Somin on the Abrego Garcia Case

"Due process is what keeps good people out of jail, even though it occasionally spares people -- such as yourself, -- who deserve to be confused for an immigrant or a criminal and sent straight to an El Salvadoran prison by an incompetent, authoritarian regime." -- Me, to Stephen Miller

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Ilya Somin of the Cato Institute summarizes the status of the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran migrant illegally deported to imprisonment in El Salvador, and why you should be concerned about it.

As you may know, Abrego Garcia was rounded up and deported to El Salvador without a hearing, and the Trump Administration has since admitted the deportation was in error.

Somin's update:

When the case was remanded back to the district court, Judge Paula Xinis issued an order instructing the defendants to "take all available steps to facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia to the United States as soon as possible." The government indefensibly interpreted this as merely requiring it to remove "domestic" obstacles to his return, making no effort to get the Salvadoran government to release him from prison. That makes no sense in a context where the Salvadorans had imprisoned Abrego Garcia at the behest of the US, and the Trump Administration could easily secure his release simply by demanding it. As conservative legal commentator Ed Whelan puts it: "The administration is clearly acting in bad faith ... The Supreme Court and the district court have properly given it the freedom to select the means by which it will undertake to ensure Abrego Garcia's return. The administration is abusing that freedom by doing basically nothing."

The Administration coupled this bad-faith failure to follow the Supreme Court's and district court's orders with unsubstantiated claims that Abrego Garcia was a member of the MS 13 drug gang. They have no evidence for that. And if they did, the proper course of action is to charge him with it in court, rather than deportation and imprisonment without due process. [bold added]

Somin is absolutely correct to warn:

I would add that this danger [of whisking people to foreign prisons, then disavowing responsibility] isn't limited to recent immigrants. It applies to US citizens, as well. The threat to US citizens' rights is no longer just theoretical, since the president is openly considering the possibility of deporting and imprisoning US citizens in El Salvador. [bold added]

As if this weren't bad enough, none other than the Vice President is pooh-poohing any concern about this serious threat to liberty as "leftist" pearl-clutching.

-- CAV

Updates

4-17-24: Corrected a typo.