Due process is right, not you get good privileges
President Donald Trump said he could bring back Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose administration was wrongly deported to the notorious Secot prison in El Salvador. But despite the Supreme Court order “promoting” Abrego Garcia’s return, he will not be deported illegally.
Trump told ABC News' Terry Moran last month, “If he were the gentleman you said, I would do that.” Trump then insisted that Abreg Garcia had MS-13 Tattooed on his knuckles. When Moran pointed out that the photos in question were obviously eliminated to add these characters, Trump replied: “Why don't you say, 'Yes, he's willing,', you know, keep doing other things?”
The remaining evidence suggests that the administration has supported its claims, and as Trump has said, Abrego Garcia is a “member of violent, killer gang MS-13” who is just as fragile even if it is repeated. Abrego Garcia came to the United States illegally from El Salvador in 2011 and has since married an American citizen who has a U.S. child. The judge issued a so-called “pre-deductible” order in 2019 that prevented Abrego Garcia from being deported to El Salvador and found he had reason to worry that he would be persecuted by gangs who harass his family. When the Trump administration sent him to Cecot, an ICE official admitted that it was done because of an “administrative error”, given that the order for the judge to not be deported was valid.
Even so, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called Abrego Garcia a “foreign terrorist” and “gang members” who “engage in human trafficking.” Trump's border tsar Tom Homan called Abrego Garcia a “public security threat” and a “terrorist.”
These are very serious allegations. If Trump officials are confident in their authenticity, then recognizing Abrego Garcia's right to justify his conviction or dismissal. Abrego Garcia doesn't have to be sent to a foreign prison or continue to recover him there. The government can accuse him of crime, probably seeing him convict. The government may attempt to withdraw its protected status because he committed the offence that qualifies him for deportation, or he committed fraud in his application, or he is no longer threatened by the El Salvador environment, which can be based on the advantage of evidence, with a lower standard of evidence than is required for a criminal conviction. The government can also move Abrego Garcia to a third country as long as he is not tortured. Abrego Garcia may challenge this evacuation based on the possibility of persecution, but there is no clear lawyer and the government brings him elsewhere.
Except for Trumpian rhetoric, everyone in the United States has a legitimate process because the Constitution is to prevent the arbitrary exercise of power by the state. Since deportation is a civil process, there is less right to undocumented than a criminal trial, but this is different from the right to no criminal trial. This means there is a legal process that can be passed, and in terms of immigration law, the process is very respectful to the federal government.
“The detention of the removal is not a permanent and safe position in the United States,” Amanda Frost, an immigration expert at the University of Virginia Law School, told me. “So, I think the government’s threat to the removal of him is actually very realistic; his future in the United States is uncertain because the instability of the standards is uncertain. But that doesn’t mean they can remove him without due process.”
If Abrego Garcia does not have the right to stay in the United States, then the Trump administration can “bring him back and determine that through the procedures provided by the law”, Frost said. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem sued Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, who returned “no scenes” at a hearing last week, and it was more evidence that the Trump administration has clearly ignored the Supreme Court.
However, the government refused to bring him back to trial or dismissal, at least raising the question of whether it has evidence that its allegations against Abrego Garcia will be brought in court. “If the government is confident in its position,” Republican-appointed federal judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III wrote in his April 17 comment.
Then, we might infer that the government is “confident in its position.” The Trump administration directed allegations of terrorism and gang activity related to the three-person father, who married and resided in the United States, but provided obvious evidence to determine the claims.
Maryland District Court Judge Paula Xinis pointed out in his April 6 ruling that the federal government abandoned Abrego Garcia's hearing in court was “a danger to the community” and that “no evidence was provided to link Abrego Garcia to MS-13 or any terrorist activity.” There are things you can do on Fox News that are difficult to get out of the court.
Let's start with gang accusations. In 2019, Abrego Garcia was arrested while searching for construction in a parking lot in a Home Depot in Prince George County, Maryland. A police detective claimed that he was based on the words of an anonymous informant and the fact that Abrego Garcia wore a Chicago bull hat, “he was an active member of the MS-13 of the Westerners,” which was “indicating the culture of Hispanic gangsters.” According to the NBA, the Chicago Bulls sell more merchandise than the other four teams. The team's website sells 117 different types of team caps. Logic states that not every Bulls fan wearing a hat is a member of the Hispanic gang.
