Donald Trump slammed the Supreme Court on Monday after the justices temporarily blocked him from deporting Venezuelan immigrants, while asserting that America “cannot give everyone a trial” – a bedrock constitutional right.
Warning that the executive branch’s claims should shock “the intuitive sense of liberty” of Americans, a panel of judges for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit today unanimously rejected the Trump administration’s attempts to stay a lower court order to release Kilmar Abrego Garcia from a prison camp in El Salvador.
The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration last week to facilitate the release of Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man that three government officials admitted was mistakenly sent to El Salvador’s most notorious prison, along with several hundred other alleged gang members. However, the Trump administration has done nothing to comply with that order; it insists it has no power to return Abrego Garcia from another sovereign state—nor does a court have the authority to force it to do so.
When the federal district judge overseeing Abrego Garcia’s case attempted to enforce the Supreme Court’s order, the Trump administration requested an emergency stay from the Fourth Circuit Court.
Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, a Ronald Reagan appointee to the Fourth Circuit, wrote that allowing the administration’s passive interpretation of “facilitate” would “reduce the rule of law to lawlessness and tarnish the very values for which Americans of diverse views and persuasions have always stood.”
“It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter,” Wilkinson wrote. “But in this case, it is not hard at all. The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done.”
“This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear,” Wilkinson warned.
Trump administration officials have made no secret of its contempt for the concept of due process.
The wife of the man the Trump administration deported and has indefinitely imprisoned in El Salvador’s notorious gang prison spoke out this week in various interviews.
MSNBC anchor Ana Cabrera noted on Wednesday, “Also still waiting for the Supreme Court to rule on the case involving Kilmar Abrego Garcia, that Maryland father who was wrongfully deported as the administration admits was almost a month ago. Now he was sent to that prison in El Salvador. His future remains in limbo. I spoke with his wife earlier today, take a listen.”
“I want them to bring him back. I want to know when they will bring him back,” Jennifer Vasquez told Cabrera.
“Because my kids asked. When is he coming? I don’t have an answer,” she added.
Despite the Supreme Court’s 9-0 ruling that Kilmar Abrego Garcia must be returned to the U.S., Bimbo #2 Kristi Noem is too dimwitted to get the message:
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on Wednesday, “We’re confident that people that are [imprisoned in El Salvador] should be there, and they should stay there for the rest of their lives.” Notably, the Trump administration previously said that Garcia was deported as a result of an “administrative error” as he had been granted “protected status” in the U.S. by a judge, meaning he could not be deported back to El Salvador for fear for his safety. The administration, however, continues to maintain Garcia was a gang member.
Trump’s moves have been frequently stymied so far by lower courts, forcing him to appeal his cases at the Supreme Court where 6-3 the conservative majority has given him some early wins — or at least delays.
But in Noem v. Abrego Garcia, a unanimous decision by the nine justices appeared to support a lower court’s ruling that the Trump administration — and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem — cannot and should not leave a Maryland man in a prison in El Salvador after admitting that the U.S. mistakenly sent him there.
(The Trump administration claimed, implausibly, that it could not bring Abrego Garcia back, despite its mistake in deporting and imprisoning him.)
…
Decrying what many view as the administration’s overt violation of core American principles, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) asserted that “there is a special place in HELL for the people who are willing to argue to the Supreme Court that the man they MISTAKENLY sent to an El Salvador prison should stay there.”
The Trump administration said it would not provide information on how it will get a wrongly deported Maryland dad home by a Friday morning deadline because the timeframe a judge imposed was “impracticable.”
In effect, the Department of Justice (DOJ) is openly defying a court order that requires it to provide details about 29-year-old Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s whereabouts and how he will be brought back stateside.
Abrego Garcia was flown to a mega prison in El Salvador last month due to an “administrative error.” Despite the DOJ admitting its mistake, it argued it did not have the authority to bring Abrego Garcia home because he was now in the custody of El Salvador.
Maryland District Court Judge Paula Xinis, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, disagreed and ruled that Abrego Garcia must be returned stateside, where he has an American wife and child and was working legally as a sheet metal apprentice prior to being taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during what he believed to be a routine traffic stop.
The issue reached the Supreme Court on Thursday. The high court, which has a conservative majority, ruled unanimously that the Trump administration must take steps to “facilitate” the return of Abrego Garcia.
The Supreme Court on Thursday said the Trump administration must work to bring back a Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to prison in El Salvador, rejecting the administration’s emergency appeal.
The court acted in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran citizen who had an immigration court order preventing his deportation to his native country over fears he would face persecution from local gangs.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis had ordered Abrego Garcia, now being held in a notorious Salvadoran prison, returned to the United States by midnight Monday.
“The 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 court said in an unsigned order with no noted dissents.
King Donald has been slapped down 9-0!
https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-maryland-deportation-trump-9f46dd62890befdc321ed1ab56107470
Attorney General Pam Bondi was caught skipping out of a press conference as she avoided answering a reporter’s question on migrants without criminal records sent to El Salvador….
“60 Minutes found that 75% of the immigrants who were sent to El Salvador do not have public criminal records. Is that true?” the correspondent asked as Pam Bondi stepped outside to take questions on immigration from reporters.
As part of her reply, Bimbo #3 & Airhead Extraordinaire says:
“So if you committed a murder in our country, we’re gonna keep you here and we’re gonna seek the death penalty and we’re gonna keep you in prison because our victims’ families deserve that, but we don’t have to charge them with every crime. We can deport them and get them out of our country and save room in our prisons because they should have never been in our country to begin with,” she finishes.
Which is a roundabout way of saying that the Venezuelans they’re deporting aren’t really criminals. And the reporter’s follow-up question:
The reporter continues to press her, as Bondi didn’t answer her original question. “So you confirmed they didn’t commit a crime, right?” asked the reporter.
Whereupon Bimbo #3 and Airhead Extraordinaire got flustered and stomped out:
At that point, Bondi turned around and left, ending the press session.
According to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt [Bimbo #1], you, too, could get a one-way ticket to a prison in El Salvador:
Responding to a question at Tuesday’s daily briefing, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt mentioned President Donald Trump’s “idea” to potentially deport “violent” and “heinous” U.S. citizens, adding a seemingly important caveat: “If it’s legal.”
Another incredibly stupid idea from King Donald and his band of sycophants. This would only cause hassles and an un-American “Papers, please!” society for legal immigrants who aren’t exempted. Illegal immigrants won’t bother to register.
The judge overseeing the case of a Maryland man erroneously deported to El Salvador has reiterated that the Trump administration must return him to the U.S.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, along with hundreds of other deportees from the U.S., is being held in El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), which District Court Judge Paula Xinis described as “one of the most notoriously inhumane and dangerous prisons in the world” that keeps people “in some of the most inhumane and squalid conditions known in any carceral system.”
“The officers had no warrant for his arrest and no lawful basis to take him into custody; they told him only that his ‘status had changed,'” Xinis wrote in her order issued Friday, which was obtained by Politico.
Judge to Trump: Yes, You Really Do Have to Undo ‘Lawless’ Deportation to El Salvador
