Lying in the Service of Human Rights Abuse
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
I was going to research a detailed timeline of the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case, but found that USAT already did one for me, Timeline: How an error led to the deportation of a legal resident of US to El Salvador. Let me just provide some highlights before we get to the lowlights (or is it lowlifes?).*
- 2006: Abrego Garcia flees El Salvador due to threats from the Barrio 18 gang.
- 2011: He entered the US illegally.
- 2019:
- March: He is arrested while looking for day labor at a Home Depot and taken into custody.
- April: ICE claims in court that an informant identified him as a member of MS-13 (more on that below).
- April: The court finds he is liable for deportation but withholds it due to the likelihood that he would be persecuted by gangs in El Salvador. The court further orders that while Abrego Garcia is liable for removal, he cannot be removed to El Salvador. ICE did not appeal, and he was released.
- 2025
- January 2: Abrego Garcia had his regular check-in with immigration officials.
- March 12: Abrego Garcia is pulled over in a routine traffic stop and taken into custody.
- March 15: He was deported to El Salvador in what the administration would later call an “administrative error” in a document filed in federal court.
- April 4: A federal judge ruled his deportation was illegal and ordered him returned.
- April 10: SCOTUS rules 9-0 to uphold the lower court ruling that the administration should “facilitate” and “effectuate” his return to the US. They also termed that deportation “illegal.“
- Due to pressure from US Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Abrego Garcia was moved from CECOT to a different prison. Van Hollen was allowed to meet with Abrego Garcia this past week after initially being rebuffed by the Salvadoran government.
Let me underscore that attorneys for the administration wrote the following in a brief filed March 31, 2025:
On March 15, although ICE was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador, Abrego Garcia was removed to El Salvador because of an administrative error. Cerna Decl. ¶¶ 12–15. On March 16, a news article contained a photograph of individuals entering intake at CECOT. Id. ¶ 59. Abrego Garcia’s wife identified one of the detainees depicted as her husband based on his tattoos and head scars.
To be as clear as possible. There was a judicial order in place from 2019 specifically blocking the deportation of Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, and ICE was aware of this order. And yet they made a mistake and deported him anyway. The error was discovered because his wife saw photos of him on TV. That is, neither ICE nor any portion of the federal government discovered the error.
This is why due process is needed.
By the way, Trumps’ DOJ responded to this error by suspending the attorney who admitted the error. Note that the suspension was not because of the error (which ICE committed) but because the attorney in question was not vigorously defending his client (the US government). Via The Hill: DOJ suspends lawyer for failing to ‘vigorously’ argue case of mistakenly deported man.
Bondi, appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” referenced Reuveni’s suspension.
“He was put on administrative leave by Todd Blanche on Saturday. And I firmly said on Day 1, I issued a memo that you are to vigorously advocate on behalf of the United States. Our client in this matter was Homeland Security — is Homeland Security. He did not argue. He shouldn’t have taken the case. He shouldn’t have argued it, if that’s what he was going to do. He’s on administrative leave now,” she said.
“You have to vigorously argue on behalf of your client.”
This just in: Lawyers also have an obligation to be honest in court filings.
I would also like to stress the following, which should all be obvious, but are being obscured by the storm of BS being tossed out by the administration and its allies.
- Being deported and being deposited in prison are not the same thing.
- Even if it can be proven that someone is a gang member, it is unjust to suggest that life imprisonment is the appropriate punishment.
- Law enforcement makes mistakes all the time in terms of who they think is guilty. That is why trials are necessary (a.k.a., due process of law).
- And, to stress again what Matt Bernius noted a few days ago, even if the people who have been sent to CECOT are guilty of crimes, currently specified or not, they are still entitled to due process.
To put it all as plainly as possible: even if you are in the country illegally and get caught red-handed doing a crime on video, you are still entitled to due process of law.
The administration and its allies keep jumbling things by acting like these people were simply deported. But they were not just deported for being in the country without legal status. They were rounded up and sent to prison in El Salvador because the US government is paying El Salvador to house them. For all the dodges about this being “foreign affairs,” they are clearly and blatantly subverting the criminal justice system.
What then makes an already horrible situation worse is all the lying in service of these abuses.
For example, US Representative Mike Collins (R-GA10) keeps posting things like the following.
First, we do not know if Abrego Garcia is in MS-13. The only “evidence” to this effect is a report from a confidential informant that has not been tested in court. You know, the kind of thing that could be sorted out in court.
Second, even if he is MS-13, there is a judicial order in place barring his deportation to El Salvador. If the federal government wishes to challenge that order, it can do so in court.
