Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland resident whom the Trump administration illegally sent to a notorious El Salvador prison in March, has become the face of the president’s assault on due process. Abrego Garcia, who fled gang violence in El Salvador at sixteen, was granted a withholding-of-removal order (a type of legal status similar to asylum) in 2019. He obtained a work permit and was living and working legally when he was snatched away. His wife and children, all U.S. citizens, await his return.
Abrego Garcia is one of hundreds of people immigration authorities sent to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in El Salvador. Others include Andry Hernandez Romero, a Venezuelan makeup artist who had sought asylum in the United States because he was targeted for his political views and for being gay, according to his attorney. Another, eighteen-year-old Carlos Daniel Terán, was disappeared despite having no criminal record, and his family believes he is in CECOT. And after Yeison Rodrigo Jaimes-Rincon, a Venezuelan asylum-seeker living in South Shore, was detained by immigration authorities, his family had no idea of his whereabouts until they saw him in a video of CECOT prisoners. There are certainly many more like them.
On April 10, the Supreme Court issued a rare 9-0 verdict directing the administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return, noting that he was “improperly” rendered to El Salvador. The president’s minions have thumbed their noses at the ruling, playing word games about the limits of their ability to facilitate the return of someone in custody overseas. “There was no situation ever where he was going to stay in this country,” said U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi. El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, who agreed to imprison detainees shipped there in exchange for a total of about $6 million, smirked at White House reporters who asked if he would return Abrego Garcia to the U.S., claiming the question was “preposterous.”
In court filings and public statements, President Donald Trump’s representatives have admitted Abrego Garcia was rendered to El Salvador as the result of a “clerical” or “administrative” error. Meanwhile, Trump has taken every opportunity to slander the father of three as a violent gang member and terrorist. All the evidence indicates he is neither.
“When politicians today invoke terrorism they are speaking, of course, of an actual danger. But when they train us to surrender freedom in the name of safety, we should be on our guard,” writes Timothy Snyder in On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century. “People who assure you that you can only gain security at the price of liberty usually want to deny you both.”
Snyder’s warning is all too relevant. During Bukele’s visit to the Oval Office, Trump was caught on a hot mic telling him these deportations are only the beginning. “The homegrowns are next, the homegrowns,” Trump said. “You’ve got to build about five more places.” On Monday, he ominously claimed the United States “cannot give everyone a trial” before deporting them. These are full-throated attacks on due process and the rule of law.
Trump is making every conceivable effort to shred the U.S. Constitution. If he succeeds in defying the Supreme Court, our 236-year-old experiment with democracy will be finished. It will take sustained, massive resistance to thwart the would-be dictator. Call your representatives and write your senators. And on May 1, put on your marching shoes.
