As mentioned, Nayib Bukele said Monday that he did not plan to return to Kilmar Abrego García to the United States. And, of course, the God Emperor Divine Right King Donald the First, says, Okay, whatever, good to go, I really don't give a fuck anyway. Little Marco say, fine with me, he shouldn't have been here anyway. Across the so-called "Trump Administration," the party line is now, Fuck Due Process, we have a winner! Nayib Bukele and El Salvador just opened the gates for any and everyone we want to "deport!"
For over 40+ years, I swore an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States, and now I finally am facing really-for-real domestic enemies. From the NC "Supreme Court." overturning an election, to the Thought Police using "antisemitism" and any others things it wishes as grounds for deporting people -- citizenship apparently not being relevant. The bullying and threats toward legal firms, colleges & universities, and government officials is a clear sign that it is time to take Howard Beale's "I Am Mad As Hell And I Am Not Going To Take It Anymore," literally.
I cannot believe that I have lived to see this happening. A South African Nazi being given free rein to destroy government agencies on his whim, using a gang of teenage thugs. The so-called Republican "conservatives" in Congress standing by while the very concept of "conservatism" is destroyed and replaced by some bizarre combination of personal whim and reactionary nonsense.
We ended up with the Declaration of Independence and fighting a war against what we considered tyranny for far less than what is now happening to the country.
It is time to think about what was once utterly unthinkable...
40 years ago as a newly admitted lawyer, I took the same oath. I can't disagree with a single thing in your comment. This is despicable and simply evil. I look at Trump, Bondi and Rubio and the blank look of a sociopath on their smug faces and I want to puke. We are a pariah country now. They are traitors to the Constitution and now I could be blackbagged for thinking and saying this and deported without due process and without notice to my wife or kids. One day I could just disappear on my way home from the office or the store. Find and watch I Am Still Here to understand what happened in Brazil then is now happening here.
Absolutely second every comment. My oath to the Constitution was foundational to everything I did in a 36 year career as a prosecutor. I think everyone our age is in a state of incredulous shock. Never in a million years could I have believed that an American President would betray this country as trump has & that his political party would cower so abjectly in terror. I did not know Americans had this in them.
Agree and it is certainly time to think about what actions you are taking for change. Are you giving to get out the vote groups till it hurts? Are you calling your legislators? Are you showing up for rallies? If in DC are you organizing against Bondi's brother gaining an important role in the Bar? Good mini editorial and I assume it's accompanied by actions.
I have yet to see a ruling on the legality of sending detainees to a torture prison in El Salvador. I have seen no rulings on the fact that this is 'cruel and unusual punishment'. I have seen nothing to explain where tRump obtained the $6 million he paid El Salvador to imprison these people. This is what you get when you elect an autocratic psychopath to the Presidency and then grant him immunity to prosecution.
I've begun to think the tattoos are just a distraction and the real Anton is in these areas and the horribly named save act, aka anti voters rights act.
"[Justice Sotomayor] in her concurring statement ... said the government's argument implies that it could deport and incarcerate any person, including U.S. citizens, without legal consequence, as long as it does so before a court can intervene. Think about what that means. What that means is that literally any of us - whether we are from Venezuela or were born in the United States, whether we are immigrants or not, whether we are citizens or not - any of us is vulnerable to basically being kidnapped by masked agents of the United States government who don't tell us why they're picking us up, perhaps never to be seen again because we are located somewhere in a dungeon, a prison cell, rotting away, whether it's in El Salvador or anywhere else in the world."
The Abrego Garcia case is just the most egregious and sympathetic, but this applies to all of those deported under the Alien Enemies Act. There are others -- a soccer player, a gay makeup artist, a man whose tattoo honors his autistic brother -- some who were here legally, to whom this applies. By rights, all of them should be returned and afforded their rights to habeas petitions. Otherwise, we are officially a police state.
