In the future, April 14, 2025, may well be recognized as a monumental day in US history. That is, of course, if there is honest history in the future. Because this is the day that President Donald Trump sent a clear message to the nation: There is no rule of law in the United States.
It happened in the Oval Office. Trump was hosting El Salvador’s authoritarian president, Nayib Bukele—who has referred to himself as a “dictator”—and an obvious issue hovered over the session: the Trump administration’s wrongful deportation of Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, where he has been locked up in the country’s notorious CECOT megaprison for the last three weeks.
The US government has conceded that Abrego Garcia was rounded up and shipped off with other immigrants to El Salvador by mistake. Yet at this tete-a-tete, both leaders made clear they intended to do nothing to redress this act of profound injustice. Asked by a reporter if he would return Abrego Garcia to the United States, a grinning Bukele, sitting next to Trump, replied, “How can I return him to the United States? Am I going to smuggle him? Of course, I’m not going to do it. The question is preposterous. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States?”
There is no evidence that Abrego Garcia is a terrorist or any sort of criminal.
At the meeting, Trump directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to address the matter. She said Abrego Garcia’s return is “not up to us. If [El Salvador] wanted to return him, we would facilitate it, meaning provide a plane.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio piped up to dismiss the Supreme Court ruling that declared the Trump administration must “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States—a ruling that backed much of US District Judge Paula Xinis’ order that required his “return” to the country. “No court in the United States has a right to conduct the foreign policy of the United States,” Rubio huffed.
Never has such a toxic brew of cruelty, absurdity, and danger been on display in the White House. Trump and his crew were saying that the US government could mistakenly apprehend a resident, ship him to El Salvador to be imprisoned possibly for life in brutal conditions, and not have to take any steps to undo this violation of due process and decency—even after courts instructed it to do so.
Their message: The law doesn’t matter, we can do what we want. This is authoritarianism.
And their refusal was presented like a mordant joke. A Kafkaesque charade. An evil Catch-22. The Salvadoran autocrat said he couldn’t do anything; the Trump posse said, it’s not on us. So nothing can be done to prevent an innocent man from rotting in a hellhole. Of course, this is untrue. They don’t want to fix the horrific situation they created.
There are obvious reasons why. Were Abrego Garcia to be returned to the United States, he would become a symbol of the outrageous excesses of Trump’s deportation crusade. The Trump administration initially contended Abrego Garcia was a member of MS-13, a violent transnational street gang. But in her ruling, Xinis pointed out that “the ‘evidence’ against Abrego Garcia consisted of nothing more than his Chicago Bulls hat and hoodie, and a vague, uncorroborated allegation from a confidential informant claiming he belonged to MS-13’s ‘Western’ clique in New York—a place he has never lived.”
If he were brought back to the United States, he would receive much attention in the media and serve as a constant reminder of Trump’s extremism and the perils of this campaign. His presence in the debate would keep raising questions about the program and future deportations. To prevent this bad PR, the White House wants him disappeared. And it appears that Bukele gets that and is eager to be an accomplice.
So the Trumpers are waging a war here to protect their deportation effort, and they don’t mind sacrificing Abrego Garcia. Hours before the White House meeting, senior Trump aide Stephen Miller, during an interview with Fox News, exclaimed that Abrego Garcia “was not mistakenly sent to El Salvador…This was the right person sent to the right place.” Yet Trump’s solicitor general, John Sauer, an ICE field office director, and a Justice Department lawyer each conceded during court proceedings that Abrego Garcia was erroneously removed to El Salvador. (Bondi’s Justice Department suspended the lawyer who made that admission.) Miller’s rant was in keeping with a top rule of the Trump gang: Never admit fault; never apologize.
The Supreme Court, in a 9-0 decision. ruled that Xinis’ “order 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.” The only way to ensure that—to abide by the court’s decision—would be for the Trump administration to bring him back, which, no doubt, it could do with a simple request to Bukele.
Yet, as of now, Trump, has not acted to comply with the Supreme Court’s decision. This is the moment that has long been anticipated: the authoritarian-minded Trump defying a court order and essentially claiming that he is above the law and that the rules do not apply to him. He is signaling that he can use government force in the most egregious manner and no one—no court—can stop him. What might he try next? Illegal arrests or deportations of American citizens? In this case, one man has been unjustly condemned to a nightmarish imprisonment. But now all of us are threatened.
