Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) issued a stark warning to El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele and other foreign leaders, cautioning that Democrats will not “look kindly” on those who cooperate with President Donald Trump when they return to power.
In a recent episode of “Pod Save America,” Raskin spoke with host and former Obama aide Tommy Vietor about the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an illegal immigrant living in Maryland who was deported and sent to prison in his home country of El Salvador despite a 2019 court order prohibiting him from being sent back there. While at a White House meeting with Trump last week, Bukele said his nation will not send Abrego Garcia back to the United States, even after the Supreme Court upheld an order for the federal government to “facilitate” his return.
Vietor said a “Latin America policy expert” suggested to him that “Democrats should threaten to take action against any foreign government that participates in the extraordinary rendition of American citizens.” He listed cutting off future aid and seeking to prosecute foreign officials as possible forms of retaliation.
Raskin, who is the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said he liked the idea, calling it a “complement to something that we need to be doing right now, which is engaging in far more work of transnational democratic solidarity with the democratic governments and the democratic movements and peoples and parties of the world to try to prevent the spread of the lawlessness and the fascist chaos that’s been unleashed against us.”
“But implicit in it,” Raskin continued, “should be the idea that if and when we come back to power — and we will — we are not going to look kindly upon people who facilitated … authoritarianism in our country. That’s an assault on our Constitution and on our people.”
The comment prompted rebukes from some of Trump’s GOP allies on X.
“[Raskin] says he will go after Trump officials when he returns to power. They haven’t learned a single lesson,” quipped Richard Grenell, who is Trump’s special presidential envoy for special missions and interim director of the Kennedy Center.
“They aren’t coming into power any time soon if things continue as they are… that’s the only silver lining in their chaos and lunacy,” said Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC).
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