r/neoliberal • u/DifusDofus European Union • 1d ago
News (US) Trump administration argues judge can’t order return of man mistakenly deported to El Salvador
https://apnews.com/article/trump-el-salvador-prison-kilmar-abrego-garcia-5a92d6bd7f893eed64c2607cc129a6f9131
u/Tenebris-Malum NATO 1d ago
Government lawyers say they have no control over Abrego Garcia and no authority to arrange for his return — “any more than they would have the power to follow a court order commanding them to ‘effectuate’ the end of the war in Ukraine, or a return of the hostages from Gaza.”
“It is an injunction to force a foreign sovereign to send back a foreign terrorist within three days’ time. That is no way to run a government. And it has no basis in American law,” they wrote.
This is just obviously hollow nonsense. We're paying the government of El Salvador to house these people in their dystopian nightmare prison so we do have the authority and power to demand their return.
I really fail to see the benefit to the Trump administration for keeping someone they admitted should not have been deported in a hellhole prison indefinitely. But given their record rational decision making can't be expected from them.
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u/Wolf6120 Constitutional Liberarchism 1d ago edited 1d ago
Kristi Noem was down in El Salvador quite recently to film some self-congratulatory Instagram videos in this very prison.
She stood there, pursing her stupid silicone duck lips literally right in front of packed cells full of miserable, freshly-shaven inmates, excitedly gushing about how "This prison is one of the tools in our arsenal against illegal immigration," but now suddenly they apparently have no authority over it whatsoever?
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u/benutzranke 1d ago
The cruelty Is the point. I really hope at some point in the future you all find it in you to stop analysing this from this from this nonsensical political capital/electoral point of view and just accept that these people (which includes many millions of Americans who voted for it) want to exert human suffering for the sake of it. It’s not a means to an end, it’s the entire goal.
This reminds me of people who somehow try to argue that the Nazis could have won the war if they hadn’t done insert policy/ideological decision made from conviction and genuine belief. Maybe they would have but they also wouldn’t have been Nazis. Sometimes you have to believe people when they tell you who they are.
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u/SigmaWhy r/place '22: Neoliberal Battalion 1d ago
just accept that these people want to exert human suffering for the sake of it.
From what I've seen this is the opinion of the supermajority of the subreddit
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u/RagingBillionbear Pacific Islands Forum 19h ago
Yet people here think you can convince the government into not doing fascist shit.
There only one time the MAGA movement was willing to turn on Trump, and that was when he was not hurting the right people.
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u/TheloniousMonk15 1d ago
Democrats need to start holding rallies and have his wife speak up as well as other family members of wrongfully detained/deported people. They cannot concede the immigration debate to the Republicans just because the Republicans poll well on it.
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u/Fish_Totem NATO 1d ago
Try to have a hearing with his wife. The more you generalise it the more it becomes about immigration, which median voters unfortunately hate. Unfortunately we need to pick the single most egregious case / single most sympathetic victim and double triple quadruple down on that. People won’t care if it’s an immigration scandals. They’ll care if they know his name.
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u/TheloniousMonk15 1d ago
Yeah this is what the Republicans did successfully with Laken Riley. Despite your average undocumented person being far less likely to commit a murder than your average US citizen they made that one tragic murder look like a 9/11 attack and the median voter pictured your average undocumented migrant as a criminal.
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u/allbusiness512 John Locke 1d ago
Median voters are slightly racist and I’m not afraid to say it. We’re unique here in how we view immigration but the median voter is at minimum xenophobic/slightly racist.
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u/Jakexbox NATO 1d ago edited 1d ago
The median voter, maybe? Research into who swing voters actually are is quite fascinating. They tend to have more extreme unorthodox opinions. (538 Research)
The average voter doesn't vote based on immigration, nor do I believe the average American is racist enough to effect their vote. Most voters are partisans who vote the same "no matter what" anyways.
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u/ResponsibleChange779 Gita Gopinath 1d ago
I think it's also good to hammer home that tomorrow it could be you, your spouse, your kid, your friend whatever getting deported with no due process. Use fear like how the GOP uses it.
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u/Best-Chapter5260 1d ago
Democrats really need to take a page from The Lincoln Project on this stuff and start using fear-based messaging.
The difference between liberal-based fear messaging and conservative-based fear messaging is the former is actually rooted in reality.
