Clarence Page: Donald Trump's immigration crackdown enters the Twilight Zone

Chicago Tribune

20-04-2025

Kafkaesque.
One hears that word a lot in discussions of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
Or, for lowbrows like me, 'The Twilight Zone' might be the pertinent reference.
Abrego Garcia is the Maryland man who was wrongly deported and has been detained without trial in a grim prison in El Salvador. In March, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents stopped Abrego Garcia while he was out with his young son. Within days, he was on a plane to the notorious terrorist confinement center called CECOT in El Salvador, where it is clear that U.S. officials were content to leave him to an uncertain fate.
His wife sued the United States over the deportation in a case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court. The process revealed a sordid reality in the administration of President Donald Trump that brings to mind the scene in Lewis Carroll's children's tale 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland,' when the Queen of Hearts impatiently declares during the trial of the Knave of Hearts: 'Sentence first — verdict afterwards.'
In essence, that's the shaky case against Abrego Garcia. The Trump administration no longer disputes that he was mistakenly deported. And, indeed, the Supreme Court ruled the government must obey a lower court's direction to 'facilitate' the prisoner's return to the United States.
However, Trump, who shows little patience for anyone or anything that gets in the way of his agenda, curiously deferred to Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who has rebuffed calls for Abrego Garcia to be returned to U.S. custody.
And Trump and his minions continue to accuse Abrego Garcia, without credible evidence, of being a member of the notorious international gang MS-13, whereas in fact he had escaped to the U.S. and was granted 'withholding of removal' status in 2019, on the strength of his testimony that the gang had threatened his family in his native El Salvador.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, said on Thursday night that he had an unexpected meeting at a hotel in San Salvador with Abrego Garcia, hours after he had been denied a meeting. But Bukele insisted that Abrego Garcia would remain in El Salvador.
For Democrats like Van Hollen, the issue has been a defense of fundamental principles of human rights, legal access and equal protection under the Constitution.
For Republicans like Team Trump, equal rights for Abrego Garcia is a misguided gesture of sympathy for a man who, as the White House notes repeatedly, entered the U.S. illegally.
'It's appalling and sad that Sen. Van Hollen and the Democrats applauding his trip to El Salvador today are incapable of having any shred of common sense or empathy for their own constituents,' Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said at a Wednesday afternoon briefing, displaying her rather typical role as a gruff, judgmental megaphone for the president's views and prejudgments.
Due process, all the formalities that ensure individuals are treated equally under the law, has been called the fundamental right on which all other rights are grounded. It guarantees that individuals have a fair opportunity to be heard before their life, liberty or property is taken away.
Indeed, as an American who happens to live near the strip mall in the Maryland suburb where Abrego Garcia was arrested, I find it 'appalling and sad' that the administration shows so little respect for the constitutional right to due process.
It is, after all, one of the bulwarks against the rise of a Big Brother autocracy that Trump seems to find increasingly appealing.
The Trump administration has admitted to an 'administrative error' in Abrego Garcia's case, yet it also says it does not have the authority to secure his return.
Instead, as Abrego García's lawyers have said, he 'sits in a foreign prison solely at the behest of the United States, as the product of a Kafkaesque mistake.'
There's old Kafka again. I'm not alone in noting the similarity.
Interestingly, a deeper look into the case against Abrego Garcia reveals some loose ends. One arresting officer, for example, linked his Chicago Bulls baseball cap to the MS-13 gang, which sounds pretty thin.
A federal appeals court on Thursday scolded the Trump administration for its handling of the case.
'It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter. But in this case, it is not hard at all,' wrote Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, in an opinion this past week for a panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. '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.'
Wilkinson's no bleeding heart liberal. The Reagan appointee, as Politico pointed out, 'has been on the bench for 41 years and is one of the nation's most prominent conservative appellate judges.'
Earlier in the week, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg found probable cause to hold administration officials in criminal contempt for defying an order to halt deportations of people deemed 'alien enemies.'
And U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, who has described the deportation of Abrego Garcia as 'wholly lawless,' castigated administration officials for having done 'nothing' to comply with her order to facilitate his release and return.
Well, not quite nothing. They have helped start a debate over the legal meaning of 'facilitate.' I imagine Kafka would have some thoughts on the semantics. Meanwhile, I'm wondering if Team Trump knows the legal meaning of 'freedom.'