By Arturo Castañares
Publisher

The continuing controversy over an El Salvadorian man’s wrongful deportation by the Trump Administration to a notorious prison in his home country is an example of the blatantly punitive nature of Trump 2.0 and his total abandonment of the rule of law. 

Trump and his minions are celebrating the deportation of a man they labeled a gang member with no proof and deported with no legal review or due process, dooming him to an uncertain future in a dangerous prison filled with murderers and rapists. 

But as more details surface, the reality is that Trump’s aggressive stance toward immigration is leading to a lawless vigilante form of justice that is anything but just, and it should concern everyone that they or someone they love could face a similar fate. 

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, 34, came to the US in 2011 when he was 16 after his family was extorted by a local gang known as Barrio 18. The gang allegedly demanded money to protect the Garcias' family business or Garcia and his brother would have to join their gang. 

As many immigrants from dangerous countries do, Garcia sought refuge in the US but entered the country illegally as an undocumented immigrant. 

Eight years later, Garcia was arrested in 2019 while looking for day labor work at a Home Depot parking lot. During the arrest, one of the other workers told police Garcia was “a gang member” without offering any proof. Garcia was transferred to ICE custody to be processed for deportation. 

During that deportation process, police documented Garcia as a gang member because “he was wearing a Chicago Bulls hat and a hoodie" and a confidential informant claimed Garcia was affiliated with an MS-13 gang based in New York, although Garcia had never lived in New York. 

Garcia was never accused or convicted of any crimes before being arrested for his immigration status. 

No evidence of Garcia actually being a gang member was ever introduced in court, and Garcia has consistently denied any connection to any gang. 

While going through the legal process, Garcia married a US citizen and had a child born in the US, making that child a US citizen as well. Garcia and his wife have also been raising her two children from a previous marriage, and all three children have special needs. 

In October 2019, Garcia applied for asylum and was denied because there is a one-year limit on seeking asylum protection, but the immigration judge granted Garcia "withholding of removal" status that prevented his deportation due to the threat that gangs would pose to him. 

With the removal hold, Garcia had protected legal status and was granted a work permit by the US Department of Homeland Security. 

Garcia continued to work and help raise his children in Maryland, and had annual check-ins with Immigration and Customs Enforcement without any issues or criminal problems. 

But on March 12th, after picking up his son after work, Garcia was stopped by police in a targeted immigration sweep. Police told him his “status had changed” and transferred him to ICE custody. 

Garcia was then sent to a detention center in Texas, and, just two days later, was put on one of three airplanes sent directly to El Salvador, but his family had no idea where he was. 

Then the Trump Administration announced they had deported known gang members to El Salvador under a $6 million a year program to house criminals at that country’s Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT), a notoriously tough maximum security prison in Tecoluca, El Salvador, built in 2022 specifically to house gang members. 

Shockingly, Garcia’s wife only found out where he was when she saw him in videos from news reports from CECOT and she immediately contacted lawyers to seek his return. 

During a court fight, US Justice Department lawyers admitted they knew about Garcia’s withhold order and that his deportation was “an administrative error” but argued the court lacked jurisdiction to order the return of Garcia because he was no longer in US custody. The judge ruled his deportation without legal process was illegal and ordered the US to return him. 

The judge decided that the deportation "shocks the conscience", was "wholly lawless”, and confirmed the government had presented "no evidence" that Garcia was a gang member.

The Justice Department appealed to the Fourth Circuit in Virginia, but the case was upheld. The appeals court ruled that the US has “no legal authority to snatch a person who is lawfully present in the United States off the street and remove him from the country without due process” and that Trump’s claims “that the federal courts are powerless to intervene, are unconscionable.”

Still, the Trump White House appealed to the US Supreme Court under an emergency docket, and Chief Justice John Roberts issued a stay until the full Court could review the case. 

Three days later, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous yet unsigned decision stating that Garcia was “subject to a withholding order forbidding his removal to El Salvador, that the removal to El Salvador was therefore illegal”, and that lower court "properly requires the Government to facilitate Abrego Garcia's release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador."

Although that full legal review unanimously concluded that Garcia was illegally deported and should be returned to the US, Trump and his staff have continued to call Garcia an undocumented immigrant and gang member, defending their lawless behavior. 

This week, when El Salvador’s President, Nayib Bukele, visited the White House, he told reporters it was “absurd” to suggest he would return Garcia to the US, calling Garcia a “terrorist” and saying “I'm not going to do it. The question is preposterous.”

Since that meeting, Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff and Immigration advisor Stephen Miller called Garcia “an illegal alien” and said that if he were returned to the US he would be deported again. 

So why is this whole sordid affair even newsworthy if it's up to the President to handle immigration issues?

Because, up until Trump’s presidency -the second more so than the first- the US was a nation of laws where everyone, guilty or innocent, rich or poor, citizen or visitor or even undocumented immigrant, had the Constitutional right to due process under the law. 

And, of course, our laws don't just protect US citizens because even foreign visitors are protected against both crimes and allegations leveled against them through legal processes.

Garcia was living his life legally in the US under existing laws, complying with every requirement of his withholding order, paying taxes, and raising his US citizen child. 

Then one day he was snatched off the streets, held in custody without contacting his family or lawyer, and flown to a hardcore prison in El Salvador after baselessly being labeled a gang member and criminal. 

Now our government admits it was an error but washes its hands of rescuing him from the dangerous third-world prison where they sent him, and returning him home to his family. 

And why should any of this concern US citizens here legally?

Because Trump this week suggested that he would send “homegrown” criminals -meaning US citizens- to El Salvadorian prisons if he could. 

This is a chilling statement aimed at scaring people, but Trump seems to be boasting that he truly believes —and now behaves like—he is above the law. 

This lawlessness must stop. No one is safe when anyone is at risk of such an egregious violation of our laws.