As Democrats rally around Abrego Garcia case, some worry a due process argument won’t land with voters

By Arit John and Eva McKend, CNN

(CNN) — Democrats’ efforts to land on a winning message against President Donald Trump have led the party to consider how fully to embrace a new, politically complex cause: pressuring the administration to follow a Supreme Court order to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

The party has uniformly spoken in support of Abrego Garcia’s right to due process after he was mistakenly deported to El Salvador last month. But some have expressed concern in recent days over how it has conveyed the nuances of their argument that a violation of one person’s due process rights – regardless of their personal backstory or legal status – threatens everyone in the US. And as Democrats look to take back power in Washington, starting with next year’s midterm elections, how that message is received by voters matters.

Democrats who’ve urged a different approach say they worry that the party isn’t doing enough to broaden the due process argument beyond Abrego Garcia’s case. Others have argued it’s a “distraction” from more politically salient messages on the economy that shifts the conversation to immigration, where Trump holds an advantage with voters.

In an aggressive push to keep the issue alive and raise pressure on the administration, Democratic lawmakers – including Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen and a quartet of House progressives – recently traveled to El Salvador to visit Abrego Garcia, who has been held in Salvadoran prisons since his deportation last month, and pushed for his release. They join others who have rejected the counter argument from members of their own party, who say the due process argument comes with political risks.

“We as Democrats should fight for due process not because it polls well, not because it’s been focus grouped, but because fighting for due process is the right thing to do,” Rep. Ritchie Torres, a New York Democrat, said in an interview.

Under legislation Torres introduced last month, the US government would be required to punish foreign countries if they don’t return migrants who a court has ruled were improperly deported.

On Monday, Democratic Reps. Maxwell Frost of Florida, Robert Garcia of California, Yassamin Ansari of Arizona and Maxine Dexter of Oregon arrived in El Salvador to, as they put it, “bring attention to President Trump’s illegal defiance of the binding and unanimous Supreme Court decision.”

At a press conference there, Frost said he was in El Salvador because he’d received “hundreds and hundreds of calls” and emails from his constituents.

“I represent a lot of immigrants. I represent a lot of people who see themselves represented in this situation,” Frost said later in an interview with Fox News on Monday. “They’re saying, ‘Congressman, do what you can now because it’s him today, and it can be one of us tomorrow.’”

Clear agendas

Republicans have been quick to frame Democrats’ defense of Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old Salvadoran national and Maryland resident who entered the country illegally over a decade ago, as a sign the Democrats are more committed to protecting migrants than American citizens.

In a bid to shift public opinion around Abrego Garcia, the administration has pointed to a 2021 protective order his wife filed accusing him of domestic violence that was later dropped, a 2022 traffic stop that an officer described as a suspected “human trafficking incident,” as well as allegations from a law enforcement informant that he is a member of the gang MS-13.

Abrego Garcia’s wife and lawyer maintain he does not have ties to MS-13. The Maryland man has no criminal record in the United States, according to court documents.

Last month, Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison, despite a 2019 order preventing him from being sent to the country due to a risk of persecution. The administration called his deportation an “administrative error” and has openly defied the Supreme Court’s order to facilitate his return.

During a recent White House press briefing, press secretary Karoline Leavitt was joined by Patty Morin, the mother of Rachel Morin, a Maryland woman who was raped and murdered by a fugitive from El Salvador in a 2023 case unrelated to Abrego Garcia. They have also sought to use social media, zeroing in on images of Van Hollen meeting with Abrego Garcia at the senator’s hotel, where the lawmaker said wait staff placed salt-rimmed glasses on the table to make it appear the pair were drinking margaritas.

After the four progressive lawmakers announced they’d arrived in El Salvador, House Republicans’ campaign arm labeled the Maryland man Democrats’ new “poster child.” The NRCC also offered to pay for Democrats’ round-trip airfare to El Salvador if they livestream their trips.

“House Democrats have proven they care more about illegal immigrant gang bangers than American families,” National Republican Campaign Committee spokesperson Mike Marinella said in a statement. “Their agenda is clear: Elevate criminals. Abandon Americans.”