Third, he had not been convicted of any crimes in the US nor El Salvador, so why was imprisonment accepted as a legitimate punishment? Criminal convictions are handled, say it with me, in court.
One last matter: talking to a gang member is not “traitorous.” That is inflammatory language that is meant to discredit someone via insult and unjust accusation, rather than making an honest argument.
Since I am writing this on what is considered the holiest day of the Christian religion, which I am sure Representative Collins considers himself an adherent, allow me to quote Matthew 25, which keeps running through my head. Look at that tweet above and tell me which man, Collins or Van Hollen, is being Christlike.
Emphases mine.
31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink?38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
46 “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
Then we have things like this from POTUS:
You know what would be a great way to examine and confirm tattoos on Abrego Garcia’s body? Having Abrego Garcia in court.
Here’s the official Twitter feed of DHS making unproven allegations against Abrego Garcia as a means of mocking Van Hollen, because for the administration, this is all about scoring political points, not justice.
Notice the esclation. They go beyond just being an MS-13 member to “human trafficker” as well as making wild claims about what Van Hollen is trying to accomplish.
Here’s the AG calling Abrego Garcia a “terrorist” and a “top MS-13 member.” The ratchet just keeps being turned ever upward.
Allow me again to contrast what the administration has said in court (i.e., “administrative error”) versus the lies they tell to the public. This reminds me of the ways in which Trump 1.0 made wild claims in public about the 2020 elections, while sticking to actual evidence in court documents.
Then there’s stuff like this.
So, now we are to support life imprisonment based on potential?
Here is some additional info from NBC News: New documents detail government’s case that mistakenly deported man was a gang member.
The Justice Department shared records, not previously made public, detailing how police officers in Maryland assessed Abrego Garcia was a member of the MS-13 gang during an arrest in 2019. He had no criminal history at the time, which the documents also state, and his attorneys have denied that he is a gang member.
In a document titled “gang field interview sheet,” the Prince George’s County Police Department detailed how in March 2019 it approached Abrego Garcia along with three other people for loitering at a Home Depot parking lot in Hyattsville. Abrego Garcia said in a court filing that he was there looking for day labor work.
Police said he was wearing “a Chicago Bulls hat and a hoodie with rolls of money covering the eyes, ears and mouth of the presidents” on the bills.
The officers said such insignia — indicating “ver, oir, y callar” or “see no evil, hear no evil and say no evil” — was “indicative of the Hispanic gang culture.” The officers said they consulted with a reliable confidential source, who “advised that [Abrego Garcia] is the rank of ‘Chequeo’ with the moniker of ‘Chele’” in the gang.
I would note that this information was reviewed when Abrego Garcia was in court in 2019, and the result was the judge ordering him not to be deported to El Salvador and being released.
And if the government has proof of his status, they could present it, you know, in court.
The NBC News piece also notes some history that has made the rounds from the mouths of apologists for the administration.
Aside from the new documents, the Department of Homeland Security posted on social media earlier Wednesday that Abrego Garcia’s wife had sought a temporary protective order against him in 2021. The case was ultimately dismissed. Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, has been a strong, vocal supporter of her husband and has fought for his return.
“After surviving domestic violence in a previous relationship, I acted out of caution after a disagreement with Kilmar by seeking a civil protective order in case things escalated,” Vasquez Sura said in a statement Wednesday. “Things did not escalate, and I decided not to follow through with the civil court process.
This strikes me as simply an attempt at ex post facto rationalization and character assassination. First and foremost, let me note again: due process is not just for saints, which really makes the above irrelevant. And even if he engaged in abuse, and exactly what led to the above is unclear, that has zero to do with his arrest and deportation.
I could go on and on with stuff like this. The desire by the administration to make this rendition stick is sickening and ominous. It is sickening because it demonstrates the utter lack of concern about human rights, either in this specific case or more broadly. It is ominous because this administration clearly wants the power to send whomever they like, including “homegrowns” to foreign prisons so that they will be outside the reach of US courts.
The fact that they have to lie to make their case just underscores how bad their position really is.
By the way, when people make pleas to Republicans, facing up honestly to what the Trump administration is doing, and being willing to call out lies and take moral account of what is going on, is part of what they are asking for.
You want to be tough on crime? Fine. You have clear views on deporting the undocumented; that’s a policy position. But it is quite clear what is going on here. The administration says one thing in court, and yet another on TV (especially to targeted audiences). They are clearly abrogating due process of law. If I am wrong about any of this, feel free to explain it to me.
