigration Hub is out with a new project timed to Trump’s first 100 days. In reaction to the White House’s stunt of showing mugshots of immigrants they deported, “Disappeared in America: The Faces of Trump’s Immigration Dragnet” documents more than seven hundred individuals—including legal residents and U.S. citizens—who have been detained, disappeared, or deported under the Trump administration.