Matt Bennett, the co-founder of Third Way, a center-left think tank, said the Abrego Garcia case was a “tough and complicated cause” for Democrats to take up, but “[Trump] thumbing his nose at the court is a pretty safe place for Democrats to land politically.”

“I know that the Republicans – the Trump administration and the NRCC and others – believe that this is a winner for them, and I’m not sure they’re right,” Bennett said. “I think that Americans are uneasy with a president that is acting in ways that are so clearly unlawful.”

On the other end of the Democratic spectrum, Adam Green, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, said Trump had personalized one of the party’s key 2024 issues: defending democracy.

“If the downside of talking about democracy in 2024 is that it wasn’t a kitchen table issue, Trump has created an issue that literally whisks parents away from a kitchen table to a gulag in a foreign country with no due process,” Green said.

A debate over distractions

But one Democratic strategist who works with candidates in districts Trump won expressed concern that the nuances of the constitutional rights argument would get lost. The strategist, who asked for anonymity to speak candidly, said Democrats should stand up for due process when asked about it, but that the volume of attention focused on the current case makes it seem as if it’s the party’s top issue.

“The impulse among lots of Democrats is to always crank the volume up to 11 and take advantage of whatever the easiest, most obvious photo opportunity is,” the strategist said. “In this case, you get a situation where you’re giving the White House and the Republicans a lot of images and visuals that they think are compelling for them.”

Democratic strategist Mo Elleithee, meanwhile, argued that Democrats should be careful not to turn Abrego Garcia into a martyr, or keep the focus of their due process argument squarely on him. Instead, he said, the party needs to focus its argument on a White House that has “run amok” in a way that threatens all Americans, including US citizens who have been unfairly detained by immigration officials.

“The Democrats who are going down there ought to be saying … ‘If a judge says he’s a bad guy, then let’s deport him,’” Elleithee said. “‘And if he’s a good guy, then we will escort him back to his family who’s waiting for him.’”

Some Democrats have argued that the administration is using the Maryland man’s case to distract from the impact his tariff agenda has had on the global economy.

“They’re doing it because they want to distract people from the fact that our economy is in a tailspin thanks to them, their tariffs,” Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom, a California Democrat and potential 2028 presidential candidate, agreed with members of his party calling on the administration to follow the Supreme Court’s orders. But he also called the push to return the Maryland man a “distraction” and a “tough case” for Democrats, because some voters might view the party as defending MS-13 or “someone who’s out of sight, out of mind in El Salvador.”

“They don’t want this debate on the tariffs, they don’t want to be accountable to the markets today,” Newsom said during a press conference on tariffs last week. “They want to have this conversation. Don’t get distracted by distractions.”

Asked about Newsom’s remarks, Van Hollen reiterated that the case isn’t about one person, but the threat the case poses to everyone else’s constitutional rights.

“I think a lot of voters, both Republican and Democrat, are tired of elected officials and politicians who just put their finger to the wind,” Van Hollen separately told CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday. “Anyone who’s not prepared to stand up and fight for the Constitution doesn’t deserve to lead.”

Democrats’ push on the Abrego Garcia case could also mark a subtle shift in how the party has approached the issue of immigration. Last year, President Joe Biden backed a bipartisan immigration deal that would have funded immigration courts and border security, as well as created more avenues for legal immigration, that ultimately failed.

In the first weeks of the second Trump presidency, several dozen Democrats in the House and Senate helped pass the Laken Riley Act, which requires the Department of Homeland Security to detain migrants charged with burglary, shoplifting, assaulting a law enforcement officer or a violent crime. Critics of the law argue that its mandatory detention provisions erode due process rights for some migrants. At least one Democratic lawmaker, Connecticut Rep. Jahana Hayes, has said she regrets backing the bill.

Matt Barreto, a Democratic strategist and pollster who worked on Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign, said Democrats’ response to the Abrego Garcia case shows that the party is finding its footing on how to address immigration and Trump, with Van Hollen leading the way. Still, he said, Democrats could do more to defend immigrants.

“I think on immigration, in particular, Democrats can push back harder to demonstrate that these are not criminals,” Barreto said. “These are people with families, these are taxpayers, and Trump is lying about the criminality aspect of this as an excuse to just abduct people who are here in the United States.”

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