That is not a description that legally applies to Garcia, Todd Starnes, a Memphis-based show host and conservative media figure, told American Family Radio Wednesday.
Garcia, a citizen of El Salvador, has lived as an illegal immigrant in Maryland since 2011. Eight years later he was granted a protection order by an immigration judge.
Critics say he was wrongfully deported to El Salvador, where he’s now imprisoned, in part because they deny the claim of President Donald Trump’s administration that Garcia is a member of the violent criminal gang MS-13.
Garcia has denied gang membership but El Salvador officials have confirmed he is a gang member, Newsmax has reported, and his own story confirms gang membership.
Meanwhile, Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, posted video of himself just before boarding a plane for El Salvador early Wednesday morning, the first leg of a journey in which he hopes to correct what he called a “miscarriage of justice.”
Garcia has claimed fear of violence from rival gangs if he remains in El Salvador. Rivals, by definition, are competitive within the same business, sports teams or field of expertise.
“What that means is, if he was worried about violence from a rival gang in El Salvador, then he's effectively admitting he's part of a gang himself," former federal prosecutor Francey Hakes said on Newsmax Tuesday.
Garcia is described as a “Maryland Man,” but that’s not where he’s a citizen.
“He's an El Salvadoran, and El Salvador said that he was a member of MS-13, and El Salvador seems to think this guy is dangerous enough that he needs to be in prison. So again, he is from El Salvador. He was in our country illegally, and now he is back in his home country,” Starnes told show host Jenna Ellis.
Democrats want a 'welfare check'
The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 on April 10 that immigrants are entitled to due process – a complex issue separate from Garcia’s contested gang membership -- in U.S. courts regardless of their citizenship status. It also required the Trump administration to “facilitate” Garcia’s return from El Salvador, his home country, to the U.S.
From his prison cell, Garcia has now become the poster child of Democrats who are seeking to block Trump’s agenda that the White House says is supported by 312 electoral votes and a difference of more than 2 million popular votes last November.
House Democrats Robert Garcia (California) and Maxwell Frost (Florida) sent a letter to House Oversight Committee chair James Comer Tuesday requesting an official congressional delegation to visit the El Salvador prison where Garcia is being held in order to “conduct a welfare check,” Axios reported.
Sen. Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) is working to arrange a Senate delegation, Axios reported.
“I really don’t see what the problem is,” said Starnes, who told Ellis he sees judge appointments by former Democrat Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden as part of a “bigger scheme” to control the country through the judiciary.
“The Constitution lays out how the branches have powers, and the executive branch, it would seem has fewer powers, according to the judicial system, than a dog catcher,” Starnes said.
Due process has been a key talking point for Trump administration critics and was something Van Hollen returned to just before boarding his flight.
“The goal of this mission is to let the Trump administration, let the government of El Salvador know, that we are going to keep fighting to bring Abrego Garcia home until he returns to his family. This is a miscarriage of justice. The Supreme Court has ruled 9-0 that he was illegally taken out of the country and put in a prison in El Salvador. This is about due process, about rule of law,” he said.
How to define due process
But due process is considered case by case and is not a one-size-fits-all right, constitutional attorney Mike Donnelly told Ellis.
Garcia did have an order of withholding – an order that a court can issue to individuals who fear persecution in their home country but are ineligible for asylum. That order was supposed to protect him from deportation.
“But he was still here illegally, so should he be able to come back? Due process depends on the person, the situation. There’s a difference in due process that’s due non-citizens vs. citizens,” he said.
The government’s ability to provide due process should be a factor in determining due process, Donnelly said.
“Resources do come into it,” he said, adding, “I think it’s important to recognizes these principles and that due process … it depends on the person and their status.”
Available resources was a central point of a lengthy X post in which Vice President J.D. Vance laid out the Trump administration’s case against Garcia.
Wrote Vance: “Here's a useful test: ask the people weeping over the lack of due process what precisely they propose for dealing with Biden's millions and millions of illegals. And with reasonable resources and administrative judge constraints, does their solution allow us to deport at least a few million people per year?
“If the answer is no, they've given their game away," the Vice President continued. "They don't want border security. They don't want us to deport the people who've come into our country illegally. They want to accomplish through a fake legal process what they failed to accomplish politically: The ratification of Biden's illegal migrant invasion.”
Former prosecutor: Garcia did have due process
Hakes, the former prosecutor, contends that Garcia, in fact, has had due process through two previous court hearings in 2019.
“When he was arrested or picked up in 2019, he had an immigration hearing. Lots of people are yelling online and on television that he hasn't received any due process. And that is a complete lie, because he did get the due process to which illegal aliens are entitled,” Hakes told Newsmax. “And at that hearing, the judge found that the evidence presented by DHS was credible, that he was a member of MS-13, which also made him deportable.
"Now, after that, he got an appeal. So that's the second bit of due process that he got. He got appellate level … judge panel to look at his case and to agree with the initial federal judge who found that he was deportable," she added.
