Free Abrego Garcia

And: Trump Vs. Harvard; God Bless The Conquistadores; LNBL Episode 3 Out Today

Woke up this morning to this overnight text from a Southern friend:

Trump is refusing to obey the Supreme Court over the order to bring that dude back from El Salvador. He using the tactic of “you can’t make me.” He met with the president of El Salvador today who announced he would not be sending the dude back. So our President met with a foreign leader to collude on how to ignore a lawful order from the top of the a judicial branch. According to my high school civics, that’s treason and it’s punishment by execution. F—k Trump. I’m done with him and I regret my vote…already.

Wait … what happened? This:

In an Oval Office meeting with President Trump on Monday, President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador said that he would not return a Maryland man who was wrongly deported from the United States and sent to a notorious Salvadoran prison.

Mr. Bukele, who has positioned himself as a key ally to Mr. Trump, in part by opening his country’s prisons to deportees, sat next to the president and a group of cabinet officials who struck a combative tone over the case, which has reached the Supreme Court.

“Of course I’m not going to do it,” Mr. Bukele said when reporters asked if he was willing to help return the man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old father of three who was deported last month. The Trump administration has acknowledged that his deportation was the result of an “administrative error.”

The message from the meeting was clear: Neither Mr. Trump nor Mr. Bukele had any intention of returning Mr. Abrego Garcia, even though the Supreme Court has ruled that he should come back to the United States. The case has come to symbolize Mr. Trump’s defiance of the courts and his willingness to deport people without due process.

Even as someone accustomed to Trump’s edge-pushing, this was … a lot. This is, in fact, outrageous. It is intolerable. It is wicked. It cannot stand.

Here’s the White House line:

But the evidence that he is a gang member is not at all solid, and there is no evidence that he is a terrorist. He was here legally, though that’s not how he came. He should have been deported using normal channels years ago, but he wasn’t, and now he has the legal right to stay here. The man was sent away without any chance to prove his case. Andy McCarthy, the former federal prosecutor, explains. Excerpt:

The Venezuelans were lawlessly deported to San Salvador on March 15 aboard three flights, one of which included Abrego Garcia, who is a Salvadoran national. In his case, there is a 2019 federal immigration court order prohibiting his repatriation to El Salvador. That’s because the immigration judge credited his fear-of-persecution claim. Regardless of whether one believes his story (I find it self-serving and unpersuasive), the judge’s finding still stands because the Justice Department in Trump’s first term failed to refute it or appeal it, and Attorney General Pamela Bondi, who leads the DOJ in Trump’s second term, failed to take available action to reverse it. (The immigration court is a component of the DOJ, not an independent judicial court.) As has become habitual, the Trump DOJ decided it could skip the law’s due process mandates and just expel Abrego Garcia since, as Vice President Vance puts it, “We can’t just ignore the president’s desires.”

What if those desires are — what’s the word? — illegal? That’s what is at issue. Abrego Garcia should have been deported much earlier, as he came here illegally. But he obtained legal status allowing him to remain in the US. Maybe that was a mistaken ruling, but nevertheless, that is the law. Even Trump’s government admits that Abrego Garcia was deported because of an “administrative error”. Trump is now saying that the US Government has no authority to compel El Salvador to send one of its citizens back to America. This is absurd: all Trump has to say to Bukele is, “Send him back,” and it will be done.

McCarthy:

Under the known terms of the U.S.–El Salvador agreement, there appears to be no reason, other than its own stubbornness, that the Trump administration cannot obtain Abrego Garcia’s immediate transfer from the Salvadoran prison (where he remains constructively in U.S. custody) to a federal prison in the United States that would be convenient for producing Abrego Garcia at required federal court proceedings in the District of Maryland.

The Trump team keeps repeating the line that Abrego Garcia is a “terrorist,” and that justifies what they’re doing. But that has not been proven! He denies it, and his denial in court hearings in the past were persuasive to the courts. What gives Trump special knowledge, such that he knows better than judges who have heard the evidence?

What we know is that in 2019, the Trump administration alleged that Abrego Garcia is in MS-13 — based primarily on the claim of a confidential informant, and the fact that he wore a Chicago Bulls hat and a hoodie. The informant said Abrego Garcia was part of MS-13 in New York — a place in which he has never lived. Abrego Garcia strongly denies he has anything to do with MS-13. He could be lying. How are we to know without due process? In any case, there has never been any substantiation of the claim that this man was or is in MS-13.

Besides which, the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that Abrego Garcia has the right to be in America. Maybe the Court is completely wrong, but that is how the system works. Trump is only defying the Court now based on a technicality. As far as I’m concerned, Abrego Garcia, who entered the US illegally, should be deported. There is a way to do that legally: bring him back, lift the court stay preventing him from being deported, and send him back legally. After all, SCOTUS said that Abrego Garcia had been wrongfully deported because of an “administrative error.”

