One might think that with President Donald Trump unilaterally sending the economy into recession, Democrats might become at least temporary champions of free trade in an effort to find their way back out of the political wilderness. But instead, Democrats have chosen a different path.
Despite the fact that immigration is the one issue voters still give Trump the highest marks on, Democrats have chosen to make a man named Kilmar Abrego Garcia the face of Trump resistance.
To hear Democrats like Sen. Chris Murphy (D-RI) tell it, Garcia was just an innocent, doting father who was randomly targeted by the Trump administration to be sent to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center. The Supreme Court then ordered Trump to return this “legal” resident back to the United States. Trump has refused, sending our nation into a constitutional crisis. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) has even announced he is going to personally travel to El Salvador to bring Garcia home.
The problem is that Democrats leave a lot out of Garcia’s story, and the truth makes Trump’s failure to return him quite reasonable.
For starters, Garcia was not in the United States legally. By his lawyer’s own admission, he entered the country illegally in 2011. Then, eight years later, Garcia was arrested at a Home Depot while illegally soliciting employment. The Prince George’s County Police Department then transferred him to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which began deportation proceedings against him.
As a defense to deportation, Garcia tried to claim asylum, claiming his life was in danger from the Barrio 18 gang. But his asylum claim was denied and the judge ordered his removal. The judge did, however, grant Garcia a “withholding of removal” order, forbidding his removal to El Salvador, but this did not make him a “legal” resident. As Garcia’s own lawyers admit, “Should [the Trump administration] wish to remove Plaintiff Abrego Garcia to any other country, they would have no legal impediment in doing so.”
The Supreme Court did, as Democrats claim, hold that the Trump administration erred in sending Garcia to El Salvador. But the Court also held that the District Court needed to be more clear on how the Trump administration should “effectuate” his release from his custody in El Salvador.
Garcia’s own lawyers, and many Democrats, have argued that the Trump administration should threaten to withhold funding to El Salvador payments meant to compensate them for the detention of 261 illegal immigrants deported from the United States until El Salvador agrees to release Garcia.
But this is exactly the type of political foreign policy question that courts have no authority to venture into. Is Garcia’s detention more important than keeping the other 260 illegal immigrants, most of whom are violent offenders, locked up? Should Trump risk disrupting his relationship with President Nayib Bukele for this one illegal immigrant who has no right to be in the United States to begin with? These are all political questions courts are not equipped to answer.
RETURNING ILLEGAL MIGRANT FROM EL SALVADOR ‘AN EXERCISE IN FUTILITY’: LEGAL SCHOLARS
After years of aiding and abetting a completely open border where thousands of murdering rapists like Jose Antonio Ibarra, Victor Antonio Martinez-Hernandez, and Johan Jose Martinez-Rangel were free to enter without any meaningful background check, the argument by the Democrats that Trump should now move heaven and earth to bring an admitted illegal immigrant back to the United States, even though he still has no legal right to be here, rings hollow.
If anything, Garcia is exactly what Trump wants voters talking about while his tariffs tank the economy.