It's horrifying. Contacting our representatives and senators and expressing our concerns, and urging them to uphold the constitution and the rule of law. Donating to the ACLU or similar legal fund, checking out Indivisible's page and seeing if there's an action we can take, such as a rally. Small things to be sure, but they do add up.
I called my two Republican Senators and my Democratic Representative to put all due pressure on the administration to “facilitate” the return of Mr. Garcia. Posthaste! It’s something besides staying vigilant and informed.
This applies to all of us Americans. Due process matters. It must apply to all of us or none of us truly have it. Otherwise, we no longer live in a nation of laws, nor do we have liberty, we only have "liberty" the tyrant allows. All of us must stand and resist this, on behalf of our freedom, justice, and the rule of law.
And we must continue until we prevail. Trump has met his match - and it's all of us, together, and without pause. This is an outrageous violation of our laws.
And someone needs to keep track of the numbers of us who go missing, without cause, throughout all of this mayhem, and post their names and locations so everyone will know what's going on!
The president of El Salvador says Mr. Garcia will not be returned, I'm sure this was at the Felon's direction. American tax payers are paying for the prison, Christy Noem went to the prison to do a photo op; but now the president of El Salvador says Mr. Garcia won't be returned. I wonder if Congress authorized the funding of the prison (this is a rhetorical statement - of course they didn't).
So if the Felon decides to pull American citizens off the street, deporting them to El Salvador, the president of El Salvador says they won't be returned; then, guess what, they won't be returned. The courts won't do anything about it because the six Christian Nationalists on the Supreme Court says the courts can't enforce outcomes on the Administration.
The Felon in Chief is costing us millions of our taxpayer dollars to feed his need for playing golf and relaxing at his Marblelago place, at a current cost of over $34.6 million, as well as paying the president of El Salvador $6million to house all those deported so far. He isn't saving any of us any money. He is spending as much of our money as he can and making himself and his buddies ever richer while emptying out our pockets. I do not understand how this is happening except that drumpf was seeding our Senate and Reps with a whole bunch of dumbasses over the past 4 years, so he could just pick up where he left off with no one questioning any of his illegal moves. He is an abomination!!
It is now beyond time for Congress to act. They have unleashed this horror upon our nation, and if they don't rise up and take the power the Constitution has given them, our country as we know it, is lost.
I’ve been quietly thinking of all the retired and fired military personnel out there. They know how to organize an operation and carry it out. I hope they are in a secure location doing what only they can do. 🙏🏼👹
Thanks but I don’t really care. If they come to get me, they’ll find an old woman with a bad back and a very expensive medical condition. If I die, it’s okay. I’ve been living on borrowed time for almost 30 years and I’ve had a good run. 👹
An Administration of Horror. This is the price we're paying now, brought about by the voters who elected him. We told you so, we told you so. Do you hear us now? Do you hear us now? We can see now how Nazi Germany happened. How Franco's Spain happened. How Sarajevo happened. How Navalny was murdered. Is Republican Congress going to sit on their hands and close their eyes and cover their ears? Are their jobs worth their puny souls?
They're supposedly scared of being primaried. Well, that's going to happen either way, by trump or by the voters. None of those wimps will be keeping their jobs, so they might as well go out with some dignity intact instead of finding their sorry photos on a wall of shame that goes down in history.
Nesbitt is right this whole thing is about doing what is right and it should piss off every American. Garcia was not granted due process his right even if he did not come here legally. If the government can play political football with an immigrant then they’ll do it to American citizens.
Why did the corrupt "supreme" court not ORDER the corrupt "administration" to return this man, rather than use the word "facilitate?" Surely they know this lawless "administration" will not do what any lower court orders them to do?
To answer your question, the question of whether the courts have the jurisdiction to compel the executive branch to compel a foreign government to act was not before it because the lower court order was not clear. Instead, the lower court order required clarification before the SCOTUS could take up the Constitutional question as it involves the separation of powers. MAGA carefully orchestrated this for this very reason. I am appalled at our government but I could see the court's seeing this as diplomatic and exclusively the province of the Executive branch. BUT I am not a Constitutional expert, just a lawyer. If Trump wins, our Country and the rule of law as I have loved it for 68 years is finished.
