That is not accurate. His initial encounters with the courts stemming from the 2019 arrest indicate that they saw at least some merit to the government's allegations of gang affiliation. From additional reading the best breakdown of the situation prior to the 4th Circuit holding last week is here:
What they are calling an administrative error is deporting him to El Salvador, which based on the withholding of removal, was the one country he was not supposed to be deported to. He could have been deported to any other country at any time without additional process, had there been one willing to take him. It is of course understandable that to date there had not been another country that would take a Salvadoran national.
Thinking further I want to put a finer point on where my positions are coming from. You're a leftist, and you are not afraid to state and defend your principles. I respect that and find our exchanges interesting because of it.
I have principles too, that land me somewhere in the moderate Democrat camp. I view the Trump situation as a 5 alarm fire. But experience with Trump 1.0, and his propensity to 'flood the zone' says to me you have to be smart about how you fight him. I think the most advantageous ground to do that is with tariffs, the bond market, his unilateral destruction of the economic outlook for regular working people.
Conversely I do not find it useful to spend news cycles litigating the particulars of some borderline case that serves to highlight the problems huge numbers of voters have with the immigration system, and which has plenty of smoke for the right wing media to kick up. My principles say you quietly hold firm in the courts on due process, but beyond that? I think its insane to try to fight Trump on his strongest issue (immigration), on a case where who knows what other facts may emerge, and when he is opening up a massive flank to exploit on trade. Sadly I've seen enough of Senator Van Hollen to know how clueless he is about outside perceptions but we should not be encouraging it. Moreover I think the coalition needs to understand that regardless of whether or not he is a gang member, someone like Garcia shouldn't have been here to begin with. Give him his day in court but there just isn't a lot more to it than that.
I am certainly not expecting you to agree with me on any of this, but I try to be as transparent as I can.
I'm not the one whose position on this and related issues needs to constantly find ways to accommodate illegal entrants who some how, some way, keep having encounters with the authorities, including in a jurisdiction where there is no collaboration with federal immigration enforcement.
Re: the game I don't think the deduction is as strong from a group of (I assume) thousands and thousands in an arena as from a much, much smaller group in a parking lot (I believe in each instance 5 or less). But if an investigation of gang members at the game also turns up some other people of unclear affiliation who are not legally in the country I see no reason to give them the benefit of the doubt in light of their status.
No, he was arrested the first time in 2019 with a group of people at a Home Depot, 2 of whom were (apparently) MS 13 members. He was not legally in the country at that time and could have been deported, but won a withholding of removal order from an immigration judge. He was legally in the country subject to that order when he was picked up the second time in March, this time loitering outside of an IKEA, and again with a group of people that (apparently) included MS 13 members.
As I said, he needs his day in court based on that withholding of removal order. I have no idea whether he is a gang member but we cannot keep letting people caught repeatedly in these types of circumstances stay in the US and I do not think you have to be MAGA sympathetic to see it that way.
I've said he needs to be returned and if the Trump admin ultimately refuses to comply with clear as day court orders then we are truly entering a new and frightening era.
But no, I don't have a problem with Salvadorans being returned to El Salvador. If some of them want to try their luck entering illegally and hoping for a reprieve then the minimum they need to do is avoid somehow finding themselves being brought into custody with gang members, to say nothing of having protective orders filed against them.
Sure they need to make it right but all that means is bringing him back and giving him his hearing. I have no idea whether or not he is a gang member but someone in the country illegally caught twice with people who apparently are gang members is enough for me to say he should not be allowed to stay. I'm on the side of the rule of law and rewarding guys like Garcia makes the law an ass.
He does though. He entered the country illegally and has been arrested twice now in the company of gang members, plus his wife has filed a protective order against him. He is a bad fit as an immigrant and should ultimately be repatriated to his country.
Dude was caught with his little gangster buddies at the IKEA I shop at. I can already see the local news headline in 5 years when he he's arrested for some serious crime yet people are mystified as to how someone like this was still in the country despite being apprehended twice by the authorities.
I don't know why you'd think Trump is scared but one hopes this combined with the strongly worded 4th Circuit decision yesterday is a step back from the brink. They need to bring the guy back, have his hearing, then hopefully promptly send him back to El Salvador where he belongs.
I am throwing this out there everywhere I comment in case relevant to anyone including any lurkers. It came to my attention yesterday that Pam Bondi's brother Brad is running for president of the DC Bar association. I typically don't pay attention to these but any other DC barred attorneys should vote just to vote against him. Voting open until June 4. I don't know that the DC Bar does anything important but the last thing we need is another hanger on of these people getting authority over anything, no matter how small.
