The struggle of one Salvadoran American has become emblematic of both the current administration’s savage war on immigrants and our collective hopes for the rule of law. Kilmar Abrego Garcia, kidnapped by ICE in March and detained at the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador despite a 2019 judicial order, then released from CECOT because of a long campaign for his freedom, then held in detention in Tennessee until mid-August where he fought another deportation to Costa Rica, then released to reunite with his family, has now been detained again with the threat of another deportation: to Uganda.
To say that this case is political is an understatement. The administration spins lies about him to justify their unlawful actions against him and thousands like him, kidnapped, denied their legal rights to due process, and then either deported or condemned to indefinite detention in the flourishing, for-profit hell of ICE detention. Their baseless claims of Abrego Garcia’s “crimes” embody the false construction of the “criminal alien”: character assassination pimped out as legal category.
The rule of lies by the powerful will continue to fabricate allegations against those they target for their disdain. This can be anyone: immigrants, dissidents, LGBTQ folks.
Abrego Garcia’s fight is the struggle of our collective lives. On the brink of his detention and likely long fight against another deportation, he admonished his supporters: “Regardless of what happens here with ICE, promise me this that you will keep fighting, praying, believing in dignity — not only for me but for everyone.”
(Taken from an email sent to me by Never Again Action.)
I have this awful certainty that when they’re finished with the legal theater and they run out of ways to keep him incarcerated, they’re just going to shoot him in the street. There will be some brief media outrage about norms and values, but the shooter will never be prosecuted and we’ll see a bunch of sober legal analysis about how qualified immunity is the bedrock of our democracy. That or they’ll just get someone to do it out of uniform and immediately pardon them. Maybe if they’re feeling clever they put him on a plane and shoot him at soon as it lands, then insist that no US laws were violated and no US court has jurisdiction. Everyone will shrug and conclude that’s just the way our system works.
I hope that Garcia is able to escape to Canada or China with his family
I highly fucking doubt that the U.S. would even seriously consider granting him asylum.
I repeat, he should go to Canada or China with his family and request it.
They’re really mad that he escaped their clutches before.
that’s the “better life” and the “american dream” they were chasing…but thinking about it, returning to the hug of the salvadorean dictator doesn’t look better
