See below for reactions by Sen. Tim Kaine, Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA08) – I’ll add others who weigh in, if and when they do – to Trump this morning (as Sen. Tim Kaine says) “cozying up to an aspiring dictator,” El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele. As Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA08) puts it:
“1) Kilmar Abrego Garcia was here legally 2) Trump illegally sent him to a prison in El Salvador; the Administration admits this was a mistake 3) The Supreme Court unanimously ordered his return 4) Trump refused 5) Trump wants to do the same thing to U.S. citizens This is sick.”
KAINE STATEMENT ON PRESIDENT BUKELE’S VISIT TO THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Tim Kaine, the Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, (D-VA) released the following statement regarding El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s visit to the White House:
“Once again, President Trump is cozying up to an aspiring dictator. The Bukele regime has for many years rounded up tens of thousands of Salvadorans without due process, and indefinitely crammed them into overpopulated megaprisons. Trump is conspiring with President Bukele to do the same with people in the United States, including Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a legal U.S. resident and Maryland father whom the Administration openly admits they deported by mistake, but now refuses to release from a notorious torture prison and return to his American family. The United States should call out Bukele’s contemptuous and anti-democratic behavior rather than celebrate and be complicit in it.”