Innocent until proven guilty is supposed to mean something if one believes in law and order.
Likewise is the notion that the punishment should fit the crime.
*I would also recommend this episode (“The Emergency is Here“) of The Ezra Klein Show, which has a timeline as well as an instructive, if depressing, discussion of the matter with Asha Rangappa, assistant dean at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs.
It’s what Trump slaves (like JKB, Paul L/Connor/Drew, Fortune et al.) support. That’s why they, so loud on other topics, have no critiques of this MAGA regime disappearing people into prison camps without due process. Like Hitler’s brownshirts, in lockstep with the inhumane marching orders given them by their Fox News masters.
Trump supporters are either fascists, lazy enablers of fascism, or just unpatriotic cowards. They do not care about the Constitution, due process, or the rule of law. But we knew that already when they sold out to an Epstein-bestie rapist felon.
Since Republican policy to obediently do whatever Trump says, Republican policy is also to target legal immigrants and, eventually, to disappear US citizens. Trump thinks Hitler “did some good things” and wished he had generals “like Hitler had.” So his Hitlerian deportation desires track.
Btw, conservatives are going full Nazi in response to Trump’s polling decline — as Trump/Musk DUI hire incompetence, DOGE mass layoffs, and tariff trade war chaos destroy market and increase Americans’ economic struggles.
But Americans can dislike Putin-puppet Trump’s fascism and his economic failure at the same time, tho.
The previous Republican President, GWBush, solved a similar problem of needing to avoid American courtrooms by using Gitmo & AbuGraib. The difference is they are getting closer to home. They have always been there. We shouldnt be surprised.
Our legal system’s foundational premise is that the judicial process renders a fair and impartial determination of the facts and the application of the law. If Trump and his Enablers admit – even once – the importance of due process, then they will have to admit their unabashed support for putting a convicted felon in the White House. They’d have to concede that Lawfare is a falsehood and that victory in a popular vote ought not be a get out of jail free card.
Abrego Garcia is a terrorist because they say so, because Trump is not a criminal only based on their say so.
Shortly thereafter, the officer who claimed to have that confidential informant was put on leave for soliciting sex, and for lying on police reports.
Garcia might be an MS-13 gang lord, but the administration has provided no evidence.
And, even if life imprisonment is the appropriate punishment for something, the conditions of CECOT are torture. And the prisoners are denied medical care.
(And satellite imagery of CECOT shows what appear to be ominous reddish brown stains on the ground. Since no human rights observers have been inside and given full access, we can merely speculate as to what those stains are)
The MS13 on Garcia’s fingers are clearly photoshopped in — they present perfectly shaped, despite being on curved parts of the body.
They are also not visible on photos from his meeting with Senator van Hollen.
This is like using a sharpie marker to change the course of a storm.
@Gustopher:
Trump provided no evidence that he lost the 2020 election either. That didn’t stop him, with near complete support from the Republican Party, from using The Big Lie to incite his followers to violence on J6 and escape impeachment.
“Unreality” is a key element of fascism. Journalism is “fake news,” data & statistics are no more valid than bold assertions, due process is easily weaponized against one’s political opponents, etc.
The Trump administration won’t be providing any evidence regarding Abrego Garcia. Not because they don’t have the evidence, but because even the demand for evidence undermines their rule.
I think about that Matthew 25 bit a lot. I’m not a Christian, never even baptized. Nada. Anyway, I think of that a lot especially in terms of immigration and I am just absolutely dumbfounded that a Christian could read and be taught that and still behave the way that they do. I mean, could it be any more straightforward?
I have a Conservative friend. He’s about the only one and he’s on thin ice because of stuff. He once argued with me quite intensely that it is simply not possible to be moral without god. His belief (faith?) is that without a sky daddy to hand down morality AND punish those that transgress there is no morality. Period end of story. Atheists are inherently amoral. Polytheists are inherently amoral. His belief is that without a singular god people are amoral, not capable of morality, and are thus incapable of being good people.
I am sure that there are Conservatives who think the same exact thing in the administration. It blows my mind that you can have those beliefs and then read Matthew 25 and think “oh screw these immigrant mooches bastards, fuck’em off to the torture prison.”
Like, wouldn’t you be in the least concerned that you’re eventually going to die and then right before you see Jesus someone comes along and goes, “nope, sir, left line for you. It’s the on labeled ‘fuck off to the torture prison’. You were given the rules and you didn’t follow them, so no right had of Jesus for you goat.”
So Victor Martinez-Hernandez is proven to be a murderer, is the Trump administration going to deport him or allow him to serve a sentence in Maryland?
