It is morally wrong and political dangerous to refuse to rectify a monumental error.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a case of exactly what should not happen in this country.
The Supreme Court of the US ruled on April 10 that Garcia was improperly deported to El Salvador, and the US government should take steps to bring him back to the US.
Garcia was improperly deported because an immigration court ruled in 2019 that the government was forbidden to remove Garcia from the US.
There is a lot of back-and-forth about Garcia’s character and allegiances, but none of it should matter, with reference to his right to be in the US, once the Supreme Court has so ruled.
It is hard to disentangle the various positions taken by the Trump administration, among them: Garcia is a gang member; Garcia was deported by mistake; the government has no power to bring Garcia back to the US; the government does have the power to bring Garcia back, but won’t; the government would endanger national security if it revealed in court all that it knows about Garcia.
All irrelevant, given the Supreme Court’s ruling. Either there is a judicial system in this country or there is not. The Supreme Court has ruled — and ruled unanimously, 9-0!
Not only that, but the administration has not challenged the 2019 immigration court order forbidding Garcia’s removal to El Salvador. It bears repeating: The administration deported Garcia without even challenging, let alone winning, a reversal of the court order that forbad Garcia’s removal.
None of this proves that Garcia is necessarily a sympathetic case. He came to this country illegally in 2012. Unlike many these days who say that he never committed a crime, we say that it is clear that he did commit a crime by coming to the US illegally. However, a court order in 2019 barred his removal from the US. His deportation by the Trump administration violated that order. This is wrong.
The administration says that Garcia is a member of a terrorist gang, but that has not been proven. One of the proofs offered for Garcia’s membership is that he has been known to wear a Chicago Bulls hat. That might be, as some allege, part of the uniform of a gang, but obviously the countless thousands or hundreds of thousands who bear Chicago Bulls hats are not gang members. Garcia’s hat is no proof. Other purported proofs are his tattoos, which, however, are as ambiguous as his hat.
In any event, Garcia has been neither been charged nor convicted of a crime in court in either El Salvador or the US, aside from his illegal entry to the US.
What is not ambiguous is the order by the US District Court in Maryland to bring back Garcia, and the Supreme Court’s upholding of that order. Given the current knowledge of Garcia, if he is a terrorist gang member or otherwise a criminal, that is to be decided in the US.
One cannot escape the conclusion that the Trump administration simply cannot accept responsibility for its own errors. So instead of saying, “We goofed, we’ll bring Garcia back,” the administration says that it was “an administrative error” to deport Garcia, but it doesn’t matter, since the US has no authority to bring him back.
We’re supposed to believe that an administration that says it can resettle two million Gazans, that says it can accept a $400 million airplane from a dictatorship, that says it can settle the war in Ukraine, that says it can stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, that says it can take over Greenland, suddenly says it cannot bring back one single person sent to El Salvador wrongly. This is not credible; it’s absurd.
The issue here is larger than Garcia. Perhaps he is a criminal. But under the American system, criminals — even illegal immigrants — have rights if this has been so determined by American courts. At issue here, potentially, are the rights of any American, for if court orders can be ignored for one, they can be ignored for all.
© IJN 2025
