Dem
47
GOP
53
Today's post, on the whole, is going to be kind of grim. Don't say we didn't warn you. And it starts with this: The Trump administration advised yesterday that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was accidentally deported to El Salvador, will remain disappeared.
It was actually a circus-like display of buck-passing. Both Donald Trump and AG Pam Bondi asserted that, now that Garcia is in Salvadoran custody, the U.S. does not get to decide what happens with him. This despite the twin facts that: (1) It's the U.S. that sent him there, and that is paying for him to be housed in a Salvadoran prison, and (2) If the U.S. says "Jump," El Salvador President Nayib Bukele says "How high?" Put another way, if, say, Steve Bannon had accidentally been deported, do you really think there is nothing the White House could, or would, do to get him back?
Conveniently, Bukele was at the White House yesterday for... meetings, we guess. And when he was asked about returning Garcia, he said he just doesn't have that authority. "How can I return him to the United States? Am I going to smuggle him?" he asked. "Of course I'm not going to do it? The question is preposterous." So, for those keeping score at home, Trump can't get Garcia back because that's Bukele's call, and Bukele can't send Garcia back because that's Trump's call. Do these people really think that anyone, other than the cultists, buys ANY of this?
The production of so much industrial-grade bull**it has quite a few people wondering if there's something more to the story that is being withheld from the public. For example, the White House claims that some of the information about Garcia is "classified," which has led to some (limited) speculation that he's a spy or is otherwise involved in activities that cannot be publicly disclosed. Others suggest that Garcia is dead, and that is the reason for the foot-dragging. Still others think he's alive, but somehow lost, such that the White House and the Bukele administration can't find him.
In our view, the truth is both simpler and more scary. The Supreme Court delivered a flaccid decision that, in a presumable effort to allow the administration to save face, also gives the administration wiggle room to try to adhere to the letter of the ruling, while utterly ignoring its spirit. And so, the current position being argued by the White House is that: (1) they have done as the Supreme Court (and lower courts) ordered, since they have "tried" to get Garcia back, and have updated the courts on their activities to that end, and (2) even if the courts' orders have not been obeyed, well, federal courts have no jurisdiction over foreign countries, even if those foreign countries are illegally holding American citizens. Abrego Garcia is not a U.S. citizen but in 2019, an immigration judge granted him "withholding of removal" status, which meant he could not be legally deported. He is a citizen of El Salvador, so this is a borderline case with El Salvador maintaining it doesn't have to ship its own citizens to a foreign country. Trump is clearly testing the waters here to see what happens and will base his next move on how it plays out.
In other words, the White House is using the gray area that John Roberts & Co. created to put to the test exactly what abuses of process it can get away with. And if the courts, including the Supremes, do not find a way to crack down on this, the administration will have given itself the authority to disappear literally anyone. After all, Garcia was in the country legally (permanent alien status), and besides, there is nothing in the arguments made by Trump, Bondi, et al. that have anything to do with citizenship status. It's 100% "Once someone has been turned over to authorities in another country, it's beyond the power of the U.S. government."
And just in case you think this might be an overreaction, Trump yesterday said he's "open" to deporting "homegrown criminals." Meanwhile, when Bondi appeared on Fox last night, and was asked whether it is legal to send U.S. citizens to foreign prisons, she refused to answer.
Now, we are exceedingly mindful around here about Godwin's law and its various corollaries. However, we now have a situation where people are being rounded up and sent to brutal prisons in a foreign country, without benefit of due process, and without any indication that they have committed a crime. Their only "offense," such as it is, is that they have been deemed enemies of the state. If anyone can identify a substantive difference between this and the early stages of the Nazi program—where the shipping of political opponents, alleged criminals, accused agitators, and other "undesirables" to places like Auschwitz in Poland preceded the targeting of Jews, and the campaign of mass executions—then they are shrewder students of history than we are. Oh, and by the way, yesterday the administration set aside a piece of land on the Mexican border where accused undocumented immigrants will be held—concentrated, as it were—under the supervision of troops from the U.S. Army.
Ultimately, the ball is the court (no pun intended) of U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis and of John Roberts to do something about this absolutely vile trampling on the Constitution and on human rights being undertaken by Donald Trump and his band of lickspittle stooges. (Z)