Kilmar Abrego Garcia has become the face of President Donald Trump’s immigration policy, but the objections Democrats and their media allies have raised about his deportation to El Salvador stretch far beyond his case and reveal their goal of undermining Trump’s ability to deport anyone.
As The Washington Post’s Jason Willick correctly notes, the Democrats erred in choosing to focus on Abrego Garcia as a hero of Trump resistance. “Abrego García’s guilt or innocence is beside the point, and liberals were foolish to ever make his alleged virtue a centerpiece of their appeals,” Willick writes.
“What the U.S. government is doing to Abrego García is just as lawless whether he beat his wife or not, and whether he is associated with the MS-13 gang or not,” Willick explains.
Willick does not mention this, but Abrego Garcia was just one of over one hundred illegal immigrants deported to El Salvador by Trump through Title 8. There were over 100 other illegal immigrants also deported to El Salvador pursuant to the Alien Enemies Act, but that is a separate issue. Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act in an undeclared war is a constitutional issue that will be heard by federal courts and most likely eventually decided by the Supreme Court.
Trump does not need a declaration of war to deport illegal immigrants pursuant to Title 8, and about half of those deported on the March flights to El Salvador, like Abrego Garcia, were deported under that law.
And according to 60 Minutes, very few of those deported to El Salvador had criminal convictions. Looking at all 238 illegal immigrants deported to El Salvador, including both Alien Enemies Act and Title 8 deportees, 75% had no criminal record, and of those that did, the vast majority were for non-violent offenses such as theft, shoplifting, and trespassing. Only 3% were accused of murder, rape, assault and kidnapping.
Willick, apparently, wants to see all of these illegal immigrants, save those accused of violent crimes, brought back to the United States because Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has chosen to lock them up in his Terrorism Confinement Center.
Willick argues that leaving any one of these illegal immigrants in El Salvador is the moral equivalent of “lynching.”
Willick’s argument might have more weight if the federal government could just fly illegal immigrants to their home countries, force them off the plane, and then take off. But that is not how the system works. Countries have to be willing to take these illegal immigrants, and finding countries that are willing to take illegal immigrants from the U.S. is not only difficult, but it is one of the main reasons the border is so hard to control in the first place.
If you were the president of El Salvador, would you let the U.S. just release a bunch of illegal immigrants in your country, especially if the entire reason they were being deported was because the U.S. government believed they were members of a violent international gang? Of course not. Which is why Bukele is detaining them.
ABREGO GARCIA ISN’T THE WINNING ISSUE DEMOCRATS THINK IT IS
Finding countries willing to take illegal immigrants is hard. Trump was able to convince Bukele to take over 200 of them. They are no longer in American custody. They have been deported and are now in the custody of the Salvadoran government.
If illegal immigrants here in the U.S. want to choose which country they are deported to, they should self-deport. And if anyone has any objections as to how illegal immigrants are treated once deported, they should take those objections up with the countries they have been deported to.