Constitutional Crisis Averted Over Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s Imprisonment in El Salvador Without Charges
Attorney General Pam Bondi “bends on Abrego Garcia,” editorialized the conservative Wall Street Journal. The Justice Department has returned Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the U.S from prison in El Salvador. “The shame is that it took so long,” the WSJ pointed out. He was kidnapped by the U.S. government and incarcerated in a foreign country two months ago.
“A needless brawl with the judiciary is avoided. Was that so hard?” asked the WSJ. The Trump administration is now charging him with transporting illegal aliens for profit, shuttling undocumented construction workers from Texas to Maryland more than 100 times. We’ll see if the charges stick.
Bondi accuses him of operating an alien smuggling ring. “The issue was always an unlawful deportation, not whether he could be later charged with crimes here. This is a victory for the Supreme Court and the rule of law over a reluctant executive branch, and it should have happened earlier,” the WSJ editorialized.
MSNBC: “After months of a legal and political battle over Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s deportation, he is back in the U.S. facing human smuggling charges. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) joins Ana Cabrera to react to Abrego Garcia receiving due process which Van Hollen and others have been fighting for.”
Sen. Van Hollen (D-MD) flew to El Salvador and met with his imprisoned constituent Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a legal Maryland resident. In 2019, a judge gave him protective status in the U.S. Both his attorney and Van Hollen asserted he was illegally kidnapped and deported by the Trump administration without due process. The White House openly mocked Van Hollen and vowed that Garcia “is not coming back” despite a unanimous Supreme Court 9-0 ruling that he must be returned. Trump on social media called Van Hollen a “fool” who is “begging for attention.” The following morning, the Supreme Court temporarily halted deportations under the rarely used Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a wartime law, until further notice by the high court.
Not surprisingly, the generally Trump-aligned Supreme Court justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented from the ruling.
“Why is Trump so dead set on denying due process to the wrongly deported El Salvadoran migrant?” asked the WSJ. It agreed with the high court opinion that the executive branch must “facilitate” Garcia’s return to the U.S. from a Salvadoran prison so he can receive due process. It quoted from Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson’s order that “‘Facilitate’ is an active verb.” It does not “allow the government to do essentially nothing.”
Follow the case against Garcia. Contempt and sanctions against the Trump administration are still on the table. The indictment of Garcia raises more questions than it answers. DOJ prosecutor resigns.