I think there was a really sad , destructive, and downright cynical in many corners complacency about the mostly, relatively normal for a Republican administration, appointments during Trump 1.0. For v 2.0 we are running an experiment to see what happens when you put the dumbest and craziest people possible in charge of organs of the state.
I can't speak for Jaybird or any other commenters but my goal is to defeat them. In sports losing to good teams is something that just happens but consistently getting beat, even narrowly, by the scrubs of the scrubs is a failure of leadership and organizational culture. IMO that is what we need to deal with and the only sure way to take out the trash.
I hear you man but you still have to play the game well or at least well enough. And look at these people we're up against. They aren't geniuses and they aren't even particularly great at blocking and tackling yet we've lost to them 2 out of 3 times.
I think Trump is setting the stage for a backlash on a number issues. My guess is that deportation of illegal immigrants will not in itself be part of it but highly publicized cruelty and defying the courts might well be.* In the mean time there are human beings caught in the middle of it and it has been bad for them and bad for the rule of law to use them in a kind of game of chicken, or as pawns in our own longstanding failure to fix the immigration system.
*If he succeeds in crashing the economy as he seems hell bent on doing all of the immigration stuff will be but a footnote in the comeuppance.
I don't see it that way and I think what's happened to the Republican party cuts to the opposite conclusion in terms of how to behave. All Biden had to do to defuse this issue was leave Trump's immigration EOs in place and use his bully pulpit to tell would be illegal entrants not to take their chances, and that the expectations of the Mexican government was a continued show of force, including remain in Mexico. You can probably do that and maybe still even get away with occasionally championing the cause of certain easy cases like the Obama admin did. Point being when youre facing an internal threat of the nature Trump poses the last thing you do is throw open the gates to a massive influx of irregular immigration.
I think that's a misread of the political dynamic. Cruelty and being vindictive will not play well, especially when it is so trivially easy to trot out the most sympathetic cases on the wrong side of it (and Garcia isn't even one of those). The error is taking that as evidence that the American people are actually in favor of allowing any person from a country with law and order problems, which is basically all of them south of the Rio Grande, a pass to get in and stay indefinitely. The result is a whiplash of low enforcement to increasingly authoritarian enforcement from administration to administration. Which goes back to my original point that signaling to people that they should take their chances during a low enforcement stretch is not doing them any favors.
I don't think that's entirely right. The most important part of how we got here remains Congressional Republicans refusal to take deals multiple times they've been on the table because they preferred the issue to a solution. It's a major factor in why the old guard lost their party to MAGA. Democrats don't own that and an inconsistent willingness to defend rule of law on principle is better than unwillingness to ever do it at all. However the politics of this issue are what they are and the best way to fight back against the madness is to accept that and start pivoting accordingly. The courts are not able to save us from every bad result of an election and it was foolishness to think they could.
Not when something within a stone's throw of those views make up a majority of voters in a democracy. Those who have been broadcasting out into the world that anyone who makes it in has a good chance of staying indefinitely under some previously obscure loophole do not have clean hands.
It all starts with grasping that a combination of executive action, the judiciary, and the immigration bar, have succeeded in turning a bunch of laws written with the horrors of the middle 20th century in mind into a pretext for a de facto immigration policy so toxic to the public even the politicians who implicitly support it don't dare say so. Trump probably isn't possible without it.
This has to be unprecedented in modern US history in terms of being totally self inflicted. It's going to be a kick right in the balls to the average household. All I can say is I hope his supporters learn their lesson, and if they haven't yet, well, I'm sure we can count on many more opportunities to come. We aren't even a tenth of the way through.
To be clear I'm really talking about taking the L and conceding the issue for the near future, with the only sticking point being humane treatment for those attempting to cross or who are caught internally as we send them back. There's no compromise on the table right now and every time I look at polls the Democrats are rated almost as badly as Republicans are on abortion, so not the neighborhood we want to be in. Better to focus on other things and get back to immigration when the opportunity re-opens, as it will one day.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Open Mic for the Week of 4/14/2025”
That is not accurate. His initial encounters with the courts stemming from the 2019 arrest indicate that they saw at least some merit to the government's allegations of gang affiliation. From additional reading the best breakdown of the situation prior to the 4th Circuit holding last week is here:
https://www.wakeuptopolitics.com/p/25-facts-about-kilmar-abrego-garcia?
What they are calling an administrative error is deporting him to El Salvador, which based on the withholding of removal, was the one country he was not supposed to be deported to. He could have been deported to any other country at any time without additional process, had there been one willing to take him. It is of course understandable that to date there had not been another country that would take a Salvadoran national.
"
Yea I mean I don't want to keep speculating. I have my differences on public policy but in my heart I'd rather be aligned with Chris and Saul.
