The case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a rat’s nest of conflicting partisan interests. The Left is concerned that Donald Trump’s deportation of Abrego Garcia represents a new threat to civil liberties. The Right, meanwhile, is worried that every effort to deport non-citizens will be obstructed to the point of paralysis. Can both be correct?

Abrego Garcia’s story first caught media attention on 31 March when the Atlantic published a story with the headline: “An ‘Administrative Error’ Sends a Maryland Father to a Salvadoran Prison.” The “Maryland Father” designation, while accurate, infuriated the Right because a judge found sufficient evidence to determine that the man was a member of criminal gang MS-13, which went unmentioned in the initial Atlantic story. The quality of that evidence has since been the subject of raging debate, and the Trump administration took its time providing more information — not releasing some relevant new details until 16 April, after Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen had flown to El Salvador.

Nevertheless, the government’s original error remains salient. As the Atlantic noted, whether he should be allowed to stay or not, Abrego Garcia was protected by a “withholding of removal” status from the government at the time of his deportation, and that’s an error the Trump administration conceded.

The fight is now mostly about whether Abrego Garcia should be returned. The Supreme Court said Trump must “facilitate” his return, but the administration is arguing that because Abrego Garcia is a citizen of El Salvador it cannot compel Nayib Bukele to act. Trump’s Solicitor General John Sauer wrote last week: “Abrego Garcia is a citizen of El Salvador being detained in El Salvador by the government of El Salvador. To demand Abrego Garcia’s return is thus to demand that a foreign nation release one of its own citizens from one of its own detention centers and return him to the United States.”

Democrats are arguing that Trump is crossing a constitutional Rubicon by not actively “facilitating” Abrego Garcia’s return. But this is not a clear-cut question. Yale law professor Jed Rubenfeld helpfully explained today: “The White House may be dragging its feet — and it’s not exactly putting pressure on Bukele to let Garcia go. But it has not (yet) defied the Supreme Court, in part because the Court’s short, ambiguous order did not define facilitate and did not say exactly what the lower court can and can’t do when it comes to clarifying effectuate.”

Here’s what I don’t like about all of this: Democrats did not exactly flock to the southern border when the Biden administration’s policies incentivised a humanitarian catastrophe of historic proportions. Abrego Garcia should not have been deported, and he should be returned to face the fair legal process agreed upon. But he should not be allowed to stay.

Even if we set aside the MS-13 allegations, his asylum claim was made years after he crossed the border illegally and abused a system set up to accept refugees actively fleeing political violence. He has failed to show up for traffic hearings, been accused by his wife of domestic violence, and been stopped by law enforcement on suspicion of human trafficking.

Republicans are rightly irritated by the media circus over this single case. But they’re also dismissing the concerns over Abrego Garcia’s fate as bad-faith hysteria. Yes, Trump made a serious mistake. His administration is not fixing it. He is cozying up to El Salvador’s “dictator” President and flirting with the idea of sending US citizens to his prison. This is extremely unwise and, from a MAGA perspective, a waste of political capital.

Two things can be true at once: the Left is once again guilty of double standards on illegal immigration. But it is also making a legitimate point about the severity of the error that sent Abrego Garcia to El Salvador. It wasn’t an amusing mishap. Due process is meant to protect the US government from rendering injustices, even and especially when the person on the other side is hardly a Boy Scout.

This is why the GOP’s infatuation with Bukele is troubling. America is not El Salvador. Bukele is filling his prisons, like the maximum security prison holding Abrego Garcia, on the basis of emergency powers that suspend some of his citizens’ rights. They’ve wrongfully imprisoned at least 7,000 people who were later released. This “shoot now, aim later” approach may be popular in gang-plagued El Salvador, but in America it doesn’t — or shouldn’t — fly.

Bukele can run his country how he wishes, but the Trump administration doesn’t need to actually pay him $6 million to take deportees, whether they’re Venezuelan or Salvadoran. He can pay for his own citizens’ detention and his own prisons, and America can find a different solution. It all makes the Trump administration’s disinterest in correcting its own error in Abrego Garcia’s case seem like a genuine disinterest in the rule of law.

This case highlights the flaws in both the Left’s and Right’s arguments.  While Democrats are correct to call out the Trump administration’s serious mishandling of Abrego Garcia’s deportation, their sudden concern rings hollow given their muted response to the Biden-era border crisis. But in exposing the Left’s double standards, Trump has revealed his own.

Emily Jashinsky is UnHerd‘s Washington correspondent.

Even Jeffrey Dahmer got a trial

MnSpring wrote on 04/21/25 at 07:42:49:


 you don't have to be a citizen here to receive a fair trial

Eegore wrote on 04/21/25 at 05:05:00:


I’m pretty sure I call you Switzerland when you do that……which is often.

But I think I’m going to change your nickname to Mr. Opinion….

I think some clarification is in order. He first broke into the country in 2004 and was arrested in 2019 along with other MS 13 gang members outside of Home Depot. I believe when MS 13 was classified as a terrorist organization, I’m assuming immigration officials went through records identifying MS 13 members and he was flagged, picked up and the issue now is he was deported along with others when perhaps he shouldn’t of been because of the order granting him an order of withholding along with a work permit but he was not granted asylum.

I think the question now is, does, the government have authority to deport members of a terrorist organization back to their country of origin regardless of an immigration status determination before his membership in a terrorist organization, was known, or before, the terrorist organization was designated as such.

But go ahead and defend a human trafficking, wife beating, illegal, immigrant and pretending he’s Nelson Mandela.

He’s been moved to a different prison now. He’s El Salvador‘s problem, that’s where he’s from. Drop it and cut your losses.