…and the Trump Administration is completely in agreement. Color me shocked.
We in that Constitutional Crisis yet?
The Trump administration has been fighting for days against a judge’s order to return a wrongfully deported Maryland man to the United States. But this meeting in the Oval Office was the most clear example yet that Trump had no intention of returning Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to the United States, despite the Supreme Court instructions the U.S. government to take steps to return the Salvadoran migrant. Trump and Stephen Miller essentially scoffed at the Supreme Court’s ability to direct the administration to take any action on foreign policy and made clear that if anyone was going to return Garcia to the United States, it would have to be Bukele. Bukele rejected any notion he would return the father of three who has no criminal record.
I think we are, or at the line of demarcation. It is pretty clear the executive branch is openly defying the judicial branch. The Constitution is clear on what should be done. The inherent weaknesses of our grand experiment stand naked in the sun.
Looking at this from a Trumpian POV, what is the rationale for defiance? Clearly Garcia is not a threat. The administration could at least give the appearance of respecting the courts and bring him home. It almost as if there is something else in play; wonder what it is. (Checks the authoritarian handbook… there it is).
I was listening to a discussion yesterday with a journalist from El Salvador. He was discussing Bukele’s rise and continued popularity. His Security minister Hector Gustavo Villatoro. There is no disputing the decrease in murder rate and clearing out of the gang violence from local communities.
But at the cost of due process. In addition to appropriate apprehension and incarceration, there are rampant misidentifications, false imprisonments, and draconian sentences and conditions. Add to that some brokered deals with MS13 leadership. Which this journalist claims was part of the agreement in the US sending known gang leaders there. If arrested in the US and tried in US courts, there is a trail. If they are deported and incarcerated, evidence gets imprisoned as well.
Of course, this is just reporting. But sheds more possible light on the mutually beneficial relationship.
I think your position yesterday was that if El Salvador told the US to “pound sand” that
We now have banked the sand pounding response.
Trump, Rubio, Miller et al are not going to lift a finger to do anything. In fact they seem to be positively revelling in their public moment of giving the judiciary the middle finger.
So here is an opportunity for you to express some genuine disdain for the government, without making a single reference to the Democrats.
They don’t care about this guy, at all. The opportunity has presented itself for Trump to kneecap the Supreme Court, the back channel diplomacy is about ensuring El Salvadore doesn’t undermine him. Getting Garcia back would be very easy - we ask, they agree. Bukele saying he can’t smuggle him into the US is a ludicrous straw man - noone is asking for that.
The leader of the GOP is even weaker than I thought. If he cannot even convince a tiny country like El Salvador to return our prisoner how is he supposed to get Putin to agree to a peace deal?
