Also the administration claims to be "powerless" to free him now. Does anybody believe this? Terrifying.
This isn't the only case, how many others are out there? https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/01/its-a-tradit...
This isn't the only case, how many others are out there? https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/01/its-a-tradit...
It's all big talk and false macho garbage and then the next moment victim card when the president complains that people say bad things about him and he needs the legal system to come down on critics ...
The information omitted by the AP article completely changes the understanding of what actually happened.
While it remains, sadly, Constitutional for the US to enslave people, and the various iterations of statute law abolishing the export slaves first in 1794 and then the slave trade more generally later probably do not bind the operations of the US government only other persons subject to it, the Constitution does require that those enslaved—and those being committed to CECOT are not merely being removed they are being enslaved and trafficked—may only be so enslaved as a punishment for a crime of which they have been duly committed.
So while the actual process in the Alien Enemies Act removals is executive fiat, and the due process under existing law for deportation (which is not afforded in Alien Enemies Act removals) is administrative rather than criminal, the Constitutionally-mandated process for those receiving the sanction being applied in the Alien Enemies Act process is normal criminal process.
It’s like civil trespass. You don’t need a trial to kick someone off your property. And when the police remove them, they’re not being punished.
In the many years we've been discussing similar things I've never known you to change your mind on even the smallest point of any subject. I frankly just don't respect you enough to put more energy into this conversation.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Due_process
Deportation is not an “extreme sanction” if it’s proven that someone is not a U.S. citizen. Non-citizens have no right to remain on U.S. soil except what the government chooses to extend.
But this particular person we are talking about got a hearing and a BIA appeal and was found to be deportable. His asylum request claim was denied. What’s perplexing is why the immigration judge didn’t order him deported.
I suspect the judge would allow a deportation to a country other than El Salvador as soon as the government presented an option of a country willing to accept him. I also suspect few governments in the world would assent to such a transfer.
Let’s say I do get a tourist visa, get admitted at the border, and the second I cross it, I begin openly violating the terms of the tourist visa. Can the government deport me right there and then, or am I entitled to a full jury trial that decides my deportation?
Finally, let’s say that I violate my tourist visa covertly instead of overtly, so that the government finds out only 3 years later. You seem to be claiming in your comment that at that point, I am certainly entitled to a jury trial. If you answered “no, you’re not entitled to trial” in the previous scenarios, what exactly do you think has changed that makes me entitled to it now?
To specifically answer your questions, I think it's reasonable that countries can deny visa applications, but I don't think they should be able to do so for behavior that would be legally be protected in the jurisdiction a person is trying to enter. I do not think the US should be able to deny visa applications for speech critical of the US government or Israel.
Once a person is in the country I would absolutely want for a judicial fact finding exercise to determine whether a person has violated the terms of their admittance. I would prefer that process to take the form of a jury trial, but practically speaking I will also accept the opportunity for people to appear before a judge as a workable but less than ideal situation.
For your final situation time in country changes things legally and entitles a person to a hearing before a judge. Ideally this would be a trial. Furthermore, it is repugnant to think that visas can be revoked for nothing but constitutionally protected activities, such as writing opinion pieces for a newspaper. I believe a judiciary not captured by fascists would find that such revocations are a violation of the plain letter of the first amendment and fourteenth amendment, and that the US government should not be able to take adverse actions against anyone for purely expressive activity.
This is very much not the current practice. The DS-160 form asks you a bunch of questions about things that are not illegal in US, but will almost certainly result in denial of the visa. Not only that, it asks about your family members, and your answers can and will cause visa denial, even if your family members are not applying for a visa with you. This is good and proper: foreigners have no right to enter our country, and just because something is legal for US citizens doesn’t meant it’s desirable, or that we need to extend this right to noncitizens.
> I do not think the US should be able to deny visa applications for speech critical of the US government or Israel.
How about for being a fan of Hitler, glorifying Holocaust, and advocating for changes in US constitution to allow wholesale genocide of Jews and Muslims? None of this is illegal. You are saying that we should we not be able to keep this freak out of our country, right?
> Once a person is in the country I would absolutely want for a judicial fact finding exercise to determine whether a person has violated the terms of their admittance.
When you enter US through a port of entry, a random CBP employee is fully empowered to deny you entry if he decides you violate the terms of your visa, or some other entry denial reason applies. Importantly, you have no right to judicial review of this denial. You can make an administrative appeal, but you are not entitled in any way to have a judge hear your complaint. You are saying now that the second you get admitted into the country, the same process that was due to you before the entry is now insufficient to adjudicate your rights. I don’t buy it, and neither does the law.
> Furthermore, it is repugnant to think that visas can be revoked for nothing but constitutionally protected activities, such as writing opinion pieces for a newspaper.
Why? You can very much be denied the visa for constitutionally protected activities. Happens all the time, in fact. It would be ridiculous if we could deny entry people who glorify Holocaust, but couldn’t kick them out if we find out they do so only after we let them in. First amendment doesn’t prevent us from denying entry to foreigners based on their speech. This is settled law. If we can refuse their entry, I don’t see why it should prevent us from removing them too.
However, much like the legal concept that habeas corpus follows the physical body, once a person is in the United States they should be granted the protections that are granted to all persons within the US and subject to its jurisdiction (I'm using "should" as both normative and descriptive, current actions are in part so controversial because they're violating this principle).
