Kilmar Abrego Garcia is no martyr

In the matter of Kilmar Abrego Garcia and his all-expenses-paid sojourn in El Salvador, there has been a goodly quota of posturing all around. Or, rather, there has been understandable outrage and intransigence on the part of the Trump administration. There has also been wild, almost comic posturing on the part of Democrats and their megaphones held up by the media.

There are 195 countries in the world today. It is unfortunate, or at least complicating, that the Trump administration settled on El Salvador as the country to which to deport Garcia, whose wife was granted a temporary protective order against him in 2021, according to Maryland court records. Garcia has admitted to clambering into the US illegally in 2012, though he has never been convicted of any crime. After several arrests and hearings, he was slated to be deported back to his native country, El Salvador.

In 2019, however, an immigration judge granted him “withholding of removal” status, which prohibited the Department of Homeland Security from sending him home because, it was alleged, he faced threats of gang violence. Why, then, was Garcia sent to El Salvador? It was a mistake. Several government officials have admitted it was an “administrative error.” But no matter, they said. They claimed Garcia is himself an alleged member of MS-13, a designated terror group, and so is no longer eligible for that “withholding of removal” status.

That’s where we were in mid-April. Then the judges, the media, and the politicians got in on the act. Garcia and his PR team are insisting that he is not a member of MS-13. Two courts, a couple of bona fide members of the gang and various law-enforcement officials disagree. But the question has yet to be settled definitively.

The suggestion that Senator Chris Van Hollen was sipping margaritas with Garcia was made for GOP attack ads

The wildebeest in the room is the concept of “due process.” J. Harvie Wilkinson III, a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, thundered that “the government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order.” Gosh. Let’s acknowledge that the judge is correct that “due process… is the foundation of our constitutional order.” The question is, has Garcia been granted enough of that process? He certainly seems to have enjoyed quite a lot of it. He has had three immigration hearings. One determined his MS-13 affiliation. A second upheld that determination. A third denied his petition for asylum. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court has said that the administration must do what it can to “facilitate” his return – and speedily.

What would that entail? President Bukele of El Salvador has said he will not release Garcia and “smuggle” him into the US. Should we therefore impose sanctions on our new friend in Central America? Perhaps we should rouse our inner Victoria Nuland and invade El Salvador to retrieve Garcia so we can then either jail him or deport him to one of the 193 other countries on offer? And speaking of “due process,” what sort of process was involved in allowing millions of illegal immigrants to flood the country during the Biden years? There was no process. They just came. Does each deserve his own district court judge and hectoring Democrat politician to plead their case?

And then there is Judge Wilkinson’s wind-up. Was the government “asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons” with no due process? Senator Elizabeth Warren thinks so. “If they can disappear Mr. Abrego Garcia,” she croaked, “then they can disappear you!”

Some pointed out the absurdity of this claim, but they shouldn’t expect any thanks for their translation. People tend to dislike it when their absurdity shows, like a poorly fitting slip.

As the indignant clamor of Judge Wilkinson’s rhetoric suggests, the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia has afforded plenty of opportunities for high dudgeon. “Trump has let his inner Hitler off the leash! He is a threat to our cherished constitutional order!” The volume on both sides has been cranked up to eleven. Trump could usefully dial things back. He is famed for “the art of the deal.” He should bring that skill to this controversy and defuse the situation.

The Dems have seized upon Garcia as a martyr-in-waiting: a moral life jacket whose buoyancy they are counting on to save them. It won’t work. The suggestion that Senator Chris Van Hollen was sipping margaritas with Garcia in El Salvador was custom-made for next season’s GOP attack ads.

As commentator Ann Coulter observed, he has locked up the “face tattoo vote.” The public at large, however, is not smiling. Van Hollen and other members of the canonization committee for Garcia have made a strategic political error described in the late 1960s by the political scientist James Q. Wilson: they have confused their audience – the media and other repositories of correct opinion – with their constituency, the people eligible to vote for them.

A friend observes: they are like a school of dolphins whose ability to navigate by echolocation has been scrambled. Having lost the thread, they are about to beach themselves, there to heave and shudder in impotent, out-of-office irrelevance.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s June 2025 World edition.