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u/Bayley78 Paul Krugman 1d ago
I really don't think that moderates care. Unless its their friend who lost someone to ICE its a single case out of "hundreds of necessary deportations".
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u/AniNgAnnoys John Nash 1d ago
If I was an American, I wouldn't care what moderates thought. My support for the democrats would be dependent on them standing up for the rights if every American to not be bagged, and shipped off to another country without a trial.
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u/Bayley78 Paul Krugman 1d ago
Its not about agreeing with them. I'm just saying that the moderates won't be switching sides because democrats put a victim on the big stage. They had their chance to have a heart.
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u/AniNgAnnoys John Nash 1d ago
and my point is stop worrying about what moderates think
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u/Bayley78 Paul Krugman 17h ago
and we go back to theres no point in putting a victim on the stage for rallying points. Anyone who hates trump already knows what he's doing.
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u/obsessed_doomer 1d ago
I don't think it matters.
The admin could spirit literally anyone to El Salvador tomorrow and they'll be there forever.
It's no longer a popularism game (though if it was, polling shows people dislike this)
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u/Secondchance002 George Soros 1d ago
This. Public opinion can be changed. Do not give into this inhuman shit.
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u/CheetoMussolini Russian Bot 1d ago
Interview her. Get AOC to do it, get clips of it EVERYWHERE. On every social media platform. On every TV station.
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u/Acoolgamer6706 NATO 1d ago
Unironically how is this a winning position from this administration? Like politically speaking, they’re not even denying they made a mistake. This is logistically a confusing take at best. Why wouldn’t they just say they’ll get him out?
And away from strategy talk this is some fascist shit.
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u/SGTX12 Jerome Powell 1d ago
The winning position is that Trump deported a brown person. The people who this will resonate with do not care about the legality or method through which this was accomplished, only so long as one more non-white foreigner is out of the country.
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u/rTpure 1d ago
I think the term deport is misleading
They sent an innocent man to a prison for an indefinite amount of time with no trial
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u/BumblingBeeeee 1d ago
It was rendition. The government illegally renditioned a legal resident without due process.
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u/Traditional_Drama_91 NATO 1d ago
Exactly, there is a lot of reckoning that still needs to be done with the fact that his supporters are just racist(and or homophobic, sexist, etc.) and because of that logic and strategy are just going to be completely alien to decent people
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u/LivefromPhoenix NYT undecided voter 1d ago
Another reason out of touch "we need more bipartisanship" dem politicians are getting even more pushback this time around. Conservatives are absolutely reveling in being bad people, what does "bipartisanship" look like when you have partners like that?
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u/Traditional_Drama_91 NATO 1d ago
Yup, this isn’t going to end unless the party that traffics in this shit is dismantled, not compromised with.
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u/lunartree 1d ago
Prison is run by the government and exists within American borders. This is something else.
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u/gnarlytabby John Rawls 1d ago
To add to the other comments, the winning position in MAGA's' minds is "I did it and you couldn't stop me, resistance is futile on this and all other topics." They believe it demoralizes the opposition and they are only partly wrong.
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u/Mickenfox European Union 18h ago
Exactly, breaking the rules for the sake of breaking the rules is a great show of force for them.
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u/Albatross-Helpful NATO 1d ago
this is some fascist shit.
That's why they have to defend it. None of these people received due process. And now they're in a foreign black site where US law does not apply. The Trump position is "we can't obey you US court, because we don't have custody of that prisoner anymore, and even if we did, this court does not have jurisdiction in El Salvador." And also "you can't tell us not to snatch and grab undesirables because we're in a state of emergency"
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u/jaydec02 Trans Pride 1d ago
Trumps approval on immigration is still +10 right now. Voters actually like that he’s doing this shit.
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u/SapCPark 1d ago
Because immigration is the one position he isn't losing ground in polling. Americans are fine with this
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u/thehomiemoth NATO 1d ago
Ask any Trumpy and they are convinced this guy is a gang member running around killing Americans.
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u/DumboWumbo073 17h ago
They don’t care about laws anymore because Americans are too fucking lazy to stop them
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u/ConsequenceVast3948 1d ago
They have all the power and authority in the world when they are making stupid and outrageous mistakes and become powerless the moment they have to correct it. If they wanted they could bring him back immediately but they are afraid of the things he has to say.
