Van Hollen Defends “Margarita Gate”: “Neither of Us Touched the Drinks”; Stephen Miller: “His Heart Is Reserved for an MS-13 Terrorist”

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) held an impromptu press conference in April 2025 to address what he called “Margarita Gate” — photos posted by President Bukele showing Van Hollen and deported Kilmar Garcia at a table with margarita-style drinks during the senator’s El Salvador visit. Van Hollen insisted: “Neither of us touched the drinks that were in front of us. Nobody drank any margaritas. This is a lesson into the lengths that President Bukele will go to deceive people.” White House Senior Adviser Stephen Miller fired back: “I’m almost at a loss for words for how outrageous it is. That is who the Democrat Party is going to provide aid, solace and comfort to? Not to Senator Van Hollen’s own constituents like the Morin family? His heart is reserved for an illegal alien who’s a member of a foreign terrorist organization."

"Margarita Gate”

Van Hollen addressed the controversy with visible frustration upon landing from his El Salvador trip.

“I hadn’t planned to do this,” Van Hollen said, “but as I was landing on the airplane, I got a transcript of some questions President Trump was asked at the White House today about what I would call Margarita Gate.”

He described what happened: “When I first sat down with Kilmar, we just had glasses of water on the table. I think maybe some coffee.”

He explained how the photo was staged: “And as we were talking, one of the government people came over and deposited two other glasses on the table with ice and I don’t know if it was salt or sugar around the top, but they look like margaritas.”

He noticed a detail: “And if you look at the one they put in front of Kilmar, it actually had a little less liquid than the one in front of me. To try to make it look, I assume, like he drank out of it.”

He was emphatic: “Let me just be very clear, neither of us touched the drinks that were in front of us.”

Van Hollen then invited the press to verify: “And if you want to play a little Sherlock Holmes, I’ll tell you how you can know that.”

He laid out the evidence: “If you look at the video or the picture I sent out from the beginning of our meeting, you’ll see there are no glasses on the table. So you’ll see in later videos they are on the table.”

He pointed to the forensic detail: “But they made a little mistake. If you sip out of one of those glasses, some of whatever it was, salt or sugar, would disappear. You would see a gap. There’s no gap.”

He concluded: “Nobody drank any margaritas or sugar water or whatever it is. But this is a lesson into the lengths that President Bukele will go to deceive people about what’s going on.”

The margarita defense was remarkable for how much political energy Van Hollen was expending on the wrong question. Whether he drank a margarita while visiting an MS-13 member in El Salvador was not the issue that mattered. The issue was why a United States senator was visiting an MS-13 member in El Salvador at all.

Stephen Miller’s Response

White House Senior Adviser Stephen Miller delivered what would become the administration’s definitive response to Van Hollen’s trip.

“I’m almost at a loss for words for how outrageous it is,” Miller said.

He described Garcia: “Here’s an individual, the man who has been deported to his home country, El Salvador, who has been repeatedly documented by multiple federal and state authorities to be a member of MS-13.”

He drew the moral contrast: “That is who the Democrat Party is going to provide aid, solace and comfort to?”

He named the victims: “Not to Senator Van Hollen’s own constituents like the Morin family or Kayla Hamilton.”

Miller delivered the devastating assessment: “How broken is that man’s heart? How broken is his conscience that he doesn’t have even an ounce of empathy or time or concern to share with those families?”

He stated the indictment: “None of that concerns him in the least. His heart is reserved for an illegal alien who’s a member of a foreign terrorist organization.”

He concluded: “I’m beyond appalled.”

Miller’s response reframed the entire controversy. Van Hollen was spending his political capital defending himself against margarita photos. Miller was asking why the senator had traveled to a foreign country to visit a deported gang member instead of visiting the families of that gang member’s victims in his own state.

The Bukele Photo Strategy

Van Hollen’s accusation that Bukele staged the margarita photo to embarrass him revealed an interesting dynamic. El Salvador’s president had turned the Democratic senator’s visit into a public relations weapon — using the images of a U.S. senator socializing with a deported criminal to demonstrate the absurdity of the American Democratic Party’s position on immigration enforcement.

Whether the drinks were placed deliberately or were simply part of normal Salvadoran hospitality, Bukele’s decision to post the images was strategic. The photos told a story that no amount of context could fully neutralize: a United States senator sitting across from a man with an MS-13 record, in a country that senator had traveled to specifically to advocate for that man’s return to the United States.

Van Hollen’s forensic analysis of the salt rim on the glasses — arguing that the undisturbed garnish proved he hadn’t sipped the drink — was a level of detail that inadvertently highlighted how far removed the conversation had gotten from the actual policy issue. The senator was performing crime scene analysis on a cocktail glass while the families of MS-13 victims in his home state of Maryland waited for him to acknowledge their suffering.

The Morin and Hamilton Families

Miller’s invocation of the Morin and Hamilton families was the most politically devastating element of his response. Both families were Van Hollen’s constituents — Maryland residents whose loved ones had been killed by illegal immigrants.

Rachel Morin had been murdered while jogging on a trail in Bel Air, Maryland. Her mother, Patty Morin, had become one of the most visible angel moms in the country, appearing at the White House and pleading with the press to “tell the truth” about illegal immigrant crime.

Kayla Hamilton was a 20-year-old autistic woman who was strangled to death in her apartment in Aberdeen, Maryland, by an illegal immigrant MS-13 member who had been released into the United States as an unaccompanied minor.

Both victims were from Maryland. Both were Van Hollen’s constituents. Both were killed by MS-13 members — the same organization that Garcia, the man Van Hollen traveled to El Salvador to visit, had been identified as a member of by two separate federal judges.

Miller’s question — why Van Hollen had time to fly to El Salvador for Garcia but not to visit the Morin or Hamilton families — was unanswerable. The senator had prioritized a deported gang member over his own murdered constituents. No amount of margarita forensics could explain that choice.

The Broader Democratic Problem

The Margarita Gate episode encapsulated the Democratic Party’s broader problem on immigration. Instead of acknowledging that the deportation of a documented MS-13 member was justified, the party’s position required defending the man’s right to remain in or return to the United States. This forced Democrats into increasingly absurd positions — flying to foreign countries to visit deported criminals, holding press conferences about staged cocktail photos, and expending political capital on a cause that the vast majority of Americans opposed.

Van Hollen’s insistence that Bukele was the one engaging in deception missed the larger point. The deception that mattered was not whether drinks were staged for a photo. The deception was the Democratic narrative that painted deported criminals as victims and enforcement actions as injustices.

Key Takeaways

• Van Hollen held a press conference on “Margarita Gate,” insisting: “Neither of us touched the drinks. Nobody drank any margaritas.”
• He accused Bukele of staging the photo: “A government person deposited the glasses. The salt rim was undisturbed — this is the lengths Bukele will go to deceive people.”
• Stephen Miller: “His heart is reserved for an illegal alien who’s a member of a foreign terrorist organization. Not for his own constituents like the Morin family.”
• Miller asked: “How broken is his conscience that he doesn’t have an ounce of empathy for those families? I’m beyond appalled.”
• The controversy highlighted Van Hollen’s choice to visit a deported MS-13 member rather than the families of MS-13 victims in his own state of Maryland.