This was the position of the Trump administration … until suddenly, it wasn’t. Stephen Miller went on Fox News and claimed otherwise:

That view had already been advanced in court papers by a top official at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and by D. John Sauer, Mr. Trump’s newly appointed solicitor general. It was also offered during a court hearing this month by Erez Reuveni, a Justice Department lawyer who was handling the case — that is, until he was fired this weekend, according to a person familiar with the matter.

In one of the more remarkable moments in his appearance on Fox News, Mr. Miller blamed Mr. Reuveni — and only Mr. Reuveni — for having planted the idea that Mr. Abrego Garcia’s deportation had been in error.

“A D.O.J. lawyer who has since been relieved of duty, a saboteur, a Democrat, put into a filing, incorrectly, that this was a mistaken removal,” Mr. Miller said.

That assertion, however, flew in the face of the fact that other Trump officials had said the exact same thing.

One of them was Mr. Sauer, a top-ranking Justice Department official. Another was Robert Cerna, the acting field office director for enforcement and removal operations at ICE.

Early in the case, Mr. Cerna submitted a sworn declaration about Mr. Abrego Garcia’s deportation, and made clear that it was a mistake.

“This removal was an error,” he said.

Moreover, just a few weeks before he was fired, Mr. Reuveni was praised as a “top-notched” prosecutor by his superiors in an email announcing a recent promotion.

They fired an excellent Justice Department lawyer for advancing the same view as ICE and the Trump-appointed Solicitor General? I guess Team Trump needed a scapegoat rather than admit that they are in error here.

It seems that the White House is using a technicality in the SCOTUS ruling to avoid doing what common sense and common decency requires: bringing Abrego Garcia back and sending him home the legal way. (And “home” means to El Salvador, not necessarily to that brutal maximum security prison there.) This is a bright red line, I think, because the administration is not only transparently concocting a narrative to justify its mistaken, illegal deportation of this guy, but it is also flagrantly defying the Supreme Court. Again, it’s not exactly a direct defiance, because the Court left just enough space for Team Trump to pretend that it has no power to compel El Salvador to send Abrego Garcia back.

But think about it: what if you were illegally deported to a Supermax prison in El Salvador, and the Supreme Court ordered that you be returned to the US. How would you feel if the administration threw up its hands and said, “Sorry, but we can’t tell the government of El Salvador what to do”? Keep in mind that even though Abrego Garcia is not a US citizen, and was, in fact, in the US illegally, he still had the protection of the law.

This is a bright red line, having to do with the rule of law. I am generally supportive of the aggressive stance Trump has taken on deportations of illegals. This problem has grown nearly uncontrollable because of previous administrations, both Democratic and Republican, not taking it seriously. I anticipate that there will be bureaucratic errors in this process, and don’t consider them to invalidate the mission. But when those mistakes come to light, then the administration must backtrack, and do things legally.

This eagerness to defy the courts is destabilizing of the legal and constitutional order. The only way, it seems, that the administration can tamp down public anger is to keep repeating the line that Abrego Garcia is an MS-13 member — an allegation based on a single information, that has never been substantiated.

The administration’s willingness to leave a possibly innocent man languishing in that El Salvador prison shocks the conscience. So do stories like this, about Merwil Guitierrez, a 19-year-old Venezuelan illegal taken off the streets of New York and sent to that same prison. The kid was swept up in an ICE raid and shipped off to the prison in El Salvador, despite the fact that there is no evidence that he had anything to do with a gang, and the absence of any criminal charges against him. Again, the fact that he was in America illegally is sufficient evidence to deport him. But to dispatch this teenager to live as a captive among some of the hardest criminals in the world? In what moral universe does that make sense?

As one Fourth Circuit federal appeals court judge wrote in the three-judge panel’s April 7 ruling denying the government’s claim:

The United States Government has no legal authority to snatch a person who is lawfully present in the United States off the street and remove him from the country without due process. The Government’s contention otherwise, and its argument that the federal courts are powerless to intervene, are unconscionable.