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u/n00bi3pjs 👏🏽Free Markets👏🏽Open Borders👏🏽Human Rights 1d ago
Until the courts start arresting individual justice department lawyers and ICE members for contempt, nothing would change.
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u/rainbow3 1d ago
Under what agreement can the US send a Venezuelan citizen to El Salvador? Presumably the latter has to actually agree and therefore there is dialog with them?
And are they arguing that whatever error they make it cannot be corrected e.g. if they "accidentally" sent Kamala Harris to El Salvador there would be sadly no way to undo the mistake?
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u/pfmiller0 Hu Shih 1d ago
We are paying El Salvador to hold these people for us. We clearly have the ability to get people back.
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u/dawgthatsme 1d ago
This guy is actually from El Salvador.
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u/rainbow3 1d ago
You are right. So why is he in a prison? Is he there indefinitely without a trial?
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u/FuckFashMods NATO 1d ago
Anyone that participated in this illegal act needs to be jailed for willfully breaking the law.
We cannot allow this breach of justice
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u/ElectriCobra_ YIMBY 1d ago
If this really was the case - which it is not, we are paying the government of El Salvador for this - the naturally following argument would be that we should use force, which we are entirely capable of. It's just nonsense upon nonsense.
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u/ClearlyAThrowawai 1d ago
Big strongman president can't get tiny El Salvador to return American residents.
Absolutely disgusting. This is the government you want backing you up? Rolls over at the tiniest of difficulties? (Lol, we all know it's not true but they can't have it all ways)
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u/Im_A_Quiet_Kid_AMA Hannah Arendt 1d ago
I'm confused about the messaging here.
“It is an injunction to force a foreign sovereign to send back a foreign terrorist within three days’ time. That is no way to run a government. And it has no basis in American law,” they wrote.
Either he's a terrorist in their view, or they made a mistake.
In any case, the administration looks either incompentent or weak regardless of how you look at this. What is even the positive spin here?
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u/Unlevered_Beta Milton Friedman 1d ago
This makes no sense to me even from a cynical and amoral pure political damage control perspective. The smartest, most normal move would’ve been:
“There was an unfortunate bureaucratic error. We’re working to correct it. The man will be returned immediately.”
That would defuse the story in 24 hours. No further headlines, no Twitter firestorm, no legal chaos. They could quietly shuffle him back in, blame “red tape,” and move on. I mean FFS no one cares about Signal-gate anymore and that was several orders of magnitude worse as a fuck up than this. So why aren’t they doing that?
Is it because admitting error—even a (comparatively) tiny one—is a sign of weakness in MAGA culture? I mean Trumpism is in fact built on a “never apologize, never back down” posture, and even a bland bureaucratic correction is seen internally as a “loss” in that dynamic. It’s possible that they also fear that if they cave on this, they’ll look “weak on immigration” or open the door to scrutiny about deportation procedures generally.
But this is nevertheless a high-risk play, because I’d like to think most Americans—including many conservatives—would be disturbed if the full details hit home, and yet they are betting on the Streisand effect not taking hold and making this a bigger story, even while doing the very thing that makes it likelier by fighting this?
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u/CapuchinMan 1d ago
Quoting from the declaration of independence:
The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
...He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries...
...He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance...
...For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world...
...For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences...
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u/miss_shivers 1d ago
This whole case really just highlights everything that is wrong with presidential executive government.
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u/PierreMenards 1d ago
Obviously this whole situation is awful and Bukele would probably send him back if Trump phoned him up but this guy is a Salvadoran citizen, not an American one.
It’s a strange situation to be asking a foreign government to hand over their own citizen back to you on something other than an extradition request
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u/AI_Renaissance 1d ago
By that logic they'll say the same about American citizens being "mistakenly" deported.
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u/Xytak 1d ago
True but on the other hand, if the argument is he’s wanted for Salvadoran crimes, then the normal process would be for them to request extradition. Since he shouldn’t have been sent there in the first place, he should be brought back to the U.S. at which time El Salvador can file the proper extradition paperwork.
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u/TF_dia Rabindranath Tagore 1d ago
Bullshit, I am 100% sure that if Trump phoned Bukele asking him to collaborate with the court order he would immediately book the first plane to get Abrego García back into the USA.