The test of American constitutional democracy is unfolding in the unlikely place: a dark Central American prison system.
US President Donald Trump does a lot during his second term Authoritarian or illegalHe threatened Do more.
But he hasn't crossed a line, at least not yet. He did not intentionally, clearly violated the court order, and crossed the Rubicon over the constitutional unmanned land where the rules did not apply.
This is what makes Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s case more than just a vague story about a man’s deportation of different El Salvador prisons, including what was originally a notorious Gulag-like anti-sanitation facility.
I don't know much about this person himself.
This week the court ruled Recognized allegations Abrego Garcia is a low-level Gang memberstroubled by the history of allegations of domestic abuse. Or did he actually escape the life of a construction worker in Maryland with his native El Salvador and joins his American wife and children?
In what he calls a gang tie Court ruling “Maybe, but maybe not,” said this week.
What is clearer about the case is that it has the potential to open the floodgates for a constitutional crisis under Trump, which many people are worried and predicted.
The court ordered the government to at least try to comply with the law. In other words, work hard to get Abreg Garcia back. Submit proper paperwork; and seek to deport him again – but legally.
So far, what has Trump’s team responded? Complete mockery. The government was condemned by the lower courts and ridiculed them. The Supreme Court weighed Trump, and now, Trump may have violated the High Court for the first time.
He obviously liked the fight: Americans are now talking about immigration again, not about a lot of unpopular tariffs – a Popular issues For Trump.
happen6:25The lawyer said
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the judge's order that the Trump administration promoted the return of a Maryland man who was wrongly deported to El Salvador, but the president of no country seemed interested in bringing Kilmar Abrego Garcia home. During a visit to the White House on Monday, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele said: “How do I smuggle terrorists into the United States?” It happened that host Nil K▲Ksal spoke with Nicole Hallett, director of the Immigration Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School.
But members of the legal community, no only Liberalsinsisting that this is bigger than immigration or any single case and beyond normal domestic politics.
“We are quickly approaching the first real moment of truth,” said Dean Harold Hongju Koh, a professor of constitutional law and legal counsel to the State Department during President Obama.
“Will the Supreme Court let him escape with a transparent fake? If not, will Trump publicly violate court orders?” Koh wrote in an email to CBC News. “And, will the American public accept the shocking claim that Trump has the right to transport innocent people like Abrego García and even American citizens to sea hell on fig leaves without proper procedures?”
The lower court described the case as amazing. In a decision on Reagan's appointment, the court said some legal disputes were complicated. But not this.
“It's not difficult at all,” the three-member Circuit Court of Appeals said in a unanimous ruling issued Thursday.
“The government is advocating the right to hide residents of the country in foreign prisons without due process, which is the basis of our constitutional order,” the decision said.
“It was not only shocked to the judge, but also to the Americans… still very intimate sense of intuitive freedom.”
Background of the case
This is the story Abrego Garcia tells in court documents.
He entered the United States illegally in 2011 as a teenager. He said he escaped El Salvador as a street gang in the capital threatened his family. His mother, Cecilia, runs a company that sells pupusas or cornmeal cakes and is forced to pay protection funds to the Barrio 18 gang.
When the fees rise, she is told that if she does not pay, one of her sons will have to join the gang or be killed. In panic, the family sent a son to the United States, where he became a citizen.
The gang then began asking Abrego Garcia – who ran away.
In 2019, he was arrested at a party site at a Home Depot in Maryland. He was planned to be deported. He had tried and did not ask for asylum, but he did win a rare order to detain. This means that the deportation from El Salvador is due to the risks of the gang.
He married an American who had a nonverbal and autistic son. He works full-time as a metal worker, has no criminal record and meets court conditions by regularly checking in with authorities.
Suddenly, two months ago, he was pulled by the immigration authorities. A few days later, his wife learned from online photos that he was taken to El Salvador Counter-terrorism prison.
She found him kneeling among a group of men, with his hair shaved and his arms on their heads.
A federal attorney admitted in court that deportation was a mistake. The court now asks Trump to bring Abrego Garcia back, or at least try.
But the government pulled them out. Actually, it says, nothing is wrong. even pause Federal lawyers who acknowledge this mistake.
Trump's team's opinion
Many Trump officials and the president themselves dismissed the lack of due process.
“Do you think we’re going to sit around and twist our hands and wonder, ‘Oh, maybe we should release this guy and give them a little extra time and give them a little extra chance to defend the case?’” White House aide Stephen Miller asked.
“So what? They kidnapped someone? Did they cut their throats? They shot them in the head and we said, 'At least the illegal aliens got a legitimate lawsuit.' They were illegal.
Miller accused the media of focusing on the case and said he hoped they would spend more time reporting on murders of illegal immigrants; the White House highlighted one by inviting a sad mother to the media briefing room.
Then, Trump's team took a rare step Case file Questioning Abreg Garcia's innocence. Some claim that he wore gang-related symbols when he was arrested in 2019. With two famous criminals; and, a reliable informant identified him as “Chequeo”, the lowest rank in MS-13. The document also claims his gang nickname is “Chele”.
The government also promoted two separate Police reportfiled on different occasions, his wife accused him of beating and scratching her. It even released Old police report After a routine traffic stop, an official believed he might be involved in smuggling.
But Abrego Garcia was never charged with a crime. His attorney also said the gang allegations were called illogical by a source because he was accused of belonging to a gang chapter in New York but living only in Maryland.
El Salvador President Nayib Bukele met with U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington and raised a question Monday asking back to Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident who was filed for a U.S. court, who admitted to being expelled. Buckley dismissed the issue as “absurd” and suggested that he would not release El Salvadorian citizens, whom Buckley would describe no evidence as “terrorists” in that country.
Next step: The moment of truth
The lower court ordered the return of Abrego Garcia and given due process, hoping to be sworn in by April 23, explaining why they have not complied so far.
The Supreme Court hasn't gone that far. It said the government must try to “promote” his return and show how it tried. It is also required that the lower court adjust its instructions.
The final test will take place when the court makes new instructions and how Trump responds to them.
The initial signs are not hopeful. The administration has continually misunderstood the initial Supreme Court ruling, calling it a 9-0 decision in favor of Trump.
It also reached out and said that with all these procedures, it is impossible to deport millions of illegal immigrants. But it has nothing to do with millions of cases: it's about 1,000 people per year Typically, withholding order status is granted like Abrego Garcia.
Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen met directly with a Maryland man for allegedly being wrongly deported to El Salvador for allegedly being in a violent MS-13 gang. Despite federal court orders, the Trump administration refused to bring him back.
El Salvador's president joined in the mockery. Nayib Bukele claims to be powerless and can put Abrego Garcia on a plane to the United States
He said Abrego Garcia has nowhere to go, troll Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen, who visited with prisoners in El Salvador, who he claimed were “Drink margaritaVan Hollen denied that they had been drinking and claimed that people in Bukele put their glasses on the table for stage photos.
Among his numerous tweets, Buckler described it as a game of chess.
But this is not a game. This is a cruel question for the Constitutional Republic. In this week's decision, the Fourth Circuit actually begged the government to respect the law. It calls this behavior futile.
“[The administration] “The court may be successfully weakened, but over time, history will conquer those things from all possible miserable gaps, and timely laws will sign its epitaph.”
“We still insist on hope that our good brothers in the executive branch do not naively believe that the rule of law is crucial to the spirit of the United States. This case provides them with a unique opportunity to prove this value and call on the best we have within us.”
