President Donald Trump’s White House openly mocked Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen on Friday by annotating a headline about his Thursday meeting with Kilmar Abrego Garcia in El Salvador.
“Fixed it for you, New York Times,” the White House X account shared. “Oh, and by the way, Chris Van Hollen — he’s NOT coming back.”
Their changes to the paper’s piece titled “Senator Meets With Wrongly Deported Maryland Man in El Salvador” included crossing out “Wrongly” in red ink and replacing the words “Maryland Man” with “MS-13 Illegal Alien.” They also added “Who’s Never Coming Back” to the end of the headline.
This social media update comes after Attorney General Pam Bondi, Border Czar Tom Homan and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt all shared similar sentiments regarding Abrego Garcia’s March deportation to the place of his birth this week.
“President Bukele said he was not sending him back. That’s the end of the story,” Bondi told reporters on Wednesday. “If he wanted to send him back, we would give him a plane ride back. There was no situation, ever, where he was going to stay in this country. None.”
“If he ever ends up back in the United States, he would immediately be deported again,” Leavitt reiterated on Thursday. “Nothing will change the fact that Abrego Garcia will never be a Maryland father, he will never live in the United States of America again.”
“I think we did the right thing, I think he’s where he should be,” Homan then told Kaitlan Collins on CNN on Friday. “Even if he came back, people think he’s going to be released? No, he’s going to be detained and he’s going to be removed, as per the order of removal, either to El Salvador or another country.”
Despite their allegations of Abrego Garcia being a terrorist due to his alleged ties to MS-13, the Department of Justice has made no such claims in court — just the court of public opinion. Additionally, Trump’s team previously said the deportation was a wrongful “administrative error” before later admitting it was intentional.