I think we should start demanding that he be impeached. I get all the reasons that won’t happen now, but I think it expresses the right level of concern for his willful disregard for our laws. I contacted my House representative today and suggested impeachment.
Watching all this north of the border with increasing disbelief - if that's possible. If this Administration (Regime?) keeps this up you will have to rewrite your National Anthem:
"O say can you see, by the dawn’s muted light,
What so proudly we hailed, now consumed by the night?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,
Are now veiled in decree, under fear’s iron might.
And the ramparts we watched, silenced voices now glare,
As the voiceless are cast with no justice or care.
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave,
O’er the land where the law fails the lives it should save?
Credit: with multiple prompts, revised by Chatgpt.
Trump invited dictator Bukele to the White House! today for a photo op to thumb his nose at our Judiciary. As the article stated, Trump is testing the courts and the American people to see if he can get away with making anyone disappear to a foreign prison, perhaps forever, certainly with no foreseeable path to return.
The Supreme Court needs to revise its ruling and order the Trump administration to bring Garcia home. Their cute distinction of "facilitate" rather than the judge's ruling to "effectuate" was clearly insufficient to persuade Trump.
The American people also need to protest and to write their elected officials demanding Garcia's return- safe and sound.
Believe a German who lived under and studied the Nazi's and their holocaust. His confessional poem could be paraphrased for us today as "First they came of the undocumented migrants, and I did not speak out - because I was not an undocumented migrant; Then they came for the documented migrants, and I did not speak out - because I was not a documented migrant; Then they came for student protesters, and I did not speak out - because I was not a student protester; Then they came for all citizens who objected to Trump's corruption and violations of the rule of law - but I had not publicly criticized him; Then they got my texts and emails and came for me - and there was no one left to speak for me.
This is the first writing I've seen that explicitly mentions successful prisoner swaps, events that by their mediacentric nature are high profile.
Most recent cases involve people imprisoned in some adversary nation, many of whom actually 1) violated a law of that nation, 2) were convicted and 3) were sentenced. We can certainly argue that the process was unjust, but that's not the point. These were individuals who had "three strikes against them", yet we still secured their release from a hostile nation.
The point is in the contrast between their situations and that of Abrego Garcia, who 1) is accused of no crimes in either the US or El Salvador, 2) is being labeled a "gang leader" and :human trafficker" despite nary a shred of evidence and 3) received literally no due process but was kidnapped and removed in the face of a court order explicitly forbidding it.
Trump and "his" DOJ are utterly hypocritical. We brought those other prisoners home despite their convict status and in the face of sigilnificant hurdles. We owe this innocent man no less, and their claims of insurmountable obstacles are odious, reprehensible lies.
That a president of the United States could sit in a meeting with the vice president, secretary of state, the head of the justice department, and threaten to send Americans to a Salvadoran prison while not one official recoils in horror makes me think we are about to lose our country
All those in that meeting are the appointees trump put in, okayed by all the spineless republicans. The rest of the citizenry of the US outnumber them. We all need to raise hell until they are voted out of office and give them no ground.
As mentioned, Nayib Bukele said Monday that he did not plan to return to Kilmar Abrego García to the United States. And, of course, the God Emperor Divine Right King Donald the First, says, Okay, whatever, good to go, I really don't give a fuck anyway. Little Marco say, fine with me, he shouldn't have been here anyway. Across the so-called "Trump Administration," the party line is now, Fuck Due Process, we have a winner! Nayib Bukele and El Salvador just opened the gates for any and everyone we want to "deport!"
