Kilmar Ábrego García must be very thrilled to become one of the most famous people in the United States overnight. Mainstream media in America, which some were hoping would do some ‘soul searching’ and change course after the second election victory of Donald Trump, has found their golden ‘human interest story’ to try to sway public opinion on immigration.

And, just like that, the deportation of Kilmar Ábrego García has become the hottest story in the United States. At the same time, Mr García became ‘Maryland man’ in all the headlines of news articles, such as ones by POLITICO, Axios, Reuters, NPR, PBS (the latter two are currently fighting defunding by a Republican Congress), ABC News, and The Guardian. Or, alternatively, he is the ‘Maryland dad’, for example, in the headline for a piece by CNN.

Almost needless to say, Mr (or Señor) García had no right to be in Maryland or any other state in the Union as he lacked proper documentation. Or, as CNN puts it in one of their more recent articles, he is an ‘undocumented migrant’.

President Trump’s homeland security advisor Stephen Miller has routinely explained to the press that there is no question whether or not García resided in the United States illegally—the BBC reported that even the man himself acknowledged that in court in 2019. He is also a citizen of El Salvador, the country where he was born.

With these two pieces of information settled and not in dispute, you would need a real hard spin job to make it a national story that this individual was deported back to El Salvador.

The little confusion there has been caused by a court ruling which, according to Miller, barred García from being deported to El Salvador specifically. This had to do with his fear of being targeted by the local gang, the 18th Street Gang. If that is the case, that is a fact that would make one very reasonably believe that García is involved in gang activity, specifically MS-13, a rival gang of the 18th Street. However, that claim about García is being vehemently challenged by the leftist liberal media and Democratic legislators alike in the United States.

Senator Chris Van Hollen from Maryland went as far as visiting the man detained in El Salvador. In the meantime, the President of his home country, Nayib Bukele, referred to him as a ‘terrorist’ whom he would never let free in his home country while visiting President Trump in the White House.

Democrats may be looking at President Trump’s declining approval rating on immigration, and that is why they believe that they can make immigration a winning issue for them again.

However, about nine years of polling data on President Trump should give them pause on that assumption. President Trump’s overall approval rating in his first term was routinely measured in the 30s in his first three years, even by such reputable pollsters as Gallup. Then, the election year of 2020 came around, along with a pandemic and a consequent recession, as well as mass riots across the United States. Yet President Trump won 46.9 per cent of the popular vote, and was only shifting a few tens of thousands of votes in swing states away from winning the Electoral College.

Given the election result in 2020, it is safe to assume that President Trump was vastly underpolled in 2017–2019, when stock market growth was high, unemployment was declining, and there was no major social unrest.

So, going on a media blitz for an illegal alien with likely gang ties is not the best idea for Democrats, as common sense would suggest, no matter what polling says.

However, Democrats do have to move fast on the issue. The 2030 census is fast approaching, and if Republicans manage to retain the White House, they will be in control of the US Census Bureau, conducting it. Also, in that case, they would likely not be allowing the millions of migrants into the US to pad the population numbers of solid Democrat states like California, Illinois, and Maryland.

According to current estimations, California stands to lose three electoral votes in the next census. The other heavy Democrat states of New York, Illinois, and Washington are also about to lose EC votes (two, one, and one, respectively). Meanwhile, the solid red states of Texas and Florida stand to gain the most, four EC votes, as of now.

So, Democrats are really under the gun to do something, or else they could be in for a harsh decade in the 2030s. However, it should probably be a little better than the ‘Maryland man’ story.

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