As a lot as Donald Trump desires the general public to imagine that is within the arms of “the world’s coolest dictator,” he’s holding all of the playing cards.
An interfaith prayer vigil for Kilmar Abrego Garcia is held on the White Home in Washington, DC, on April 14, 2025, in the course of the go to of El Salvador’s president.
(Astrid Riecken for the Washington Put up / Getty Photographs)
US District Courtroom Decide Paula Xinis got here down laborious on the Division of Justice attorneys defending the illegal rendition of green-card holder Kilmar Abrego Garcia to a focus camp in El Salvador. Xinis cited the Supreme Courtroom’s 9–0 choice discovering that the Trump administration needed to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return to america as the ultimate phrase backing her earlier ruling—and it ought to be.
DOJ attorneys tried to quote Monday’s shameful Oval Office press conference, the place the self-described “world’s coolest dictator,” Nayib Bukele, wearing a too-tight blue go well with, insisted he would by no means, ever “smuggle” that “terrorist” again to the US, as “proof” that the US can’t deliver Abrego Garcia again.
Oh proper, the superpower that has change into El Salvador’s accomplice in human rights crime is the lesser energy. Bought it. If Donald Trump actually wished Abrego Garcia again, and Bukele refused, Trump would ship the bush-league dictator to Guantánamo and by no means look again. We all know pet killer Homeland Safety Secretary Kristi Noem acquired into that most safety jail, together with her showy Rolex, so heavy it might need killed a jail guard, for some torture porn. She may go get Abrego Garcia. That is the worst kayfabe ever.
Decide Xinis swatted the DOJ’s Drew Ensign like a fly, dismissing that Oval Workplace “proof” as unworthy of the time period. “The Supreme Courtroom has spoken,” Xinis stated, noting that the Monday Oval Workplace circus present “shouldn’t be earlier than the courtroom.” She stated she’d conduct full discovery, with real proof, from either side, on the federal government’s alleged “case” towards Abrego Garcia, and on the plentiful proof that there’s none (as Justice Division attorneys have repeatedly admitted, calling his seize an “administrative error”). She additionally desires documentation of what the federal government has performed to deliver the Maryland father dwelling, and stated that to date, it seems like “nothing.”
Xinis stated she wished the invention to maneuver “quick,” including, “Cancel holidays, cancel different appointments. I’m going to be out there if you could do it at odd hours or weekends. That’s what I’m speaking about.”
All of that’s the excellent news. The unhealthy information is that Abrego Garcia remains to be languishing, illegally, in a focus camp, distant from his household, for no less than the subsequent two to 3 weeks. Most likely extra. He might be tortured, or worse, and we’d by no means know the reality.
Present Challenge
Like many individuals, I hoped Xinis would maintain the DOJ attorneys in contempt, which she admitted she was making an attempt to keep away from. My hope was at all times unrealistic. Even with obvious Supreme Courtroom backing, she has to conduct cautious discovery, by no means thoughts that the DOJ has defied all of her orders to report on concrete steps it has taken to deliver Abrego Garcia again. She is betting that the backing of the Supreme Courtroom, as attenuated as it might probably appear, will drive the Trump administration to provide extra proof of its “case.”
However there isn’t a case. Though the DOJ has repeatedly known as the rendition a mistake, on the creepy Trump press convention Monday, Santa Monica sociopath Steven Miller, together with corrupt Lawyer Normal Pam Bondi, started recirculating claims from nearly a decade in the past that Abrego Garcia was a member, possibly even a frontrunner, of the Salvadoran gang MS-13. Prosecutors as soon as tried to make that case, however in 2019 the supply of the testimony was found to be a corrupt cop who acquired his info secondhand, and the try and deport Abrego Garcia was dropped. Sure, that was underneath the primary Trump administration.
As tenacious journalist and authorized detective Marcy Wheeler asked Tuesday: “Why did Donald Trump free somebody who he purports to be a harmful terrorist?”
I do know, I do know. We will’t struggle them with information. However we will struggle them with tales and pictures. Even NewsMax is doing its half, with quite a lot of the clips of Abrego Garcia’s spouse, Jennifer Vasquez Sura.
“I cannot cease preventing till I see my husband alive,” she advised reporters. “Kilmar, in case you can hear me, keep sturdy. God hasn’t forgotten about you. Our youngsters are asking when you’ll come dwelling.… They miss their dad a lot.”