For over 40+ years, I swore an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States, and now I finally am facing really-for-real domestic enemies. From the NC "Supreme Court." overturning an election, to the Thought Police using "antisemitism" and any others things it wishes as grounds for deporting people -- citizenship apparently not being relevant. The bullying and threats toward legal firms, colleges & universities, and government officials is a clear sign that it is time to take Howard Beale's "I Am Mad As Hell And I Am Not Going To Take It Anymore," literally.
I cannot believe that I have lived to see this happening. A South African Nazi being given free rein to destroy government agencies on his whim, using a gang of teenage thugs. The so-called Republican "conservatives" in Congress standing by while the very concept of "conservatism" is destroyed and replaced by some bizarre combination of personal whim and reactionary nonsense.
We ended up with the Declaration of Independence and fighting a war against what we considered tyranny for far less than what is now happening to the country.
It is time to think about what was once utterly unthinkable...
40 years ago as a newly admitted lawyer, I took the same oath. I can't disagree with a single thing in your comment. This is despicable and simply evil. I look at Trump, Bondi and Rubio and the blank look of a sociopath on their smug faces and I want to puke. We are a pariah country now. They are traitors to the Constitution and now I could be blackbagged for thinking and saying this and deported without due process and without notice to my wife or kids. One day I could just disappear on my way home from the office or the store. Find and watch I Am Still Here to understand what happened in Brazil then is now happening here.
Absolutely second every comment. My oath to the Constitution was foundational to everything I did in a 36 year career as a prosecutor. I think everyone our age is in a state of incredulous shock. Never in a million years could I have believed that an American President would betray this country as trump has & that his political party would cower so abjectly in terror. I did not know Americans had this in them.
Many of them, obviously, lack 'the right stuff'.
Agree and it is certainly time to think about what actions you are taking for change. Are you giving to get out the vote groups till it hurts? Are you calling your legislators? Are you showing up for rallies? If in DC are you organizing against Bondi's brother gaining an important role in the Bar? Good mini editorial and I assume it's accompanied by actions.
I have yet to see a ruling on the legality of sending detainees to a torture prison in El Salvador. I have seen no rulings on the fact that this is 'cruel and unusual punishment'. I have seen nothing to explain where tRump obtained the $6 million he paid El Salvador to imprison these people. This is what you get when you elect an autocratic psychopath to the Presidency and then grant him immunity to prosecution.
This is bigger than tariffs. This is the very essense of being an American...
I've begun to think the tattoos are just a distraction and the real Anton is in these areas and the horribly named save act, aka anti voters rights act.
Tarrifs not tattoos!
From Laurence Tribe yesterday on NPR:
"[Justice Sotomayor] in her concurring statement ... said the government's argument implies that it could deport and incarcerate any person, including U.S. citizens, without legal consequence, as long as it does so before a court can intervene. Think about what that means. What that means is that literally any of us - whether we are from Venezuela or were born in the United States, whether we are immigrants or not, whether we are citizens or not - any of us is vulnerable to basically being kidnapped by masked agents of the United States government who don't tell us why they're picking us up, perhaps never to be seen again because we are located somewhere in a dungeon, a prison cell, rotting away, whether it's in El Salvador or anywhere else in the world."
https://www.npr.org/2025/04/13/nx-s1-5357784/one-lawyers-big-worry-about-the-abrego-garcia-case
The Abrego Garcia case is just the most egregious and sympathetic, but this applies to all of those deported under the Alien Enemies Act. There are others -- a soccer player, a gay makeup artist, a man whose tattoo honors his autistic brother -- some who were here legally, to whom this applies. By rights, all of them should be returned and afforded their rights to habeas petitions. Otherwise, we are officially a police state.
Well, I think we know that under trump we are a police state. Welcome to Trump's banana republic!
This is incredibly disturbing. Is there *anything* the ordinary citizen can do???
It's horrifying. Contacting our representatives and senators and expressing our concerns, and urging them to uphold the constitution and the rule of law. Donating to the ACLU or similar legal fund, checking out Indivisible's page and seeing if there's an action we can take, such as a rally. Small things to be sure, but they do add up.
