Chairman Green Responds to Homeland Democrats' Calls to Visit Deported Salvadoran MS-13 Gang Member, Domestic Abuser
WASHINGTON, D.C.—House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Mark E. Green, MD (R-TN) released the following statement after multiple Homeland Democrats expressed desire to travel to El Salvador to visit Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national with ties to the transnational gang and foreign terrorist organization MS-13, who was unlawfully present in Maryland, and deported by the Trump administration:
“There is no excuse for Democrats to waste taxpayer dollars visiting and defending a transnational gang member and reported domestic abuser. If Democrats care so much about defending this individual, they can use their own personal credit cards—not taxpayers’ money—to virtue-signal to their radical base.”
Background:
According to the Department of Justice, Abrego Garcia has repeatedly been identified as a member of MS-13. When questioned by law enforcement alongside known members of the gang in 2019, Abrego Garcia admitted to crossing the border illegally in 2012. In 2021, Abrego Garcia’s then-girlfriend filed a temporary order of protection against him for domestic violence. In 2022, a Tennessee Highway Patrol officer detained Abrego Garcia due to suspicion of human trafficking.
Wednesday, the mother of Rachel Morin, a Maryland mother of five who was murdered by an illegal immigrant in 2023, spoke from the White House about her tragic loss and the open-borders policies that took her daughter’s life. In Patty Morin’s remarks, she called out Democrat leadership for their hypocrisy: “We are American citizens; we need to protect our families, our borders, our children… To have a senator from Maryland, who didn’t even––or barely––acknowledged my daughter and the brutal death that she endured––leaving her five children without a mother, and now a grandbaby without a grandmother––so that he can use my taxpayer money to fly to El Salvador to bring back someone that is not even an American citizen. Why does that person have more rights than I do, or my daughter, or my grandchildren?” Patty Morin testified before the Committee last Congress. Read highlights and watch her testimony here.
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