However, the immigration judge found that there was enough evidence to deport Abrego Garcia after being arrested in 2019. This is not a comment on the strength of evidence against Abrego Garcia, rather than the work the government has to do to expel undocumented people.
“It is to understand that the federal rules of evidence do not apply to immigration courts,” Heidi Altman of the National Center for Immigration Law told me. “As long as the immigration judge thinks the evidence is proof or relevant, it can be accepted and often brought to extremes. So, for example, rumors can be fully accepted in immigration courts,” Altman noted. “Police reports that in immigration court lawsuits, people are almost treated as criminal courts or federal courts, which is considered a criminal court or federal court.”
This lower standard of evidence and respect for law enforcement can lead to adverse outcomes. Detective who identified Abrego Garcia as a member of the gang this New RepublicGreg Sargent reported that he was later suspended for revealing information about police investigations to the sex workers he visited. As this Washington Post Prince George County police were also reportedly sued for the gang department for their actions. The department is accused of racial discrimination against black and Hispanic residents for encouragement to add it to the federal gang database that later retired, postal “As its credibility is questioned,” the report said.
“Gang units are motivated to fill the database,” postal “Because intelligence collection is the core function of grant funds,” the report said. In other words, even if the information they provide is false or unreliable, officials in the unit are rewarded for generating numbers. For fans electric wirepolice in gang departments are under pressure from “arrogant statistics”. As a result, the information they provide may not be reliable.
So the “gang members” and “terrorist” allegations are based on the double rumor of a shameful detective who is providing information to a retired gang database and the police feel forced to the juice because in the words of a former unit member postal“If you have not submitted your name, then your career, your time in that unit is very limited.”
This is not a credible basis for certain someone is in a gang. Even if he is in a gang, he still has the right to due process. After all, this is how you assess whether such allegations are true. Or at least, if you care if the person you are targeting is guilty, that's what it does. Due process is a constitutional right and a limit on government power, not your good privilege.
Abrego Garcia is also accused of being a “human trafficker.” Again, the government can seek to cancel his collection order or prosecute him. The allegation is based on Abrego Garcia's evacuation in Tennessee in 2022 while driving a car with eight other people. Federal investigators are reportedly investigating the incident and if it turns out that Abrego Garcia is involved in something illegal, the right thing is to charge him or remove him from his post in a legal way. “I don't guarantee that person, I provide certification for his due process,” Van Hollen told Noem when he insisted that he supports “known terrorists.”
The more confirmed charge is that Jennifer Vasquez Sura, the wife of Abrego Garcia, seeks multiple protective orders for his physical abuse. There is evidence that other domestic abuses were taken in court documents during the same period. Nevertheless, Vasquez Sura has been trying to get her husband back and had to move to a safe house as the Department of Homeland Security publicly released her private information and because of the Trump administration's allegations in the media that were not proved in court.
Perhaps the government's evidence is more than it has been leaked publicly, but after his deportation, its crazy scramble puts the archives into Abrego Garcia, which only highlights its failure to comply with due process before it was shipped to El Salvador.
If Abrego Garcia is a terrorist, then sue him. If he is a member of the gang, sue him. If he is a trafficker, then sue him. If he is a domestic abuser, sue him. However, the whole point of due process is that until proven guilty, not sent to a foreign gulag, and afterwards the rebuke of rumors and allusions. There is nothing here to justify the Trump administration's ignoring the Constitution and the law.
“We can have perfect due process in every court in the United States and we should all yell so much that our government can never torture people,” Altman told me.
The Trump administration’s allegations against Abrego Garcia reveal that it is not interested in people’s guilt or innocence for the guilt or innocence of El Salvador’s Gulag. Instead, the government sees men like Abrego Garcia as a collective intra-guise of a class of people, which exposes them to any conceivable abuse. Instead of establishing an inner gui before deporting him, the government chose to deport him and then attempted to establish its guilt in public opinion. But this is not how the legitimate process works. The judgment is after the establishment of the guilt or culprit, not before.