I called my two Republican Senators and my Democratic Representative to put all due pressure on the administration to “facilitate” the return of Mr. Garcia. Posthaste! It’s something besides staying vigilant and informed.
I am deeply disturbed today and worried about my family.
So You Want to Be a Dissident?https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-weekend-essay/so-you-want-to-be-a-dissident
This applies to all of us Americans. Due process matters. It must apply to all of us or none of us truly have it. Otherwise, we no longer live in a nation of laws, nor do we have liberty, we only have "liberty" the tyrant allows. All of us must stand and resist this, on behalf of our freedom, justice, and the rule of law.
And we must continue until we prevail. Trump has met his match - and it's all of us, together, and without pause. This is an outrageous violation of our laws.
And someone needs to keep track of the numbers of us who go missing, without cause, throughout all of this mayhem, and post their names and locations so everyone will know what's going on!
Absolutely yes!
The president of El Salvador says Mr. Garcia will not be returned, I'm sure this was at the Felon's direction. American tax payers are paying for the prison, Christy Noem went to the prison to do a photo op; but now the president of El Salvador says Mr. Garcia won't be returned. I wonder if Congress authorized the funding of the prison (this is a rhetorical statement - of course they didn't).
So if the Felon decides to pull American citizens off the street, deporting them to El Salvador, the president of El Salvador says they won't be returned; then, guess what, they won't be returned. The courts won't do anything about it because the six Christian Nationalists on the Supreme Court says the courts can't enforce outcomes on the Administration.
The Felon in Chief is costing us millions of our taxpayer dollars to feed his need for playing golf and relaxing at his Marblelago place, at a current cost of over $34.6 million, as well as paying the president of El Salvador $6million to house all those deported so far. He isn't saving any of us any money. He is spending as much of our money as he can and making himself and his buddies ever richer while emptying out our pockets. I do not understand how this is happening except that drumpf was seeding our Senate and Reps with a whole bunch of dumbasses over the past 4 years, so he could just pick up where he left off with no one questioning any of his illegal moves. He is an abomination!!
It is now beyond time for Congress to act. They have unleashed this horror upon our nation, and if they don't rise up and take the power the Constitution has given them, our country as we know it, is lost.
It may soon be time for our patriotic, military leaders, not Trump's appointees , to take appropriate action to save the country from this asshole.
I’ve been quietly thinking of all the retired and fired military personnel out there. They know how to organize an operation and carry it out. I hope they are in a secure location doing what only they can do. 🙏🏼👹
You are proposing a coup and that is a crime. In this day and age I would be very careful....Just some friendly advice.
Thanks but I don’t really care. If they come to get me, they’ll find an old woman with a bad back and a very expensive medical condition. If I die, it’s okay. I’ve been living on borrowed time for almost 30 years and I’ve had a good run. 👹
I’m also not the first to suggest this.
Amen, Rachel
An Administration of Horror. This is the price we're paying now, brought about by the voters who elected him. We told you so, we told you so. Do you hear us now? Do you hear us now? We can see now how Nazi Germany happened. How Franco's Spain happened. How Sarajevo happened. How Navalny was murdered. Is Republican Congress going to sit on their hands and close their eyes and cover their ears? Are their jobs worth their puny souls?
Apparently so. Wretched rat-bastards. 👹
They're supposedly scared of being primaried. Well, that's going to happen either way, by trump or by the voters. None of those wimps will be keeping their jobs, so they might as well go out with some dignity intact instead of finding their sorry photos on a wall of shame that goes down in history.
Dignity intact would be a good call. Whether they will make that call....
Apparently their answer to both questions is yes. Except that they have no souls. Or it is, like Trump's, a black & withered thing.
Love your description, "a black & withered thing". So apt.
Nesbitt is right this whole thing is about doing what is right and it should piss off every American. Garcia was not granted due process his right even if he did not come here legally. If the government can play political football with an immigrant then they’ll do it to American citizens.
