'Kangaroo courts': Md. Sen. Chris Van Hollen to force vote on El Salvador human rights report

Ben Mause, Baltimore Sun on May 1, 2025

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Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen introduced a privileged motion Thursday that will force a vote on requiring the State Department to conduct a human rights report on El Salvador. The announcement continues the saga of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man detained and deported to an El Salvador prison.

“Donald Trump, he may want to adopt El Salvador’s approach to violating human rights,” Van Hollen said. “But we don’t. We will not model our judicial system on El Salvador’s kangaroo courts.”

Van Hollen’s activism follows his three-day trip to El Salvador this month, during which he secured a groundbreaking meeting with Abrego Garcia. Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran citizen who entered the U.S. illegally as a teenager, was wrongly deported from Maryland in March despite a judge granting him “withholding of removal status” and legal working papers in 2019.

The unique resolution, filed under a section of the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act, would require the State Department to issue a human rights report on El Salvador that would focus on the prison conditions in the facilities where people deported from America are being held. Sens. Tim Kaine of Virginia and Alex Padilla of California, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York were co-sponsors of the motion.

“Senate Democrats have done more to advocate for and improve the lives of illegal aliens, alleged gang members, and domestic abusers than to work for their constituents,” White House spokesperson Harrison Fields told The Sun in a statement on the resolution. “No bill will change the fact that President Trump is deporting criminal illegal migrants, which the Constitution allows him to do.”

The nature of the resolution ensures that the senators will receive a vote on the motion soon. Whether that vote will receive the necessary Republican support to be adopted is unclear.

Kaine was optimistic that moderate Republicans would be open to supporting the resolution. But the maneuver is similar to other recent acts by Senate Democrats designed to get Republican senators to vote on politically sensitive issues.

“Why wouldn’t you want a human rights report from the Trump administration when American citizens are being sent there?” Kaine said.

On Wednesday, multiple Republicans joined the entire Democratic caucus in supporting a resolution to overturn Trump’s tariffs.

Both Van Hollen and Kaine said no GOP lawmakers currently plan to support the new resolution; however, Van Hollen hoped conversations over the next 10 days could change that before the resolution becomes active.

Van Hollen said he’s had conversations with Republican senators who have “definitely expressed real misgivings with Donald Trump’s violation of constitutional due process rights.”

“This will be their opportunity to actually vote on that,” Van Hollen said.

The Trump administration and its congressional allies have framed Abrego Garcia and others deported from the U.S. to El Salvador as violent MS-13 gang members. Abrego Garcia has no criminal record in either country, but his wife sought a protective order against him in 2021, a case that was resolved without charges being filed.

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(Carson Swick contributed to this report.)

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