Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence 250 years ago. Four of the numerous grievances he leveled at King George III have an uncanny application to Donald Trump. Jefferson accused the King of “abolishing our most valuable laws”, “altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments”, “excit[ing] domestic insurrections amongst us”, and – most ominously – “transporting us beyond the Seas to be tried for pretended offenses”. At Trump’s direction, on March 15th, some 200 migrants were “removed”, i.e., deported. They were forced onto three planes, flown “beyond the Seas” to El Salvador, and incarcerated in the notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) – all without an iota of due process. Haste, stealth and prevarication marked the Trump administration’s actions. Clearly, Trump wanted removal completed before anyone could exercise their constitutional rights.
Regarding at least one of the 200 – Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, an El Salvadoran native – the Trump administration’s illegal actions were simply astounding. In 2019, Abrego Garcia was granted “withholding of removal” status that specifically prohibited his removal to El Salvador and allowed him to remain and work legally in the U.S. Trump paid Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, six million taxpayer dollars to house the detainees – in what Trump’s Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, called “very good jails” – for up to one year, “pending the United States’ decision on [their] long term disposition”.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis described CECOT as one of the most “dangerous prisons in the world”, holding some 40,000 prisoners in “the most inhumane and squalid conditions known.” Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that “inmates are rarely allowed to leave their cells, have no regular access to drinking water or adequate food, sleep standing up because of overcrowding, and are held in cells where they do not see sunlight for days”. Very good jail, indeed!
Judge Xinis found “no legal grounds whatsoever for [Arbrego Garcia’s] arrest, detention, or removal.” The Government admitted it had “no legal authority to arrest him, no justification to detain him, and no grounds to send him to El Salvador”. He was not wanted for any crime in either country. His detention, Judge Xinis concluded, is “wholly lawless”.
On April 4th Judge Xinis ordered the Government to “facilitate and effectuate” Arbrego Garcia’s return to the U.S. Her order withstood an appeal to the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court. Rather than say “mea culpa” and immediately take belated steps to effect Abrego Garcia’s return, Trump has made no good faith effort to comply with the order in violation of his oath of office.
Trump’s government “clings” to what Judge Xinis called the “stunning” and “eye-popping proposition” that it “can forcibly remove any person – migrant and U.S. Citizen alike – to prisons outside the United States [beyond the Seas], and then baldly assert [it has] no way to effectuate their return. The District Court rejected this legally embarrassing and intellectually insulting argument. At Trump’s direction, the Government detained the people, forced them onto planes, flew them to El Salvador, and dumped them in a hell-hole of a prison. Your tax dollars and mine are paying for their confinement until the Trump administration decides “their long-term disposition”. Trump claims to be helpless. Nonsense. Iif he chose to get off his ample backside and act in a lawful, responsible manner, Abrego Garcia would be back in this country before you read this.
If you believe you cannot “be removed immediately with no notice, no hearing, no opportunity – zero [legal] process”, wake up! Trump has already deported American citizens, without due process, and he told his new-found friend, Nayib Bukele: “The homegrowns are next. You gotta build about five more places. … It’s not big enough.”
The Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process applies to everyone in this country. Everyone. But “if the government can choose to abandon fair and equal process for some people, it can do the same for everyone”.
The mantle of tyranny Mr. Jefferson draped about George III fits Donald Trump quite nicely, and his denunciation of the King applies equally to Trump: “A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”
Vance Waggoner (4/28/2025)