What happened to American exceptionalism? Oh, it has been replaced by American sadism and cruelty. How sick are we as a nation right now?
Why did the corrupt "supreme" court not ORDER the corrupt "administration" to return this man, rather than use the word "facilitate?" Surely they know this lawless "administration" will not do what any lower court orders them to do?
To answer your question, the question of whether the courts have the jurisdiction to compel the executive branch to compel a foreign government to act was not before it because the lower court order was not clear. Instead, the lower court order required clarification before the SCOTUS could take up the Constitutional question as it involves the separation of powers. MAGA carefully orchestrated this for this very reason. I am appalled at our government but I could see the court's seeing this as diplomatic and exclusively the province of the Executive branch. BUT I am not a Constitutional expert, just a lawyer. If Trump wins, our Country and the rule of law as I have loved it for 68 years is finished.
I think we should start demanding that he be impeached. I get all the reasons that won’t happen now, but I think it expresses the right level of concern for his willful disregard for our laws. I contacted my House representative today and suggested impeachment.
Watching all this north of the border with increasing disbelief - if that's possible. If this Administration (Regime?) keeps this up you will have to rewrite your National Anthem:
"O say can you see, by the dawn’s muted light,
What so proudly we hailed, now consumed by the night?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,
Are now veiled in decree, under fear’s iron might.
And the ramparts we watched, silenced voices now glare,
As the voiceless are cast with no justice or care.
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave,
O’er the land where the law fails the lives it should save?
Credit: with multiple prompts, revised by Chatgpt.
Thanks. Very helpful to those of us in serious pain.
Trump invited dictator Bukele to the White House! today for a photo op to thumb his nose at our Judiciary. As the article stated, Trump is testing the courts and the American people to see if he can get away with making anyone disappear to a foreign prison, perhaps forever, certainly with no foreseeable path to return.
The Supreme Court needs to revise its ruling and order the Trump administration to bring Garcia home. Their cute distinction of "facilitate" rather than the judge's ruling to "effectuate" was clearly insufficient to persuade Trump.
The American people also need to protest and to write their elected officials demanding Garcia's return- safe and sound.
Believe a German who lived under and studied the Nazi's and their holocaust. His confessional poem could be paraphrased for us today as "First they came of the undocumented migrants, and I did not speak out - because I was not an undocumented migrant; Then they came for the documented migrants, and I did not speak out - because I was not a documented migrant; Then they came for student protesters, and I did not speak out - because I was not a student protester; Then they came for all citizens who objected to Trump's corruption and violations of the rule of law - but I had not publicly criticized him; Then they got my texts and emails and came for me - and there was no one left to speak for me.
This is the first writing I've seen that explicitly mentions successful prisoner swaps, events that by their mediacentric nature are high profile.
Most recent cases involve people imprisoned in some adversary nation, many of whom actually 1) violated a law of that nation, 2) were convicted and 3) were sentenced. We can certainly argue that the process was unjust, but that's not the point. These were individuals who had "three strikes against them", yet we still secured their release from a hostile nation.
The point is in the contrast between their situations and that of Abrego Garcia, who 1) is accused of no crimes in either the US or El Salvador, 2) is being labeled a "gang leader" and :human trafficker" despite nary a shred of evidence and 3) received literally no due process but was kidnapped and removed in the face of a court order explicitly forbidding it.
Trump and "his" DOJ are utterly hypocritical. We brought those other prisoners home despite their convict status and in the face of sigilnificant hurdles. We owe this innocent man no less, and their claims of insurmountable obstacles are odious, reprehensible lies.
That a president of the United States could sit in a meeting with the vice president, secretary of state, the head of the justice department, and threaten to send Americans to a Salvadoran prison while not one official recoils in horror makes me think we are about to lose our country
All those in that meeting are the appointees trump put in, okayed by all the spineless republicans. The rest of the citizenry of the US outnumber them. We all need to raise hell until they are voted out of office and give them no ground.