Donald Trump has a message for the US: There is no rule of law.
In the future, April 14, 2025, may well be recognized as a monumental day in US history. That is, of course, if there is honest history in the future. Because this is the day that President Donald Trump sent a clear message to the nation: There is no rule of law in the United States.
It happened in the Oval Office. Trump was hosting El Salvador’s authoritarian president, Nayib Bukele—who has referred to himself as a “dictator”—and an obvious issue hovered over the session: the Trump administration’s wrongful deportation of Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, where he has been locked up in the country’s notorious CECOT megaprison for the last three weeks.
The US government has conceded that Abrego Garcia was rounded up and shipped off with other immigrants to El Salvador by mistake. Yet at this tete-a-tete, both leaders made clear they intended to do nothing to redress this act of profound injustice.
Asked by a reporter if he would return Abrego Garcia to the United States, a grinning Bukele, sitting next to Trump, replied, “How can I return him to the United States? Am I going to smuggle him? Of course, I’m not going to do it. The question is preposterous. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States?”
There is no evidence that Abrego Garcia is a terrorist or any sort of criminal.
Never has such a toxic brew of cruelty, absurdity, and danger been on display in the White House.
Trump and his crew were saying that the US government could mistakenly apprehend a resident, ship him to El Salvador to be imprisoned possibly for life in brutal conditions, and not have to take any steps to undo this violation of due process and decency—even after courts instructed it to do so.
Their message: The law doesn’t matter, we can do what we want. This is authoritarianism, writes @davidcorn1.
#trump #bukele #deportations