Democrats can afford to fight for Kilmar Abrego Garcia

Vox

24-04-2025

is a senior correspondent at Vox. He covers a wide range of political and policy issues with a special focus on questions that internally divide the American left and right. Before coming to Vox in 2024, he wrote a column on politics and economics for New York Magazine.
A rally in support of Kilmar Abrego Garcia takes place outside the US District Court for the District of Maryland on April 15, 2025, in Greenbelt, Maryland. Maansi Srivastava/The Washington Post via Getty Images
President Donald Trump has been sending undocumented immigrants to a mega prison in El Salvador without due process. Most of these deportees have no criminal record, yet our government has condemned them to indefinite incarceration in an infamously inhumane penitentiary.
In the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Trump administration admits that its deportation order was unlawful. In 2019, a court had ruled that Abrego Garcia could not be sent to El Salvador, as he had a credible fear of being persecuted in that country. The White House attributed his deportation to an 'administrative error.'
The Supreme Court has ordered Trump to facilitate Abrego Garcia's return to the United States, but the White House refuses to comply and has publicly vowed that Abrego Garcia is 'never coming back.'
Some Democrats believe that their party must call attention to this lawless cruelty. Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen and four progressive House members have traveled to El Salvador in recent days to check on Abrego Garcia's condition and advocate for his due process rights.
But other Democrats fear their party is walking into a political trap. After all, voters are souring on Trump's handling of trade and the economy, but still approve of his handling of immigration. Some Democratic strategists therefore think that Van Hollen and other progressive advocates for Abrego Garcia are doing the president a favor: By focusing on the plight of an undocumented immigrant — instead of the struggles of countless Americans suffering from Trump's tariffs — they have increased the salience of his best issue and reinforced the narrative that Democrats care more about foreigners than about the American middle class.
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As one strategist told CNN, '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. 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.'
Some progressives have declared this argument morally bankrupt. But I don't think that's right. Democrats have a moral responsibility to defend both America's constitutional order and its most vulnerable residents. It does not follow, however, that they have a moral duty to hold press events about Abrego Garcia's case — even if such photo ops do nothing to abet his liberation, while doing much to boost Trump's political standing.
In my view, the argument that Democrats are doing more harm than good by taking a high-profile stand in favor of due process is not immoral, but simply mistaken. Van Hollen's trip has plausibly benefited US residents unlawfully detained in El Salvador. And the political costs of such dissent are likely negligible, so long as Democrats keep their messaging about immigration disciplined and eventually shift their rhetorical focus to Trump's economic mismanagement.
The case for Democrats to dodge a high-profile fight over Trump's deportations
So far as I can tell, no Democrat is arguing that the party should acquiesce to Trump's lawless deportations. The concerned strategist who spoke with CNN stipulated that 'Democrats should stand up for due process when asked about it.'
Rather, the argument is that 1) the party should not go out of its way to elevate immigration as an issue, or invite the impression that the rights of undocumented immigrants are its chief concern, and 2) congressional delegations to El Salvador risk doing precisely that.
The case for this position is fairly simple. Voters are much more supportive of Trump's handling of immigration than of his economic management. In data journalist G. Elliott Morris's aggregation of recent issue surveys, voters approve of Trump's handling of immigration by 2.7 points, while disapproving of his approach to inflation and the cost of living by 21.8 points.
Therefore, anything Democrats do to increase the salience of immigration plausibly aids Trump. What's more, elevating Abrego Garcia's cause above other issues could give voters the impression that Democrats are not prioritizing their own economic concerns.
Or at least, this is what Republican strategists seem to believe. Following House progressives' trip to El Salvador, National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) spokesperson Mike Marinella said in a statement, 'House Democrats have proven they care more about illegal immigrant gang bangers than American families.' The NRCC proceeded to air digital ads against 25 swing-district Democrats, in which it offered to buy the representatives' airfare to El Salvador if they promised to 'livestream the whole thing and snap plenty of selfies with their MS-13 buddies.'
