Sen. Tim Kaine, speaking yesterday with Sen. Chris Van Hollen and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, had the following to say:
“Senator Van Hollen has an amazing track record and reputation as being a human rights champion, most recently standing up for the rule of law in the United States in the case of his constituent wrongfully deported via a Trump-era mistake to El Salvador with both the president of the United States and the president of El Salvador pretending that they don’t have the power to return him…
…this is not something that the article one branch can take lying down. When a president of the United States is flouting a 7 to 2 Supreme Court order and saying he doesn’t have the power to retract a mistake that his administration admits he’s made and thinks that’s the end of the story, we’re here to say that is not the end of the story.
There is a privileged motion that any senator can file, that Senator Van Hollen and I together with Senator Schumer and Senator Padilla are filing today, to force the State Department, the Trump administration, to issue a human rights report about El Salvador. This is a little-used privilege motion, but it’s designed like the other privileges are designed to enable the Article One branch to check executive overreach.
In this case, President Trump has facilitated the deportation of American residents, many here completely lawfully, to El Salvador without due process in some instances, people who are being deported by mistake as the administration admits. And the president has even gone beyond this and said that he would like to cut a deal to send US citizens to be imprisoned in El Salvador. So we are filing a resolution today under Section 502bc of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 to require the State Department to issue a report on the situation about human rights in El Salvador, particularly the conditions in the prison where Americans are being held; whether El Salvador is taking steps together with the administration to facilitate compliance with the Supreme Court’s ruling; are they interested in following the rule of law or not? This is a procedure where within 10 calendar days this becomes business of the Senate that we can take up, we are guaranteed a vote on it and we will seek a vote on it at a time that our leader Senator Schumer will negotiate with Senator Thune.
And I want to send a message not only to the administration, if you think you can take steps like this without Congress challenging your executive overreach you’re wrong. We’re going to challenge your overreach at every instance when we can. And I also send a message to the government of El Salvador: you might think it’s cute right now to grab attention by a bromance with President Trump. He’s going to be a president for poco mas, tres anos mas, pero el relación entre Los Estados Unidos y El Salvador es para siempre. And if you think we’ll forget you violating the human rights of American citizens, you’re wrong. We will remember this forever and there will be significant and challenging downstream consequences for any nation that violates the rights of Americans.
The followup for this report can include a privileged vote to terminate all security assistance to the nation of El Salvador, whether or not that’s the will of the body, we’ll see what the report has. But we’re going to put all of our colleagues on the record – if Americans are being sent in violation of the rule of law to El Salvador, we should all want to get a human rights report to see whether this nation is following the rule of law or not.”
Also:
“…The Alien Sedition Act was designed for a very particular purpose and like so many laws…we had a vote on tariffs last night, that law allows a president to declare a state of emergency, but nothing in the law allows the imposition of tariffs essentially a tax, at the say-so of one person. So President Trump doesn’t really care about the law, but I’m glad that judges, even those appointed by President Trump, are standing up against him. We need courts, Congress, states, activism and elections to work together to check the tendencies toward tyranny in this presidency.”
Bingo.
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