Who knows what tomorrow will bring but my spidey sense is that the Democrats will be right on the basic principle but woefully wrong on the politics.
"
You will not see me balk at enforcement against employers, if the GOP will ever take yes for an answer on anything, which we all know they won't.
"
Thinking further I want to put a finer point on where my positions are coming from. You're a leftist, and you are not afraid to state and defend your principles. I respect that and find our exchanges interesting because of it.
I have principles too, that land me somewhere in the moderate Democrat camp. I view the Trump situation as a 5 alarm fire. But experience with Trump 1.0, and his propensity to 'flood the zone' says to me you have to be smart about how you fight him. I think the most advantageous ground to do that is with tariffs, the bond market, his unilateral destruction of the economic outlook for regular working people.
Conversely I do not find it useful to spend news cycles litigating the particulars of some borderline case that serves to highlight the problems huge numbers of voters have with the immigration system, and which has plenty of smoke for the right wing media to kick up. My principles say you quietly hold firm in the courts on due process, but beyond that? I think its insane to try to fight Trump on his strongest issue (immigration), on a case where who knows what other facts may emerge, and when he is opening up a massive flank to exploit on trade. Sadly I've seen enough of Senator Van Hollen to know how clueless he is about outside perceptions but we should not be encouraging it. Moreover I think the coalition needs to understand that regardless of whether or not he is a gang member, someone like Garcia shouldn't have been here to begin with. Give him his day in court but there just isn't a lot more to it than that.
I am certainly not expecting you to agree with me on any of this, but I try to be as transparent as I can.
"
I'd ask if you are sure you're helping yours.
I'm not the one whose position on this and related issues needs to constantly find ways to accommodate illegal entrants who some how, some way, keep having encounters with the authorities, including in a jurisdiction where there is no collaboration with federal immigration enforcement.
Re: the game I don't think the deduction is as strong from a group of (I assume) thousands and thousands in an arena as from a much, much smaller group in a parking lot (I believe in each instance 5 or less). But if an investigation of gang members at the game also turns up some other people of unclear affiliation who are not legally in the country I see no reason to give them the benefit of the doubt in light of their status.
"
No, he was arrested the first time in 2019 with a group of people at a Home Depot, 2 of whom were (apparently) MS 13 members. He was not legally in the country at that time and could have been deported, but won a withholding of removal order from an immigration judge. He was legally in the country subject to that order when he was picked up the second time in March, this time loitering outside of an IKEA, and again with a group of people that (apparently) included MS 13 members.
As I said, he needs his day in court based on that withholding of removal order. I have no idea whether he is a gang member but we cannot keep letting people caught repeatedly in these types of circumstances stay in the US and I do not think you have to be MAGA sympathetic to see it that way.
"
I've said he needs to be returned and if the Trump admin ultimately refuses to comply with clear as day court orders then we are truly entering a new and frightening era.
But no, I don't have a problem with Salvadorans being returned to El Salvador. If some of them want to try their luck entering illegally and hoping for a reprieve then the minimum they need to do is avoid somehow finding themselves being brought into custody with gang members, to say nothing of having protective orders filed against them.
"
Sure they need to make it right but all that means is bringing him back and giving him his hearing. I have no idea whether or not he is a gang member but someone in the country illegally caught twice with people who apparently are gang members is enough for me to say he should not be allowed to stay. I'm on the side of the rule of law and rewarding guys like Garcia makes the law an ass.
Regarding the politics of the situation I see it differently. The last thing we want to do while we are trying to preserve our system of government from an authoritarian maniac is to make a cause celebré of an illegal alien who spends his time in front of big box stores with MS-13 members.
"
He does though. He entered the country illegally and has been arrested twice now in the company of gang members, plus his wife has filed a protective order against him. He is a bad fit as an immigrant and should ultimately be repatriated to his country.
Dude was caught with his little gangster buddies at the IKEA I shop at. I can already see the local news headline in 5 years when he he's arrested for some serious crime yet people are mystified as to how someone like this was still in the country despite being apprehended twice by the authorities.
"
I don't know why you'd think Trump is scared but one hopes this combined with the strongly worded 4th Circuit decision yesterday is a step back from the brink. They need to bring the guy back, have his hearing, then hopefully promptly send him back to El Salvador where he belongs.
"
I am throwing this out there everywhere I comment in case relevant to anyone including any lurkers. It came to my attention yesterday that Pam Bondi's brother Brad is running for president of the DC Bar association. I typically don't pay attention to these but any other DC barred attorneys should vote just to vote against him. Voting open until June 4. I don't know that the DC Bar does anything important but the last thing we need is another hanger on of these people getting authority over anything, no matter how small.
