Wednesday, April 16, 2025

Trump Administration Seems Intent on Making Americans - And Our Constitutional Rights - Disappear

By now, we have all heard about ICE agents under the Trump administration taking custody of people who are in the United States legally and deporting them without due process. 

In particular, a Maryland man and Salvadoran national, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, was deported into El Salvador prison, where he has been detained. Despite acknowledging that they took him accidentally, the Trump administration is saying that they have no plans to make any real effort to get him back into the United States. 

More recently, there were rather frightening reports - assuming that they are true - that ICE knowingly took the wrong person to that prison in El Salvador. This was a Venezuelan teenager, Merwil Gutiérrez. Supposedly, according to reports, one senior ICE agent was informed that he was not the person that they were seeking, yet responded by urging team to take him anyway,

These people - and thousands more - have been taken to this prison in El Salvador and been robbed of their Constitutional rights to due process. So they have not even had their day or say in court. For all intents and purposes, they have been disappeared.

Now that's a chilling, isn't it? If you are anything like me, or near my age, hearing that somebody has been "disappeared" by the government conjures images of South American dictatorships back in the 1970's and 1980's. At least that is what I have always associated people disappearing because they got on the wrong side of government. And it always seemed like something far away, until recently. Until very recently.

Specifically, since the Trump administration took power just a little less than three months ago. It feels like it's been a whole lot longer than just three months, doesn't it? But year, check your calendars. Not even quite three months yet as I write this, on the evening of April 16th. 

Earlier this week, President Trump warmly welcomed El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele to the White House. Bukele, by the way, proudly describes himself as the 'world's coolest dictator', and those are his words. So given Trump's history of being impressed by dictators, he surely must really like Bukele, right? It only makes sense. 

Anyway, Trump heaped praise on El Salvador's prison system, which feels sort of similar to Guantanamo Bay for the Trump administration. Those prisons are where this administration has been sending thousands of people, although it has been ICE agents supposedly sending undocumented foreigners (with some notable exceptions, as already mentioned). Next, however, Trump stated his intention to begin sending violent “homegrown criminals” to be imprisoned under a deal with the Central American country’s government. In other words, American citizens. And given the clear recent history of the Trump administration not being particularly discriminating with whether or not they have the right people, and then showing a lack of concern in rectifying the situation if they send the wrong person, this feels quite chilling. Because if American citizens can be sent to these prisons without being granted their Constitutional right of due process, he can pretty much send anyone he wants to there. In other words, get ready for more cases of people being "disappeared" in the future.

And that means that our very democracy, based on the Constitution (which includes a system of checks and balances designed to prevent abuses of power from any one branch of government) is effectively finished. Just in time for us Americans to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States declaring independence and becoming the first modern nation to experiment with democracy. Despite it's flaws, this democracy had enjoyed some huge successes for quite a long time, and kept expanding over time.

Until recently. It now appears that Trump's tendency to gut things that matter when he is in the Oval Office now includes American democracy itself. Trump explained how it is important to him to "obey the laws," although he and his administration have consistently also been arguing, paradoxically, that he and his administration are the law. That by virtue of his being president, what he says goes, that he is the law, and thus cannot break the law. It is the same argument that Nixon unsuccessfully championed during and after Watergate, in a rather weak attempt to justify his actions. Here is Trump explaining his desire to begin to send American citizens to prisons in El Salvador in the future:

“We always have to obey the laws, but we also have homegrown criminals that push people into subways, that hit elderly ladies on the back of the head with a baseball bat when they’re not looking, that are absolute monsters,” Trump declared.  

“I’d like to include them in the group of people to get them out of the country, but you’ll have to be looking at the laws on that.”

Yikes.

Indeed, if we are to become a country known for people simply being disappeared by the will of the government, we truly are no longer a democracy. If we allow this to happen, then for all intents and purposes, our American democratic experiment is over and done, and dictatorship is here.

Even worse, it was Americans who chose this fate for themselves. 




Below are links to articles which got me on this topic, and or which I obtained the information, as well as the quotes, used in this particular blog entry:


Making Our Rights Disappear: The Authoritarian War on Due Process  882  37  0 John & Nisha Whitehead March 26, 2025       

https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/making_our_rights_disappear_the_authoritarian_war_on_due_process?utm_medium=paid&utm_source=fb&utm_id=6602860686279&utm_content=6602860688079&utm_term=6602860687479&utm_campaign=6602860686279&fbclid=IwY2xjawJq0VVleHRuA2FlbQEwAGFkaWQAAAYBWSvkVwEeo2H1PNyYMb0YEIfucdgj1ccjYEsu0q_m-Z4j3Kc2gAHvAPV5aovIGOxu1qk_aem_BvXgwGUPq3oStI6ftlrg0A



Judge admonishes U.S. for failing to return Maryland man wrongly deported to El Salvador Michael Collins Eduardo Cuevas Cybele Mayes-Osterman Nick Penzenstadler USA TODAY, April 16, 2025:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/04/15/kilmar-abrego-garcia-wrongly-deported-el-salvador/83097578007/



Ice deports Venezuelan teen despite reportedly knowing he was not a target Merwil Gutiérrez sent from New York to El Salvador prison although family says he has no criminal history or gang ties  by Marina Dunbar Tue 15 Apr 2025 12.43 EDT

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/15/merwil-gutierrez-venezuelan-teen-deported-el-salvador



The 'world's coolest dictator' heads to the White House by Alfie Pannell, April 14, 2025:

https://www.npr.org/2025/04/14/nx-s1-5361119/the-worlds-coolest-dictator-heads-to-the-white-house




Trump eyes deportation of ‘homegrown criminals’ to El Salvador published by Al Jazeera, 15 Apr 2025:   

After deporting foreign passport holders to notorious Central American prison, president hints US citizens could follow.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/4/15/trump-eyes-deportation-of-homegrown-criminals-to-el-salvador

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