This is a great post. Well done.
Because it is Easter I think it’s worth noting the proudness of the Press Secretary in
@Daryl:
That was supposed to read”piousness of the cross wearing Press Secretary.
This may be the single best piece you’ve ever posted, @Steven. Well-constructed, well-reasoned, well-paced and written in such a way that visceral anger and scorn came though forcefully.
@Beth:
I find myself dumbfounded a lot these days. For me, it helps to remember that in Evangelical and fundamentalist circles, the actual teachings of Jesus and preaching and teaching on the texts of the Gospels gets a relatively short shrift. Growing up Baptist, I can’t recall many times other than at Easter where the sermon text was on a passage from the various books that tell the actual story of Jesus’ life on earth. We normally listened to presentations on the books of the Apostle Paul. We got a lot of “wives, learn in submission from your own husbands,” “children, obey your parents,” and “if a man shall not work, neither should he eat.*” Significantly less “love your neighbor as yourself,” “turn the other cheek,” and (ETA:) “so I ask you, who was the man’s neighbor” (from the parable of the good Samaritan). I learned other stuff about Christianity as I left the fundies behind and followed other teaching traditions. Christianity is not as monolithic as people like to portray it to be.
Beyond the issue above, we have a new phenomenon (for our times, at least) in people who are appropriating the mantle of Evangelical Christianity, but who, as one was cited a while back in an article from The Atlantic (?? I think ??) *don’t buy into all the stuff that Jesus guy believed and taught.*
There’s more that I could say, but this isn’t a good forum for it. The thread doesn’t exist for me to preach at people who don’t want to listen, so I try to keep it direct. I will say that your Conservative friend doesn’t understand Christianity, or how morality works for that matter, to any great degree. On “It blows my mind that you can have those beliefs and then read Matthew 25 and think ‘oh screw these immigrant mooches bastards, fuck’em off to the torture prison’,” I will note that at least some of those people will certainly also be told “no, you need to go to the left.” It’s why those from the passage are amazed that there’re on that side, after all. I suspect your conservative friend doesn’t spend a lot of time reading and thinking about Matthew 25, though.
*Interestingly enough, there was significantly less teaching on “husbands, love your wives and Christ loved the church and gave his life for it” and “parents, don’t provoke your children to the point of being enraged.” I used to wonder why. I stopped wondering long ago.
@Beth:
How long were you in the closet, and what lies did you tell yourself to maintain the fiction that you were a man?
Being “Christian” is an important social construct for them, which they are unwilling to jettison even as they jettison everything about Christ.
Alternately, they are fake fans, who saw a terrible remake of Biblical stuff, decided they are experts on everything, and never looked back to the original source material.
Either way, more social signaling than anything spiritual.
Also, what Cracker said.
I maintain that making Garcia the focus of protest is an error. None of the men imprisoned for life in El Salvador has been afforded due process. Conveying the impression to the general public that this is a single miscarriage of justice arising from a mistake trivialises the issues. The regime’s crime lies in its imprisonment of hundreds of men without trial or opportunity to appeal as a deliberate act of policy.
I maintain that making Garcia the focus of protest is an error. None of the men imprisoned for life in El Salvador has been afforded due process. Conveying the impression to the general public that this is a single miscarriage of justice arising from an administrative mistake trivialises the issues. The regime’s crime lies in its imprisonment of hundreds of men without trial or opportunity to appeal as a deliberate act of policy.
@Michael Reynolds: Thanks. I appreciate you saying so!
@Ken_L: I, personally, try and keep in mind the whole set of persons affected (I do so some above, although perhaps not as clearly as I originally intended).
I think, however, there is efficacy in focusing on a person the administration itself said was mistakenly sent, but whom it then refuses to bring back. It makes for an easy-to-understand example.
@Daryl: Thanks. And yes, that cross really catches my eye, and it really damns her, IMHO.
@Gustopher:
Thanks for noting that. I had meant to do so, but there is just so much that needed addressing, that I let that fall through the cracks.
How does it matter whether or not Garcia is a “member” of MS-13? Belonging to a group isn’t a crime, as far as I know. I mean, yeah, they can deport him, but he’s in the country illegally, so that was true anyway. Just not to El Salvador.
@Jay L Gischer: Exactly.
In my view, the goal is pretty simple: give enough Republican voters a way to rationalize away the situation so that instead of being mad at Trump, they will just fight with their anti-Trump friends and family.
As was noted above, it is about creating a specific unreality that makes it part of the team sports of polarized America.