"
True, but no death penalty in NY. I believe it's the feds pursuing it.
"
One never wants to predict an outcome but I would think chances are high he gets it. Message being sent right back kind of thing.
"
Who on Earth is Nick Decker?
"
I think there was a really sad , destructive, and downright cynical in many corners complacency about the mostly, relatively normal for a Republican administration, appointments during Trump 1.0. For v 2.0 we are running an experiment to see what happens when you put the dumbest and craziest people possible in charge of organs of the state.
On “The Lawless Lying Duplicitous Bastards of Abrego Garcia”
I can't speak for Jaybird or any other commenters but my goal is to defeat them. In sports losing to good teams is something that just happens but consistently getting beat, even narrowly, by the scrubs of the scrubs is a failure of leadership and organizational culture. IMO that is what we need to deal with and the only sure way to take out the trash.
"
I hear you man but you still have to play the game well or at least well enough. And look at these people we're up against. They aren't geniuses and they aren't even particularly great at blocking and tackling yet we've lost to them 2 out of 3 times.
"
I think Trump is setting the stage for a backlash on a number issues. My guess is that deportation of illegal immigrants will not in itself be part of it but highly publicized cruelty and defying the courts might well be.* In the mean time there are human beings caught in the middle of it and it has been bad for them and bad for the rule of law to use them in a kind of game of chicken, or as pawns in our own longstanding failure to fix the immigration system.
*If he succeeds in crashing the economy as he seems hell bent on doing all of the immigration stuff will be but a footnote in the comeuppance.
"
I don't see it that way and I think what's happened to the Republican party cuts to the opposite conclusion in terms of how to behave. All Biden had to do to defuse this issue was leave Trump's immigration EOs in place and use his bully pulpit to tell would be illegal entrants not to take their chances, and that the expectations of the Mexican government was a continued show of force, including remain in Mexico. You can probably do that and maybe still even get away with occasionally championing the cause of certain easy cases like the Obama admin did. Point being when youre facing an internal threat of the nature Trump poses the last thing you do is throw open the gates to a massive influx of irregular immigration.
"
I think that's a misread of the political dynamic. Cruelty and being vindictive will not play well, especially when it is so trivially easy to trot out the most sympathetic cases on the wrong side of it (and Garcia isn't even one of those). The error is taking that as evidence that the American people are actually in favor of allowing any person from a country with law and order problems, which is basically all of them south of the Rio Grande, a pass to get in and stay indefinitely. The result is a whiplash of low enforcement to increasingly authoritarian enforcement from administration to administration. Which goes back to my original point that signaling to people that they should take their chances during a low enforcement stretch is not doing them any favors.
"
I don't think that's entirely right. The most important part of how we got here remains Congressional Republicans refusal to take deals multiple times they've been on the table because they preferred the issue to a solution. It's a major factor in why the old guard lost their party to MAGA. Democrats don't own that and an inconsistent willingness to defend rule of law on principle is better than unwillingness to ever do it at all. However the politics of this issue are what they are and the best way to fight back against the madness is to accept that and start pivoting accordingly. The courts are not able to save us from every bad result of an election and it was foolishness to think they could.
"
Not when something within a stone's throw of those views make up a majority of voters in a democracy. Those who have been broadcasting out into the world that anyone who makes it in has a good chance of staying indefinitely under some previously obscure loophole do not have clean hands.
It all starts with grasping that a combination of executive action, the judiciary, and the immigration bar, have succeeded in turning a bunch of laws written with the horrors of the middle 20th century in mind into a pretext for a de facto immigration policy so toxic to the public even the politicians who implicitly support it don't dare say so. Trump probably isn't possible without it.
On “Open Mic for the Week of 4/14/2025”
This has to be unprecedented in modern US history in terms of being totally self inflicted. It's going to be a kick right in the balls to the average household. All I can say is I hope his supporters learn their lesson, and if they haven't yet, well, I'm sure we can count on many more opportunities to come. We aren't even a tenth of the way through.
"
Dollar down 10% since inauguration day as investors abandoning it due to tariff chaos. Yikes.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/04/15/dollar-investors-treasuries-safety/
On “The Lawless Lying Duplicitous Bastards of Abrego Garcia”
To be clear I'm really talking about taking the L and conceding the issue for the near future, with the only sticking point being humane treatment for those attempting to cross or who are caught internally as we send them back. There's no compromise on the table right now and every time I look at polls the Democrats are rated almost as badly as Republicans are on abortion, so not the neighborhood we want to be in. Better to focus on other things and get back to immigration when the opportunity re-opens, as it will one day.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.