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“Four Democratic U.S. representatives arrived in El Salvador on Monday hoping to compel the Trump administration to release Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man mistakenly deported and now held in a notorious prison in that country… Last week, Chris Van Hollen, the U.S. senator from Maryland, where Abrego Garcia lived, went to El Salvador and met with Abrego Garcia, also calling for his release…
“The U.S. Supreme Court directed the Trump administration to facilitate Abrego Garcia's return, after Washington acknowledged he was deported to El Salvador due to an administrative error. The Trump administration says Abrego Garcia belongs to the criminal gang MS-13, but his lawyers have denied the allegation.” Reuters
“Over a dissent by two of the court’s conservative justices, the Supreme Court temporarily barred the Trump administration from removing a group of Venezuelan men currently in immigration custody in the northern region of Texas under an 18th century wartime law. The prohibition came in an unusual overnight order that followed a Friday evening appeal from lawyers representing the men, who told the justices that ‘dozens or hundreds’ of detainees ‘are in imminent and ongoing jeopardy of being removed from the United States without notice and opportunity to be heard, in direct contravention of’ a ruling by the justices less than two weeks ago.” SCOTUSblog
Here’s our previous coverage of the case. The Flip Side
The left is critical of the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
“[DOJ Attorney Drew] Ensign told [Judge James] Boasberg that ‘the government has no plans to remove anyone that’s filed a habeas petition’—that is, a challenge to their expulsion to El Salvador. But Ensign then admitted that the government is still preventing migrants from filing habeas petitions in the first place…
“The attorney insisted that despite the Supreme Court’s call for due process, federal officials did not have to inform migrants of their rights, or give them more than 24 hours’ notice before loading them on a flight to El Salvador…
“There’s only one plausible reason why the court would intervene at 1 a.m. on Saturday… It didn’t trust the government to tell the truth or follow the law, including its own directives. It is heartening that a majority has, at long last, evidently recognized that this administration does not deserve the deference that courts usually afford to the executive branch.”
Mark Joseph Stern, Slate
“Although Americans generally approve of Trump’s handling of immigration, the margin is small, and may be shrinking. Several recent polls find Trump’s approval on the issue slipping below the level of disapproval. More pertinent, that support collapses when it meets almost any specific application of his agenda…
“[In a March poll] 56 percent of respondents, and 22 percent of Republicans, disagreed with the statement ‘Trump should keep deporting people despite a court order to stop.’ Deporting immigrants who have not broken any laws other than immigration laws, deporting illegal immigrants who have lived in the United States for more than a decade, and deporting people without due process are all deeply unpopular…
“Some Democrats nonetheless think it wiser to devote their attention to issues where they already have an advantage, rather than trying to create an advantage that doesn’t currently exist. That’s a sensible approach under normal circumstances. But these are abnormal times. Trump is attempting to open a loophole in the Constitution that would let him jail any person, criminal or not, citizen or not, in an overseas prison without recourse to American law… This is a political fight [Democrats] can still win.”
Jonathan Chait, The Atlantic
“Abrego García is far from a perfect defendant… [Yet] This is undoubtedly a precursor to plenty that will follow. Trump has made clear his intent to grab power and challenge the courts and Congress to stop him, often by targeting unsympathetic characters (i.e., Mahmoud Khalil, big law firms and prestigious universities)…
“To the extent Democrats cede this issue politically, because they fear it’s an unpopular cause, Trump could view that as a green light to press forward. He has even suggested that deporting U.S. citizens could be next.”
Aaron Blake, Washington Post
The right is generally unsympathetic towards Abrego Garcia.
The right is generally unsympathetic towards Abrego Garcia.
“Rule of law was conspicuously absent during Joe Biden’s lone term. U.S. net migration grew by more than 2 million per year, with about 60 percent entering illegally, the New York Times reported… Yes, [Abrego Garcia] has not been convicted of any crimes. But as Mark Krikorian of the pro-enforcement Center for Immigration Studies noted, ‘He’s an illegal alien anyway.’ That alone is grounds for removal…
“‘The Democrats consider the border to be a ratchet, and once you get across, nobody ever has to leave,’ Krikorian offered. If every individual targeted for removal gets months of costly delays, the system cannot work. I believe in due process, but where’s the process in a feckless system that has operated at a glacial pace?”
Debra J. Saunders, American Spectator
“President Trump’s immigration agenda has been a stunning success. According to Customs and Border Protection figures, encounters at the southwestern border with illegal aliens fell from a peak of 302,000 in December 2024, at the height of the Biden administration’s lax immigration policies, to a low of 7,200 last month…
“The Trump administration may believe that battling pro-immigration groups in court boosts its political standing. Polls suggest that immigration is one of the few major issues on which most Americans think Trump is doing a good job. But this posture risks alienating a conservative Supreme Court whose support the White House will need to achieve other key objectives.”
John Yoo, City Journal
“Abrego Garcia claimed that his mother had run a pupusa business — a national dish in El Salvador — out of the family’s home, and that a gang, Barrio 18, had begun extorting and threatening the family. This included a warning that it would take Kilmar, then around twelve years old, if the payments didn’t continue. Assuming that this is true, it’s awful, but it wasn’t a good reason to prohibit Abrego Garcia from being removed to El Salvador years later…
“To succeed in getting a withholding of removal, an alien is supposed to establish a risk of persecution based on his race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. How did this apply to Abrego Garcia? Supposedly his family was the ‘particular social group.’ This is a stretch, since the gang presumably would have treated anyone with a pupusa business the same way…
“Congress should eliminate the ‘particular social group’ category, which is often abused, and we should fundamentally rethink how humanitarian protection works, and even if it makes sense to be in the business of granting asylum at all. The Trump administration shouldn’t have blown by the immigration judge’s 2019 ruling in Abrego Garcia’s case, but this is no way to run an immigration system.”
Rich Lowry, National Review
