{"id":33261,"date":"2025-04-19T15:26:09","date_gmt":"2025-04-19T15:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/33261\/"},"modified":"2025-04-19T15:26:09","modified_gmt":"2025-04-19T15:26:09","slug":"what-kilmar-abrego-garcias-case-says-about-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/33261\/","title":{"rendered":"What Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s case says about America."},"content":{"rendered":"

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At some point, probably around middle school, I got tired of explaining where El Salvador was. \u201cIt\u2019s a tiny country in Central America, along the Pacific Ocean,\u201d I\u2019d say. \u201cIf you fly from LAX, you can be there in four hours.\u201d<\/p>\n

This week, El Salvador is back in the news, and I miss the days when Americans knew little about our pulgarcito.<\/p>\n

On March 15, the Trump administration unconstitutionally deported Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to a megaprison in El Salvador. The Justice Department admitted the removal was an \u201cadministrative error<\/a>,\u201d and despite a court order to do anything possible to get him back, Trump administration officials claim their hands are tied. Abrego Garcia is a Salvadoran national, their logic goes, and cannot be retrieved.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not true. El Salvador is a close ally, and all too eager<\/a> to do Donald Trump\u2019s bidding. All it\u2019d take is a diplomatic phone call. Instead, the administration doubled down, insisting that Abrego Garcia is part of MS-13, despite having no evidence and being ordered by the Supreme Court to \u201cfacilitate\u201d his return. When Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele visited the Oval Office on Monday, he parroted the claim: \u201cHow can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States?\u201d<\/p>\n

To be clear: Abrego Garcia has not been convicted of a crime. He had a legal right to be in the United States. Critics are rightly worried about the constitutional and legal crisis at hand, but legality is only part of the story. A rhetorical battle is also unfolding, one that has shaped the American immigration system for decades. At its center, as its most consistent victims, are ordinary immigrants like Abrego Garcia.<\/p>\n

Debates about whether someone deserves to stay in the United States or not often hinge on their criminal status. Even well-meaning liberals have fallen into that trap. Barack Obama infamously <\/a>defended his immigration policies as targeting \u201cfelons, not families\u201d and \u201ccriminals, not children,\u201d which sounds good, but obscures the wide range of infractions within these labels. Since the 1980s, legislation has expanded what counts as a criminal\u2014and thus deportable\u2014offense. As scholars <\/a>have pointed out, policies enacted in the 2000s have \u201ccast an increasingly wider net which continually re-determined who could be classified as a \u2018criminal alien,\u2019 such that the term is now a mostly incoherent grab bag\u201d that can include traffic violations or minor drug offenses.<\/p>\n

Abrego Garcia is neither a felon nor a criminal. Even if he was, it doesn\u2019t automatically mean he deserves to be deported. A family shouldn\u2019t be torn apart over a speeding ticket.<\/p>\n

Then, there\u2019s the question of \u201cterrorism.\u201d Bukele chose the word carefully. A Trump executive order<\/a> designated MS-13 as a foreign terrorist organization, which hides the fact that the gang originated in Los Angeles in the 1980s. Their members largely join<\/a> out of economic need, self-defense, or social pressure\u2014not ideology. By framing alleged gang members as terrorists, Bukele is able to justify the inhumane, ever-expanding prison system he\u2019s built in El Salvador, claiming it\u2019s a catch-all solution to violence in the country, despite the incarceration of thousands of innocent people<\/a> and doubts around its effectiveness<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The playbook is classic strongman: Exploit a citizenry\u2019s fears, then consolidate power. Not coincidentally, it\u2019s the same rhetoric that Ronald Reagan and the authoritarian Salvadoran government used throughout the 1980s to demonize and target leftist organizers, calling them \u201cCommunist terrorists.<\/a>\u201d Throughout the Salvadoran Civil War, thousands of innocent people were disappeared or murdered, extrajudicially, for nothing more than alleged sympathies with leftist ideology. Priests, students, educators, and union organizers<\/a> were prime targets. Wielding the threat of \u201cterrorism\u201d allowed the state to excuse its own violence and disregard for citizens\u2019 rights, a strategy Bukele has repurposed for the 21st century. Under a state of exception<\/a> passed in 2022, constitutional guarantees have been rolled back. Anyone in El Salvador<\/a> can be detained without being told the reason, denied legal representation, and held indefinitely in prisons where torture and excessive force are common.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Ruben Reyes Jr.
\n Why El Salvador Is Doing Trump\u2019s Dirty Work
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    Americans are scared of a future where they could be jailed or deported without due process. In El Salvador, that future has arrived. Salvadorans live through it every day. That\u2019s what made the images of Trump and Bukele laughing in the Oval Office so chilling. Trump seems eager to bring a Bukele-style authoritarianism stateside.<\/p>\n

    Fearmongering is a powerful political tool. A government hellbent on stripping its constituents of their constitutional rights will begin with the most liminal and marginalized among us. If immigrants can be shunned as \u201ccriminals\u201d or \u201cterrorists,\u201d anyone can. It\u2019s already happening: International students are having their visas and First Amendment rights stripped under accusations of sympathizing with terrorists. But we cannot just advocate for those with legal status. Legality is a false flag, and it will not always protect us.<\/p>\n

    We must be unflinching: Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia was illegally deported and must be returned. We must also demand more: a humane and holistic immigration system, a functional asylum process, and a discourse that doesn\u2019t demonize \u201ccriminals\u201d or \u201cfelons.\u201d Let\u2019s fight for those who have a legal right to be in the United States, and for those who have no other choice.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    Sign up for Slate\u2019s evening newsletter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33262,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[32,40,3274,49,978,659],"class_list":{"0":"post-33261","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-immigration","10":"tag-latin-america","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-us","13":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114365332421792260","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}