President
Donald Trump and El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele were seated in the Oval Office.
Like a couple of slimy bullies who publicly ridiculed U.S. courts that have mandated the return of an incorrectly deported man from Maryland.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a father and sheet metal worker, was deported
to a notorious prison in El Salvador due to what the Trump administration admitted in court was an “administrative error.” You don’t have to care about him or his family – though anyone with a hint of morality would – but you darn well better care about a U.S. president openly defying a
U.S. Supreme Court
order while yukking it up in the White House with a Central American leader who dubbed himself “
world’s coolest dictator
.”
Abrego Garcia, 29, was
detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Agents based in Maryland on March 12 were quickly sent off to something akin to a gulag in El Salvador. This move was done in clear disregard for established protocols.
An immigration judge’s decision from 2019 regarding Abrego Garcia
could not be removed to El Salvador because he would face persecution.
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Before delving further into this blatant injustice, it’s important to recall that this is the president the Republican Party desired. Unless they explicitly state otherwise, I will presume that their silence signifies approval of his authoritarian conduct.
Abrego Garcia was incorrectly deported. Trump won’t take any action to bring him back.
The administration has claimed Abrego Garcia is a gang member, but
a federal judge has already said there’s no evidence to support that claim
. On April 10,
The Supreme Court supported an order from a lower court.
mandating the administration to assist in bringing Abrego Garcia back to the United States.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote
“To this very day, the
The government has provided no legal foundation for this.
For Abrego Garcia’s warrantless arrest, his deportation to El Salvador, or his detention in a Salvadoran prison. It couldn’t be done either way.
It has become evident that Trump and his associates intend to disregard the directive to repatriate Abrego Garcia. This resolve solidified on April 14 during a meeting in the Oval Office where the decidedly uncool self-proclaimed dictator Bukele stated, “How could I send him back to the U.S.? Should I sneak him into the country? Absolutely not. Such an idea is absurd.”
This doesn’t make our large, formidable American president appear very strong.
Actually, it seems as though a dictator sauntered into the Oval Office and informed Americans that their insignificant president cannot recover an improperly expelled individual from a tiny nation in Central America.
It appears Trump is leveraging El Salvador to assist him in defying court orders.
The only other possibility is that Trump and Bukele are in cahoots and are jerking the U.S. Supreme Court around while flaunting their laws-don’t-apply-to-us attitudes.
If that’s the case, then it appears the U.S. government can simply disappear a person legally residing here with a wife and child who are are U.S. citizens and then fart around as if federal court orders are meaningless. And if THAT’S the case, then the idea of America is pretty much shot.
Trump is paying the El Salvadoran government $6 million
to take alleged gang members whom Immigration and Customs Enforcement rounds up without apparent due process.
During their discussion at the White House, they reached a certain moment when
Trump said to Bukele
: “Homegrowns are next. The homegrowns. You gotta build about five more places. It’s not big enough.”
This indicates that the plan involves transporting bona fide U.S. citizens, specifically those labeled as “criminals” by the Trump administration, to detention centers in El Salvador.
And let’s just say, this should frighten you more than an all-American apple pie.
If Trump can ignore the Supreme Court, it spells doom for America.
Once more, you must certainly be concerned about the Maryland man currently suffering through who-knows-what in a Central American jail.
And you should be just as concerned about the
other seemingly innocent immigrants
ending up “by mistake” being sent back to that very jail.
But even if you don’t care about what happens to immigrants, I strongly suggest you think long and hard about what it means to have a president who gleefully ignores the courts. I want you to ponder that slippery slope and whether your idea of America involves a king who answers to nobody dispatching American citizens he happens to dislike.
Because that Oval Office meeting with El Salvador’s president showed, in no uncertain terms, that we’re perilously close to a scenario where Trump just does as he pleases. If that’s what Republicans want, they should have the guts to stand up and say so, because this is what they asked for.
But for everyone else, it’s time to stand up and shout “Hell no!” right freakin’ now, and not a moment later.
Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at
@rexhuppke.bsky.social
and on Facebook at
facebook.com/RexIsAJerk
The article initially appeared on USA TODAY:
America is dangerously close to being run by a king who answers to no one | Opinion