There are additionally characters like podcaster Joe Rogan, considered one of Trump’s most vital allies, who’re irate about Abrego Garcia’s destiny.
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Let’s additionally bear in mind what “the good dictator” has been accused of, by way of my good friend and Nation contributor Roberto Lovato:
He was condemned by governments around the globe, together with by the Biden and Trump State Departments for violations detailed within the 2022 State Division report on El Salvador’s human rights document, which listed such abuses as: illegal or arbitrary killings, compelled disappearances; torture and merciless, inhuman, or degrading therapy or punishment by safety forces; harsh and life-threatening jail circumstances; arbitrary arrest and detention; critical issues with the independence of the judiciary; arbitrary or illegal interference with privateness; critical restrictions on free expression and media, together with censorship and threats to implement prison legal guidelines to restrict expression; critical authorities corruption; lack of investigation and accountability for gender-based violence; vital obstacles to accessing sexual and reproductive well being providers; and crimes involving violence towards lesbian, homosexual, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex people.
Let’s additionally bear in mind: Pricey Democratic Senate chief Chuck Schumer known as Trump’s defiance of a Supreme Courtroom ruling his “red line,” after so many months of impotence. “If Trump doesn’t obey the Supreme Courtroom,” he acknowledged, that will be “totally different than the rest. It’s a quantum leap totally different, as a result of our democracy is then—248 years of American democracy, the Magna Carta is out the window, and we’ll all must take extraordinary motion.”
Hiya, Pricey Chief, it’s occurring. What are you doing?
We will’t depend on the courts, or on our political leaders, to get us out of this, or to get Abrego Garcia, and so many others, again dwelling. However I additionally imagine they’ve a particular accountability to strive. I’m heartened by Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen’s journey to El Salvador—he’s on his method as I write—in addition to guarantees by colleagues like New Jersey Senator Cory Booker to comply with him to that autocracy and make a stand.
I don’t even need people like Schumer and his lame deputy Dick Durbin to go to El Salvador, to be sincere. I would like them to show their energy over to senators like Van Hollen and Booker, Brian Schatz, Raphael Warnock, Jon Ossoff, Elizabeth Warren, and even perpetually younger Bernie Sanders—a next-generation model of the senator (in thoughts if not physique) who will do what must be performed. (There are such a lot of extra within the Home, after all, however to say anybody—OK, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez deserves her due—dangers slighting so many others.)
This has been an evil shit present, and continues to be. However the utter uselessness of so many Democratic leaders has been stunning—and demoralizing to many individuals who need to arise.
Let’s hope a lot of them make the trek to El Salvador the best way one other technology of leaders made the trek to the South African Embassy, protesting apartheid, within the mid-Eighties. So many got arrested, and so many new leaders emerged.
Civil society must rise as much as cease what’s occurring. We’d like steady nonviolent protest and relational organizing. However we additionally want our highly effective political leaders to place their energy on the road. I hope we see that quickly.
The chaos and cruelty of the Trump administration reaches new lows every week.
Trump’s catastrophic “Liberation Day” has wreaked havoc on the world financial system and arrange one more constitutional disaster at dwelling. Plainclothes officers proceed to abduct college college students off the streets. So-called “enemy aliens” are flown overseas to a mega jail towards the orders of the courts. And Signalgate guarantees to be the primary of many incompetence scandals that expose the brutal violence on the core of the American empire.
At a time when elite universities, highly effective regulation corporations, and influential media retailers are capitulating to Trump’s intimidation, The Nation is extra decided than ever earlier than to carry the highly effective to account.
In simply the final month, we’ve revealed reporting on how Trump outsources his mass deportation agenda to different international locations, uncovered the administration’s enchantment to obscure legal guidelines to hold out its repressive agenda, and amplified the voices of courageous pupil activists focused by universities.
We additionally proceed to inform the tales of those that struggle again towards Trump and Musk, whether or not on the streets in rising protest actions, on the town halls throughout the nation, or in vital state elections—like Wisconsin’s latest state Supreme Courtroom race—that present a mannequin for resisting Trumpism and show that Musk can’t purchase our democracy.
That is the journalism that issues in 2025. However we will’t do that with out you. As a reader-supported publication, we depend on the help of beneficiant donors. Please, assist make our important impartial journalism doable with a donation immediately.
In solidarity,
The Editors
The Nation