For those urging Democrats to embrace message discipline, focusing on the due process rights of the undocumented is a lose-lose proposition, accomplishing nothing of substance while damaging the party politically. In this view, Van Hollen's trip to El Salvador did not actually help Abrego Garcia, whose fate still lies with America's court system and the White House. To the contrary, Democrats are effectively giving Trump an incentive to ship more undocumented immigrants to a foreign prison without due process. After all, the president wants his opponents to take high-profile stances in defense of the undocumented. If Democrats teach him that they will do precisely that — so long as he violates immigrants' due process rights — then they will have made such violations more likely in the future, not less.
Meanwhile, this faction of wary strategists insist that their party has a genuine image problem. Yes, Trump's tariffs are deeply unpopular. And as their economic impacts surface, the president's trade policies are liable to become more salient, no matter what Democrats say or do. But thus far, the public's declining confidence in Trump is not translating into rising confidence in the Democratic Party.
Historically, Democrats always outperformed Republicans on the question of which party 'cares more for the needs of people like you,' outpolling the GOP by 13 points on that score as recently as 2017. Yet in a Quinnipiac poll taken after Trump single-handedly engineered an economic crisis with his 'Liberation Day' tariffs, the two parties are tied on that question.
What's more, even as the public sours on Trump, the GOP remains more popular than the Democratic Party. In a new Pew Research survey, voters disapproved of Trump's job performance by a 59 to 40 percent margin. Yet the Republican Party's approval rating in that same survey was 5 points higher than the Democrats', with only 38 percent of voters expressing support for the latter.
Democrats have time to improve their image; the midterms are well over a year away. So some might wonder why the party should fret about increasing the salience of an unfavorable issue so far from Election Day. But there's an argument that the party should be doing everything in its power to increase its popularity — and reduce Trump's — right now. Businesses, universities, and various other civic institutions will need to decide in the coming weeks and months whether to comply with the president's illiberal attempts to discipline their behavior. The weaker Trump appears to be, the less likely it will be that American civil society acquiesces to authoritarianism.
Thus, from this vantage, message discipline is a moral imperative. Centering Democratic messaging on Abrego Garcia's case might help ambitious Democrats earn small-dollar donations and adoration among the party's base. But it undermines effective opposition to Trump's authoritarian regime.
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This argument is reasonable. But in my view, it understates the potential benefits of vigorous advocacy against Trump's lawless deportations and overstates the political harms.
On the substance, Democratic officials flying to El Salvador to check on Abrego Garcia's condition could plausibly deter abuses against him and other immigrant detainees in that country. Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele may be a reactionary aligned with Trump, but he is surely aware that the United States has a two-party system. His government therefore must give some thought to its relationship with a hypothetical future Democratic administration. Thus, by advocating so forcefully for US residents unlawfully imprisoned in El Salvador, the Democratic Party has given Bukele some incentive to, at a minimum, keep Abrego Garcia and others like him alive (something that his government routinely fails to do with its prisoners).
Meanwhile, bringing a measure of comfort to an American unlawfully disappeared to a foreign prison is a clear moral good. In an interview with Vox's Today, Explained podcast, Van Hollen said that Salvadoran authorities have not allowed Abrego Garcia to communicate with his family or his lawyers. Rather, they had kept him isolated from the entire outside world, until a US senator demanded a meeting with him. Only through Van Hollen's intervention was Abrego Garcia's wife able to send her greetings to him, or even confirm that her husband was still alive. If an elected official has the power to serve a constituent in this way, it seems worthwhile that they do so.
The prospect that Van Hollen might have effectively encouraged more unlawful deportations by taking this course of action — since Trump wants his opponents to do photo ops on behalf of undocumented immigrants — merits consideration. But it strikes me as far-fetched. One could just as easily posit that Democrats ducking this issue entirely would have emboldened Trump to ramp up unlawful deportations. Ultimately, I think the president's ambitions on this front will be determined by the scope and persistence of the judiciary's opposition, not by Democratic messaging.