Before sending someone to an overseas slave camp no one has ever been released from? Uh, yes.
... in direct violation of an American judge's legal order. Even the White House admits this!
We're just gonna keep glossing over that fact, eh?
https://www.state.gov/extraditions
> In determining whether a fugitive should be extradited, the Secretary may consider issues properly raised before the extradition court or a habeas court as well as any humanitarian or other considerations for or against surrender, including whether surrender may violate the United States’ obligations under the Convention Against Torture. See 22 C.F.R. 95.1 et seq.
Hence the judge’s ruling, and the Administration’s admission of error.
The UK, incidentally, does the same for us if sending someone here would result in the death penalty.
Kind of a weird question to ask, given that the deportations to El Salvador pretext on the Alien Enemies Act involve none of that, and this specific individual was granted protection from deportation to El Salvador at his immigration hearing in 2019, and the government chose not to appeal.
Note that as well as being in violation of the only decision made by an immigration judge in his individual case, his removal under the Administrations invocation of the Alien Enemies Act also is outside of the authority of invocation of that Act even if one assumes the invocation is valid, as, being invoked on the pretext of an existing war with Venezuela initiated by a Venezuelan invasion of the US (which is preposterous on its face, and the Administration is doing nothing to prosecute the war initiated by this invasion beyond deporting people without due process, demonstrating the lack of seriousness of the claim), it applies only to Venezuelan nationals, and he is Salvadoran.
That said, before being enslaved—and those sent to CECOT are both enslaved and trafficked in the international slave trade—under the 13th Amendment, yes, anyone is entitled to criminal trial.
So the scope of what’s at issue here is compliance with whatever “protection from deportation” might exist where someone has been found to be deportable due to gang ties, and found to lack a valid asylum claim. What possible justification could there be, and are we going to let all the 22 million illegal aliens in the country invoke such third-string justifications?
That's the strength of the evidence that this individual was a gang member. If it can happen to him it can happen to you or to me.
Due process has been working mostly fine for the last 200+ years, no need to switch to fascism.
> In its court filing on Monday, the Trump administration said ICE “was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador,” but still deported Abrego Garcia “because of an administrative error.”
He was granted protection from deportation to El Salvador. You seem very concerned about the rule of law except when it's ignored or treated carelessly for immigrants.
> The allegations about his affiliation with MS-13 stem from a 2019 arrest outside a Maryland Home Depot store, where he and other young men were looking for work, according to the complaint.
They also claim he had legal protections from being deported specifically to El Salvador:
> An immigration judge denied Abrego Garcia’s asylum request in October 2019 but granted him protection from being deported back to El Salvador.
> In its court filing on Monday, the Trump administration said ICE “was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador,” but still deported Abrego Garcia “because of an administrative error.”
This is the part that concerns the US. Also the part where this is all being paid for by American tax dollars.
There is no legitimate reason for any El Salvadoran citizen to receive asylum in the U.S. The country is now safer than Canada. If this guy thinks he is being unlawfully detained, he can avail himself of the legal procedures of his own country.
The Guardian article gives some more background, and explains these (catholic) tattoos:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/01/its-a-tradit...
(Hint: there are legitimate reasons for receiving asylum in the US as well.)
He was not granted protection from deportation, he was granted protection from being deported to El Salvador. The administrative error is that he was indeed deported to El Salvador. If he was deported elsewhere this wouldn't be an issue:
> Abrego Garcia’s lawyer, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said U.S. government lawyers had multiple opportunities to try legally to deport him, including appealing the judge’s 2019 decision or deporting him elsewhere.
> The article omits the information about the immigration judge and Board of Immigration Appeals finding that he was deportable for being an MS13 member, making it seem like the “administrative error” was about that.
It is my understanding that he had not been convicted of anything and that the administration immediately backpedaled on the claim. Do you have contradictory source?
> There is no legitimate reason for any El Salvadoran citizen to receive asylum in the U.S. The country is now safer than Canada. If this guy thinks he is being unlawfully detained, he can avail himself of the legal procedures of his own country.
I don't see how this is relevant at all, nobody was claiming he had asylum here. Again, the problem is not that he was deported, the problem is that the US government violated a US court order.
This is exactly what I was complaining about when I said the article omits key information. Here is a better one: https://www.wmar2news.com/infocus/family-of-alleged-gang-mem...
He went before an immigration judge (which is not a real judge, but rather an employee of the DOJ) who determined that he was deportable due to gang ties. He then appealed to the Board of Immigration appeals, which is not a real court but an agency within the DOJ. The BIA affirmed the immigration judge.
He wasn’t eligible for asylum, so the immigration judge said he could be deported anywhere but El Salvador. There was no violation of a “court order,” just a mix-up within the executive branch about where an illegal alien could be deported to.
This isn't just flying somebody to their country of origin and leaving them there. This is flying somebody to an unrelated country and the paying a foreign nation to throw them in an overcrowded prison with no oversight for the rest of their lives.
That's true of most of the people the Trump administration are sending to CECOT in El Salvador, but not the guy the article is about:
> Abrego Garcia came to the U.S. illegally from El Salvador around 2011, “fleeing gang violence,” according to his lawyers, and made his way to Maryland to join his older brother, a U.S. citizen.