The Trump administration said a Salvadoran man who was mistakenly deported and then brought back to the US on criminal charges will “never go free” on American soil, even though a judge ordered his release.
Kilmar Ábrego García was deported in March as part of an immigration crackdown. Government officials said he was removed in error, but they were unable to bring him back.
Earlier this month, he was sent to the state of Tennessee, where the justice department charged him with human smuggling.
The judge overseeing the case said on Sunday that Mr Ábrego García should be released from custody while he awaits trial. But she noted immigration officials would still have the power to detain him.
So much for “innocent until proven guilty”.
Trump doesn’t even get that far. He stopped at the words “due process” and said “Nope.”
It’s important to remember that it actually doesn’t matter if Garcia is guilty of any crimes. They might eventually prove that he committed treason, or murdered puppies, or raped someone, or some other crime actual Republicans have actually been convicted for without facing consequences. His guilt or innocence is not as important as the process we use to determine guilt or innocence. You’ve hit the nail on the head, but I think it’s bigger than anyone imagines. Without “innocent until proven guilty,” we literally have no laws. There are no legal foundations below that one, and everything is built upon it. It is to the law what thermodynamics is to cuisine. Without it, there’s nothing else. We could talk in theory about recipes (legislation), but you can’t heat or cool things. We could eat raw ingredients (natural law) but only if it doesn’t require refrigeration, that’s just eating naturally ocurring local food. You might think that’s a good thing, but a return to a state of nature is the opposite of civilization.
So, that phrase doesn’t actually appear in the US Constitution, but the Fifth Amendment does explicitly guarantee “due process”, and the concept of “innocent until proven guilty” has always been seen as directly tied to that
…“innocent until proven
guiltybrown”.ftfy
I think the idea is that if he’s acquitted, they’ll just deport him somewhere other than El Salvador, which they can legally do.
He missed his window to apply for asylum years ago, so the non-removal order protecting him applied specifically to deportation to El Salvador. He can be sent elsewhere, and with Trump trying to open concentration camps elsewhere, I think he’ll eventually end up in a different torture prison.
I hate this reality.
Does him being kidnapped to a gulag on mistaken identity not make him eligible for the visas you can get if a crime is committed against you?
Oh look, defying another court order.
If you’re keeping track, that’s the third box that has failed.
The ballot box didn’t fail. People decided they wanted this by either voting Republican or not at all.
When the ballot box fails to prevent fascists from getting elected, the ballot box has failed.
Edit: Because it’s the Four Boxes of Liberty, not the Four Boxes of Whatever People Vote For.
So, you propose to enforce liberty by not letting us choose our own leaders? Democracy, as long as your approve our choices?
If your idea of liberty is unidentified armed masked government agents snatching up people and rendering them to foreign prisons, you might be a fascist.
That’s not my idea of liberty at all. But you can’t say the ballot box failed, just because the people elected the worst president in the history of people in suits.
Then the ballot box - the second box of liberty - has failed.
What liberty are you talking about? The liberty of approved leaders? It’s a failure because we voted for a bad leader?
We got the leader we voted for. The failure is in the people.
I get what you’re saying, but the “four boxes of liberty” are about freedom. People were free to talk about how bad Trump would be, and they did. The 2024 election was free and fair (until we have proof it wasn’t). Federal courts have struck down many things the Trump administration has attempted. Liberty isn’t inevitable, it has to be fought for. As a country “We the People” failed, not our institutions.
Liberty isn’t inevitable, it has to be fought for.
That’s the fourth box.
If you ignore all the voter suppression and most likely election fraud by the election deniers who ran the counts, sure.
Yes, roughly half of the voting population voted for him. I have strong doubts that he or the overwhelming number of Republicans in other races won fairly.
The problem I have with this voter fraud allegations is his numbers have stayed pretty consistent across the three elections. The Democrats showed up in 2020 but didn’t bother for 2024.
The Democrats … didn’t bother for 2024.
At least there’s no genocide anymore! /s
I agree with you that there was voter suppression and gerrymandering but in no way were those insurmountable. We chose all this chaos and lawlessness.
If “Did Not Vote” was a candidate:
I missed the human smuggling part.
Dang, the regime really doesn’t want him talking do they?
The charges are bullshit, though
The charges, which date back to 2016, allege he transported undocumented individuals between Texas and Maryland and other states more than 100 times.
They are basically accusing him on going on road trips with brown people
I had no misconceptions that the charges were bullshit, but it’s pretty damn impressive that they went to those lengths to paint him as a criminal.
I mean hell, interstate bus companies are probably all guilty of this too.
It’s vindictiveness, plain and simple. His existence is an embarrassment to them. They absolutely have to get the last word in this fight, because their egos are too fragile for anything else.
I don’t think vindictiveness is a major factor. This is about power.
Trump is trying to grab as much power to deport people as he can. He will fight every challenge to it until the legal options are exhausted. He will attack the legitimacy of the courts when he loses. He cares about the precedent and saving face with his base, not Garcia himself.
I missed the human smuggling part.
That’s okay. It’s complete bullshit. DeSantis and Abbott have both done the same thing Kilmar Ábrego García is accused of and they haven’t been charged.
Illegally smuggle someone … then arrest them for illegal smuggling. Projection much?
Totally not fascism though
The cruelty is the point.
