When a Maryland Democrat decided to use Memorial Day to send a message that should outrage Americans, President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security was waiting for him.
Second-term Rep. Glenn Ivey, who represents Maryland’s 4th Congressional District, headed south of the border — way south of the border — for the holiday weekend to try to visit Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the one-time “Maryland man” now imprisoned in El Salvador and the most infamous of the illegal aliens deported since Trump took office.
But Ivey’s post on the social media platfrom X backfired badly.
“Today, I was denied access to seeing my constituent, Mr. Kilmar Abrego Garcia,” Ivey wrote in the post published Monday. “If there is nothing to hide, cut the crap. Let his lawyer and I check on him.”
The news of Ivey’s visit got wide coverage, including by WJZ-TV in Baltimore, but Ivey might have been wishing his post got less attention. Check it out here, with just a few of the scathing responses it attracted:
My jaw is on the floor. You spent your Memorial Day trying to visit a criminal illegal alien who violently beat his wife in front of their kids…
You couldn’t have thought of anything else to do today?
— Apple Lamps (@lamps_apple) May 26, 2025
You’re being paid to represent American citizens, not fly to other countries to visit with illegal foreigners on our tax dollars. Someone needs to investigate Glenn ASAP.
— LD Basler (@ArmaLite15OU812) May 26, 2025
You guys still have a hard on for that guy? He ain’t ever coming back. How about you start working for your American constituents.
— MAGA Michele (@thewalkerseven) May 27, 2025
Glenn, something is wrong with you for going to all this trouble for a gang member.
— Peter Hubert (@PeterHubert16) May 27, 2025
(And those are not cherry-picked. There are countless responses that are even harsher.)
Being so busy trying to track down deported illegal aliens, Ivey might not have noticed, but Monday was Memorial Day — a national holiday in the United States to honor those who’ve died fighting for their country.
Even though its meaning has been regrettably watered down to the point where it sometimes seems to mean nothing more than the unofficial start of the summer vacation season — and ubiquitous sales gimmicks — at its heart, it’s the most somber of the national holidays.
And it’s a holiday for Americans to honor those who died fighting for them.
Ivey is a member of United States Congress, well familiar with the privileges Americans enjoy by virtue of being part of the greatest country in the history of the world. But the responsibility of being grateful to those who have given their all to ensure that country’s security has apparently eluded him.
The DHS account on X struck back on Tuesday, noting Abrego Garcia’s criminal history, including gang membership, domestic abuse, and human trafficking — not to mention being an illegal alien in the first place.
Congressman, Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a confirmed MS-13 gang member, wife beater, human trafficker, and illegal alien from El Salvador – not your constituent.
While the mainstream media and politicians are fighting to bring a foreign terrorist and gang member back to U.S. soil,… https://t.co/ZRH2DosmJ1
— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) May 27, 2025
“Congressman, Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a confirmed MS-13 gang member, wife beater, human trafficker, and illegal alien from El Salvador – not your constituent,” the post stated.
“While the mainstream media and politicians are fighting to bring a foreign terrorist and gang member back to U.S. soil, @POTUS, Trump and @Sec_Noem are fighting for the victims of alien crime and putting the safety of Americans FIRST.”
The DHS post — and many, many of Ivey’s responders — also took issue the congressman’s description of Abrego Garcia as “constituent,” since as an illegal alien, Abrego Garcia can’t legally vote in U.S. elections.
There’s some logic to that attack, since some definitions of the word include a voting requirement, but it’s not a slam dunk.
Other definitions include only the requirement that an individual live in the area represented. And more to the point, the reality is that the populations of illegal aliens in cities and states are counted as part of the U.S. Census, and those numbers are used in apportioning congressional districts.
As National Review contributor Jason Richwine noted in a piece in November, that’s just one way the flood of illegal aliens into the United States has distorted the country’s politics.
So, it’s really at least arguably true that Abrego Garcia could be considered a “constituent” of Ivey’s. (Congratulations, Maryland 4th!) But if Ivey could pay more attention to his American “constituents” — the ones that aren’t gang members, wife beaters and human traffickers — it’s a good bet he’d be a better U.S. representative.
But semantics aren’t the issue here. It’s the Democratic priorities Ivey is putting on display — and, of course, the establishment media’s reflexive sympathy for the Democratic position.
Ivey’s post was no doubt intended to portray him as a lawmaker unafraid to go to any lengths to stand up for what he considers to be right.
Are Democrats hurting themselves in the Abrego Garcia case?
But what it actually showed was a blowhard — an American lawmaker who thought he could bully his way into a foreign country’s prison system on behalf of a known criminal to serve his own progressive political ends.
That by itself is simply disgraceful. The fact that he chose Memorial Day to do it — a day with significance that transcends every political difference in acknowledging the country’s debt to its fallen heroes — makes it simply obscene.
If this is what Democrats are planning for their own political future, it just proves they haven’t learned yet what “backfire” really means.
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