This is a fundamental rule of law question. So I ask you again: if the Trump administration erroneously and illegally put your husband, son, or brother — an American citizen — on a deportation flight to El Salvador, and when called on by the Supreme Court to bring you back, said, “Hey, we can’t make the Salvadorans let him go” — how would you feel about it? From that Fourth Circuit ruling:

The Government’s argument that there is a public interest in removing members of “violent transnational gangs” from this country is no doubt true, but it does nothing to help the Government’s cause here. As noted, the Government has made no effort to demonstrate that Abrego Garcia is, in fact, a member of any gang, nor did the Government avail itself of the “procedural mechanism under governing regulations to reopen the immigration judge’s prior order[] and terminate its withholding protection.” The Government may not rely on its own failure to circumvent its own ruling that Abrego Garcia could not be removed to El Salvador. More importantly, the Government cannot be permitted to ignore the Fifth Amendment, deny due process of law, and remove anyone it wants, simply because it claims the victims of its lawlessness are members of a gang. Nor can the Government be permitted to disclaim any ability to return those it has wrongfully removed by citing their physical presence in a foreign jurisdiction. This is a slippery -- and dangerous -- constitutional slope. If due process is of no moment, what is stopping the Government from removing and refusing to return a lawful permanent resident or even a natural born citizen? [Emphasis mine — RD]

I see today that members of the administration are on message about Abrego Garcia being a “terrorist” and “MS-13 member”. What is preventing them from the showing the evidence they have that stand up that claim? You can’t make the disturbing aspects of this case go away by simply asserting over and over that the guy is in MS-13, and hoping that people will believe you just because you say it often enough. Here is a link to detailed information about Abrego Garcia’s detention, and the hearsay evidence that got him tagged as a gang member.

Who is the law here — the Supreme Court, or Donald Trump? This is indeed “a slippery — and dangerous — constitutional slope.” Do we want to be rid of illegal immigrants so badly that we are prepared to accept something like this? Where then would you and I hide if the US Government decided that the country would be better off if we were stuffed away in some Salvadoran hellhole prison, despite our legal right to be in the United States?

Trump Vs. Harvard

So, Harvard University is going to face down the Trump Administration over the administration’s threat to withhold $2.2 billion in federal funds unless Harvard consents to a list of demands. Read the letter the administration sent to Harvard last week. Excerpt:

I think the entire list of demands is solid. The only one I’m not sure about is the demand that Harvard implement “viewpoint diversity”. I support it in theory, but as a voluntary matter. I don’t like the state compelling a university to teach according to federal mandates. To be clear: Harvard should want “viewpoint diversity,” and no ideological litmus tests, but I’m not comfortable with the federal government asserting that kind of power over curriculum and related practices. That’s asking too much.

Nevertheless, I’m glad the administration has taken on the richest and most powerful university in America, and probably the world. Harvard, though, is fighting back. Here’s a link to Harvard’s response to the administration’s letter. It calls the administration’s demands unlawful, and promises to fight. In response, the administration announced it is freezing $2.2 billion in federal funds for Harvard.

I relish this fight, actually, because it’s one the Trump administration can win, and should win. Harvard is sitting on an endowment of over $50 billion. It can afford this clash. It is good that the administration is exercising the power of the purse to pull these influential institutions back from the ideological brink:

Harvard thinks it should be able to get taxpayer dollars without having to be accountable to taxpayers. Sorry, that’s not how it works. It furthermore wants to be able to discriminate against Americans on the basis of race and other identity categories, and call it Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Federal enforcement of civil rights laws doesn’t only go one way, Harvard. You either obey them, or you don’t; you don’t get to pick and choose. Well, you don’t with Trump in charge in Washington; conventional Republicans would have been too intimidated by you to object.

Hard to see how Trump can lose this fight, at least politically. The poshest university in the US expects American taxpayers to continue to fund it, even as it wishes to discriminate on racial grounds against the sons and daughters of many of those taxpayers.

God Bless The Conquistadores

CBS News reports:

An altar from the Teotihuacan culture, at the pre-Hispanic heart of what became Mexico, was discovered in Tikal National Park in Guatemala, the center of Mayan culture, demonstrating the interaction between the two societies, Guatemala's Culture and Sports Ministry announced this week.

An altar? Oooh, what happened on that altar? More:

Lorena Paiz, the archaeologist who led the discovery, said that the Teotihuacan altar was believed to have been used for sacrifices, "especially of children."

"The remains of three children not older than 4 years were found on three sides of the altar," Paiz told The Associated Press.

Sounds satanic. Not to worry — CBS found an academic diversity-celebrator to comment:

María Belén Méndez, an archaeologist who was not involved with the project, said the discovery confirms "that there has been an interconnection between both cultures and what their relationships with their gods and celestial bodies was like."

"We see how the issue of sacrifice exists in both cultures. It was a practice; it's not that they were violent, it was their way of connecting with the celestial bodies," she said.

Some things are so idiotic that it takes an intellectual to believe them.

Part Three Of LNBL Streaming Today

Today the third (of four) episodes of the Live Not By Lies documentary begins streaming on Angel.com. Part of Episode Three deals with the horrors of Communist Romania. This dear, dear Romanian Evangelical, Ovi Martin, below, went into those dreadful Ceauşescu orphanages to show love to abandoned children. You meet him in this episode: