It’s not even a close call. President Trump has decided to make the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case a faceoff between himself and the United States Supreme Court. Not since Franklin Delano Roosevelt tried to stack the Supreme Court has any President of the United States so openly defied the high Court.
It is not a complicated confrontation. The Supreme Court has ordered the government (think President Trump) to facilitate Mr. Garcia’s return to the United States after he was mistakenly banished to El Salvador. Our government acknowledges that Garcia was sent to El Salvador by mistake, but refuses to rectify its blunder by returning him as it has been ordered to do by the nation’s highest Court. Defying the Supreme Court is a blunder of enormous magnitude, and President Trump is meandering down a legally perilous path for which history will harshly judge him and his sycophantic Justice Department attorneys, including the Attorney General, Pam Bondi.
“I’m not defying the Supreme Court,” Trump has protested. “I never defy the Supreme Court. I wouldn’t do that. I’m a big believer in the Supreme Court, and have a lot of respect for the Justices.”
His actions, of course, speak much louder than his words. He demonstrates respect for neither the Court nor its Justices. On the contrary, President Trump shows contempt for the Court and its Justices as he defies the Court’s order to facilitate Mr. Garcia’s return. He is, unequivocally, defying the Court’s order. He has chosen an incredibly weak issue to confront the High Court. In the process, he has also savaged the American legal concept of Due Process. That President Trump has chosen such a misbegotten case on which to make his defiant stand is breathtakingly foolish.
When ABC News’ Terry Moran reminded President Trump that the Supreme Court had ordered the government to facilitate Mr. Garcia’s return, and that President Trump could pick up the phone and have El Salvador return him to the United States, President Trump responded, “I could, and if he were the gentleman that you say he is, I would do that. But he is not.” And so, President Trump has taken it upon himself to defy the Supreme Court.
President Trump has acted as prosecutor, judge, and jury in banishing Mr. Garcia to oblivion in El Salvador. He is neither saving face nor showing strength by defying the Court’s order to return Mr. Garcia to his home in Maryland. What President Trump is demonstrating instead is lawless petulance.
Now, it is true that Mr. Garcia entered the United States illegally over a dozen years ago. He was a target of Salvadorian gangs when he was sixteen years old, and fled to the United States from El Salvador. Mr. Garcia could very well be subject to removal, but that isn’t a judgment for the White House to make, especially given that our immigration courts gave the Salvadoran a significant degree of protected status. He was permitted to work in the United States and was protected explicitly by the Court from being “removed to El Salvador,” a detail the Trump administration outrageously ignores.
Last Monday, the Trump administration tried a new tactic to justify its refusal to comply with the Court’s order to return Mr. Garcia to Maryland. While acknowledging that it was a mistake to send Mr. Garcia to El Salvador, the government still insists it will not return him, which begs the question: Why? The Trump administration can’t say why it refuses to return Mr. Garcia because compliance with the court order would, hold on to your hat, “violate state secrets.” You can’t make up this stuff.
Yes, the Trump Administration is now invoking State Secrets and Deliberative Process Privilege for withholding information about the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case. Assuming Mr. Garcia is not a secret spy for Russia or China, the Trump administration’s claim of the state secrets privilege may be desperate and foolhardy. More likely, the Trump Administration is simply positioning itself to buy time to not comply with the court order. That’s a fancy way of saying that President Trump is merely stalling. More importantly, President Trump is defying the Supreme Court. Donald Trump does not like to be told what to do, especially if it pertains to something he doesn’t want to do. President Trump is demonstrating contempt for the notion of co-equal branches of government.
Last month, the Justice Department said it would invoke certain privileges to protect information regarding Abrego Garcia's removal from the U.S., citing attorney-client privilege, state secrets privilege, and certain non-enumerated executive privileges.
Trump Administration lawyers have claimed that a request for documents by Abrego Garcia's legal team regarding the government's use of El Salvador's notorious prison to house deportees from the United States "calls for the immediate production of classified documents, as well as documents that defendants may elect to assert are subject to the protections of attorney-client privilege and the state secrets privilege."
Federal Judge Paula Xinis has given the two sides until tomorrow to submit filings "addressing the legal and factual bases for the invocation of those state secret privileges," including a request from Abrego Garcia's lawyers for the Court to conduct a review of "the withheld documents." Judge Xinis has ruled that if the government asserts privileges, it must provide justifications for each claim, and she will decide whether the government’s demands can stand.
In Abrego Garcia's case, Judge Xinis had ordered the Trump administration to turn over documents to Mr. Garcia’s lawyers and allow them to conduct depositions with certain administration officials. Some of the records were initially due last month, but Judge Xinis agreed to push back her deadlines following the Trump administration’s filing of information with the Court under seal. Judge Xinis has accused the Trump Administration of "willful and bad faith refusal to comply with discovery obligations."
Judge Xinis had allowed the expedited discovery process to begin last month after Abrego Garcia's legal team accused the Trump administration of failing to follow her order to facilitate his return to the United States. The Supreme Court has agreed that the Trump Administration has to facilitate Abrego Garcia's release from Salvadoran custody and "ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador."
President Trump and other top administration officials have repeatedly maintained it is up to El Salvador whether to release Abrego Garcia, who had been held at CECOT, a notorious maximum-security prison built to house the most dangerous criminals. As of April 21, he was being held at a lower-security facility in Santa Ana, according to a State Department official.
Abrego Garcia was born in El Salvador and entered the U.S. illegally in 2011. He had been living in Maryland since then. He was granted “withholding of removal” status in 2019, which prevented the government from deporting him back to his home country of El Salvador because of a risk of persecution by local gangs. Nonetheless, Abrego Garcia was among the hundreds of migrants the Trump Administration sent to the CECOT prison in El Salvador. President Trump has defied the Supreme Court by ignoring the court’s order to facilitate Mr. Garcia’s return to the United States.
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Recent podcasts have featured my commentary on Liz Cheney’s book, “Oath and Honor,” as well as my commentaries regarding:
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Brian Kemp and Those Republicans of Georgia,
The Trump Indictments,
The Fox Corp Settlement,
The CNN Trump Town Hall,
The Hunter Biden plea deal,
The New American Cult of Personality,
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John Thoresen, Executive Director, Barbara Sinatra Children’s Center;
Katherine Gehl, co-author of The Politics Industry and founder of the Institute for Political Innovation;
Your argument for the return of Garcia is frivolous at best as well as the so called “ justices “ who all want Garcia “ returned “ to the USA ! He entered ILLEGALLY WAS UNDER A DEPORTATION ORDER FOR YEARS AND PRESIDENT TRUMP ENFORCED THE DEPORTATION ORDER ! He is not defying the LEGAL COURT ORDER WHICH SUPERSEDES ALL SUBSEQUENT ORDERS GET IT YET ! Cry your BS ON SOME LIBERAL LUNATIC NOT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WE WANT THESE ILLEGALS DEPORTED NOW !
Your argument for the return of Garcia is frivolous at best as well as the so called “ justices “ who all want Garcia “ returned “ to the USA ! He entered ILLEGALLY WAS UNDER A DEPORTATION ORDER FOR YEARS AND PRESIDENT TRUMP ENFORCED THE DEPORTATION ORDER ! He is not defying the LEGAL COURT ORDER WHICH SUPERSEDES ALL SUBSEQUENT ORDERS GET IT YET ! Cry your BS ON SOME LIBERAL LUNATIC NOT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WE WANT THESE ILLEGALS DEPORTED NOW !