It seems possible — perhaps, even likely — that Democrats loudly advocating for Abrego Garcia is politically suboptimal, relative to a monomaniacal focus on the economy. But so long as Democrats act strategically on other fronts, I think the political costs of taking a stand on due process are likely to be negligibly small, for at least five reasons:
First, as far as progressive immigration positions go, 'The Trump administration should honor court orders and the due process rights of longtime US residents' is pretty safe territory. In March, a Reuters-Ipsos poll asked Americans whether Trump 'should keep deporting people despite a court order to stop?' — they said no by a margin of 56 to 40 percent. And an Economist-YouGov poll released Wednesday found voters specifically agreeing that Trump should bring Abrego Garcia back by a 50 to 28 point margin.
If Democrats frame Abrego Garcia's case as a question of Americans' civil liberties — while reiterating their party's commitment to enforcing immigration law and securing the border — they should be able to mitigate any political cost inherent to elevating this issue. And that has largely been Van Hollen's message. As the senator argued at the World Economic Forum on Wednesday, 'I keep saying I'm not vouching for Abrego Garcia. I'm vouching for his constitutional rights because all our rights are at stake.'
Second, there does seem to be some scope for eroding Trump's advantage on immigration. On March 1, polls showed voters approving of the president's immigration policies by more than 10 points. Surveys taken in the last 10 days, by contrast, show that margin has fallen to 2.5 points. It is unclear whether Democrats' messaging on the Abrego Garcia case had any impact on this decline. But given the timing, that possibility cannot be summarily dismissed
Third, some influential right-wingers endorse the Democratic position on Abrego Garcia. Last Thursday, pro-Trump podcaster Joe Rogan detailed his misgivings about the president's violations of due process:
What if you are an enemy of, let's not say any current president. Let's pretend we got a new president, totally new guy in 2028, and this is a common practice now of just rounding up gang members with no due process and shipping them to El Salvador, 'You're a gang member.' 'No, I'm not.' 'Prove it.' 'What? I got to go to court.' 'No. No due process.'
Defending a principle mutually endorsed by Joe Rogan and the Roberts Court does not seem like the riskiest stand that Democrats could take.
Fourth, I'm not sure that the media's coverage of this controversy looks all that different in the alternate dimension where Democrats voiced opposition to Trump's actions when asked, but otherwise spoke exclusively about his failed economic policies. The president exiling US residents to a foreign prison — and refusing to attempt to repatriate one of them, in defiance of the Supreme Court — is a huge news story. This is a much more shocking and unprecedented event than the House GOP's quest to cut Medicaid, even if the latter will ultimately inspire more voter backlash.
In a world where Van Hollen and his House colleagues never go to El Salvador, the general subject of immigration might have received marginally less media attention over the past week. But I think the effect here is quite small.
Fifth, Democratic officials are not speaking out on this entirely at their own direction. Their party's base is understandably alarmed by the president's lawlessness. Florida Rep. Maxwell Frost said he traveled to El Salvador because he had received 'hundreds and hundreds' of emails and calls from his constituents demanding action on this issue. Thus, there might be some cost to Democratic fundraising and morale, were the party's officials to uniformly avoid calling attention to the controversy.
All this said, I think it's true that the optimal political strategy for Democrats is to focus overwhelmingly on economic issues. Voters are more concerned with prices and economic growth than with due process. And Trump is most vulnerable on tariffs, Medicaid cuts, and his economic management more broadly.
I just don't think that dedicating some time and energy to championing bedrock constitutional principles — 19 months before the midterm elections — is by itself a perilous indulgence. In any event, to this point, it has proven entirely compatible with driving down Trump's approval rating, which has fallen by 7 points since February in Pew's polling.
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Going forward, Democrats do need to convey that their top concern is Americans' living standards. If Trump moves ahead with anything resembling his current trade policy, his approval is likely to fall, irrespective of Democratic messaging. But the party needs to make sure that voters see it as an effective alternative on economic issues — one that cares more about the needs of people like them.