Kilmer Abrego Garcia, deported without due process.
It’s Holy Week leading up to Easter and Kilmer Abrego Garcia’s wife had a message.
” I will not stop fighting until I see my husband alive. Kilmer, if you can hear me: Stay strong. God hasn’t forgotten about you,” said Jennifer Vasquez Sura, at a news conference before a hearing on her husband’s case.
As you doubtless know, Kilmer Abrego Garcia, a resident of the state of Maryland, was wrongly deported and disappeared into a prison in El Salvador known as Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT) that the United States finances with $6 million annually.
It’s a cheap price tag for the U.S.—the art of the deal and all that–but it could be because the feeding of prisoners is scanty and occasional –and human rights abuses and torture are apparently free of charge.
This week on Thursday, April 17, Abrego Garcia’s whereabouts were finally confirmed by Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen, who was initially turned away from was turned away from CECOT gates. Abrego Garcia has been moved to a prison with better conditions than CECOT known for its brutality. There is no defined sentence for him.
Wondering here why there weren’t 10 more US senators parked outside those gates to demand answers about why a union sheet-metal worker with a wife and three kids, no criminal record and who is complying with U.S. immigration law got shipped off by mistake. In 2019, an immigration judge issued an order preventing authorities from deporting him back to El Salvador for fear of violence against him.
Kilmer Abrego Garcia was recently moved from the U.S.-supported gulag.
We’ve been talking about fight-back trenches to oppose Trump Administration policies and this week’s trench is the legal one. More to follow because there’s going to be plenty to adjudicate in the coming months and years—assuming the system remains intact under this Administration.
The President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, sat beside the President of the United States in the White House and said that it would be “preposterous” to let a “terrorist” back into the U.S. On a hot mic the U.S. Commander in Chief suggested Bukele build more prisons to house “the homegrowns” the President wants to see shipped to El Salvador and locked up.
So-called “ordinary Americans” are aware of what’s happening with Abrego Garcia’s case—this past week constituents at a town hall meeting got up in Senator Chuck Grassley’s face, one shouting, according to the New York Times, “Are you going to bring that guy back from El Salvador?” Grassley , who has been in the Senate since 1980, replied that it is “not a power of Congress.”
But back to resisting the Administration and recognizing those firing back from the legal trench. We’re going to need all the legal firepower we can get as students get visas revoked—four this week at California State University at Fullerton; a UCLA student gets detained at the border and Homeland Security shows up at Los Angeles schools asking questions about students there.
U.S District Court Judge Paula Xinis has been a fierce legal warrior in the Abrego Garcia case. She is considering holding the administration in contempt of court for not reporting on Abrego Garcia’s status.
U.S District Court Judge Paula Xinis is considering holding the administration in contempt of court for not reporting on Abrego Garcia’s status.
“What the record shows is that nothing has been done. Nothing. I asked for reports from individuals with direct knowledge and I’ve gotten very little information of any value,” Judge Xinis said at a recent hearing. She has ordered four government officials who signed affidavits in the case to sit for depositions by April 23. This would afford Abrego Garcia’s lawyers to question key immigration officials.
On another front, the American Civil Liberties Union and other plaintiffs filed successful emergency lawsuits in federal courts in New York and Texas; the judges issued temporary restraining orders to block deportations to El Salvador. The 1798 Alien Enemies Act, which was being used to get deportations underway, was last used in during World War II to detain more than 31,000 people in the United States.
The majority of people removed from their homes and incarcerated in government camps were of Japanese descent; most of them were American citizens.
This time around the targets are Venezuelans identified as gang members using the “Alien Enemy Validation Guide.” It’s used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to assess the suspected gang member’s tattoos, hand gestures, manner of dress and other features and assign points per feature—a score of eight or more lands the person on the Alien Enemy list.
But not so fast, said the ACLU and other legal organizations challenging the deportations. A recent ruling by a divided the Supreme Court said that individuals had to be given due process to challenge their deportation, Lee Gelernt the ACLU attorney who is leading the lawsuit, told the Los Angeles Times.
Because of Senator Van Hollen’s high profile visit Abrego Garcia has been moved from CECOT to a prison with better conditions.
Then in an overnight decision Easter Week-end, the Supreme Court on Saturday morning on April 19 paused the deportations with dissents from Justice Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas after attorneys representing the Venezuelans filed an appeal. They argued that the immigrants were at risk of immediate deportation without enough notice to challenge the action. The court ruling was a win in terms of giving persons facing deportation due process; the high court did not rule on the issue of whether the Administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act is constitutional.
“The government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this court,” the Supreme Court ruled.
You could wonder then if Van Hollen’s high profile fight for due process for Abrego Garcia, the vigorous and also highly visible fight by the ACLU and other attorneys and legal organizations defending the Venesualan immigrants’ rights to due process might put enough of a spotlight to keep the issue in the public mind and encourage the courts to be transparent.
The fightback from the legal trench is a long and tedious slog. It’s daunting that the Trump Administration has loaded up the Supreme Court and other courts with conservative, self-serving ideologues. But push back from the lower courts, as in the case of Judge Xinis, create awareness in the public’s mind and mobilize public opinion and have potential to turn up the heat under elected officials.
Senator Van Hollen’s high profile visit has motivated others in Congress to make plans to go to El Salvador. The legal community is mobilized to slog through the slow process, and we non-lawyers, as in the case of constituents calling out Senator Grassley, can at least cause a fuss and keep pressing the issues.
We’re gonna be in the trenches a long time.
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Copyright 2025 by Bobbi Murray. All images used in this post are in the public domain.