Due Process Is The Game
Abrego Garcia is the Name
This past Saturday we marched again in the streets of Chicago as part of the nationwide “50501” protests. The streets of Chicago are famous for being part of mass protests movements that helped to make real change in America when the country seemed at war with itself. In 1968, Chicago hosted the Democratic Convention at the height of America’s involvement in Vietnam when 16,899 American soldiers were killed in just that one year. The Democrats were deeply split, and the anger and rage over the war spilled out on to Michigan Avenue when young protesters marched to the Conrad Hilton hotel, the convention headquarters for the Democrats. There the protesters were met by hundreds of Chicago police and National Guards, and the “Battle for Michigan Avenue” was on. Hundreds were injured and arrested. An appointed commission investigating the confrontation later concluded that what occurred that night on August 28 was a “police riot.” While Richard Nixon won the election and the war dragged on until March 1973, and after 58,000 American service men and women died, the streets of Chicago that August played an important part in lighting the fire of millions of Americans to mobilize and oppose that unjust war.
This past weekend, like the prior rally and march, thousands showed up to protest. It was peaceful, and there were funny signs and the usual chants. But unlike the protests that opposed the Vietnam war, the anger and rage seemed to me to be missing. Maybe it was because I and others observed that the protesters definitely skewed toward my demographic. Golden oldies. Where are the damn kids! But after we exhausted ourselves marching on a short, permitted route in the Loop, we all said our goodbyes and headed home for a well deserved nap or an almond milk latte.
I am not criticizing the importance of the protests and what 50501 is doing. It is vitally important, especially when most of our elected Democratic representatives and leaders are too cautiously following the advice of their consultants and strategists in opposing Trump’s destruction. And I have read about and seen the anger at town halls and other venues. And the polls are all showing Trump’s falling numbers, despite his fire hose of lies that he has the greatest poll numbers ever.
But all of this, and waiting for the midterms, will not save our democracy. 100 days in to Trump 2.0, and we are nearing the end game. Without hyperbole, it is not the economy, tariffs, the market or eggs. It is not Musk and DOGE, or RFK. It is not trashing our allies and breaking our historic alliances, while cozying up to Putin and other dictators. It is not the DEI attacks and attacks on universities. There is so much more that is deliberately suffocating us all by the sheer volume of Trump’s mendacity. Horrible as all of this is, and it is all ghastly, there is only one thing that really and truly matters.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia is THE GAME. It is all about this one person, and what he represents. It is about his rendition to a Salvadoran prison without due process. If this plays out as Trump and his cabal have intend, it is game, set, match and the end of America as we know it. It will be time to grab our bags and head for the exits. To try and prevent this, all of our energy, rage, protests, marches, Congressional phone calls, town halls and much more has to be laser focused on the case of Abrego Garcia. There is no do-over if we lose this.
Trump, as with every dictator, wants the unfettered power to disappear his enemies. History has been littered by dictators like Stalin, Hitler and Mao as they murdered and disappeared their enemies. Argentina is a somewhat lesser known case study, but just as evil and certainly known to Trump and his cabal and worth reviewing here.
In 1976 there was a military coup to depose Isabel Peron.1 It was led by Jorge Videla, known as the “Hitler of the Pampa.” In a brutal and lawless war against its own people, the Argentine junta disappeared anyone it deemed as its enemies, often branding them falsely as “terrorists.” They were abducted without cause and due process, and murdered, including by throwing them from airplanes into the waters around Argentina. Under his barbaric rule, 500 babies were born in prisons and concentration camps where their pregnant mothers were held as enemies of the junta. The babies were taken from their mothers at birth and illegally adopted by military couples who were part of the Videla regime.2 The mothers were often then murdered. There were no records kept of the missing, or desaparecidos. It was as if they never existed.3
Beginning in 1976, and lasting until the regime was forced out in 1983, mothers of the missing, especially the missing children, protested weekly in front of the government house at the Plaza de Mayo. The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, as they became known, risked their lives to bring international attention to the crimes committed by Videla and his henchman during the “Dirty War.” Their protests worked and Videla and his regime were forced from power. Today, these mothers and their families, with the help of organizations like the International Commission on Missing Persons,4 have worked tirelessly to identify and locate the now grown children, most of who have no knowledge of their illegal abductions and adoptions.
Trump’s disappearance plan is horrifyingly like Argentina’s “Dirty War.” Except, the disappearance by rendition of his enemies will be to countries and gulags outside the borders of the United States. It is also, no secret. During the 2024 presidential campaign Trump promised, and the Republican platform expressed, that he would have the "largest deportation program in American history," including the deportation of “others outside of criminals.” He didn’t offer much in the way of detail, except to say he would use all law enforcement agencies, as well as the military. Using federal military forces on domestic soil cannot be lawfully done without the invocation of the Insurrection Act of 1807, and only if the president determines that "unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion" against the government make it "impracticable to enforce" US law "by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings."5
At the staged Oval Office performance between Trump and El Salvador’s President, Nayib Bukele, Trump transparently told the whole world of his unconstitutional plans. Despite a 9-0 Supreme Court order directing the administration to “facilitate” the return of Abrego Garcia, Trump and his co-conspirators, Bondi and Rubio, threw up their hands and declared, gee whiz, they could not bring him back because he was outside the jurisdiction of the U.S., leaving the decision up to Bukele. But, Bondi added, if Bukele freed Abrego Garcia, of course the U.S. would facilitate his return by providing a plane. On cue, Bukele flawlessly delivered his lines: “I hope you’re not suggesting that I smuggle a terrorist into the United States,” Bukele said. “How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? Of course I’m not going to do it. The question is preposterous.” Trump added the piece de resistance when he revealed, "The homegrowns are next, the homegrowns. You've got to build about five more places," Trump said to Bukele, an apparent reference to prison space that would be needed in El Salvador to house U.S. citizens.
There it is. Clear as day. THE HOMEGROWNS ARE NEXT. We have been told. The Supreme Court has been told. In addition to Abrego Garcia, there are many others who have been renditioned to El Salvador to die in its prisons, and others who are lawfully in the U.S. but have been indefinitely detained somewhere in the U.S. based on what they may have said that Trump supposedly found offensive. These persons are all the dress rehearsal for what Trump wants to do to THE HOMEGROWNS. Also known as, U.S. citizens. He wants to be able to snatch citizens off the streets and thrown on to a plane headed for one of the many prisons Bukele will be paid to build in order to house THE HOMEGROWNS.
To be perfectly clear, Trump a few days later added that his administration is negotiating with other countries who might be willing to incarcerate U.S. citizens. "We have others we're negotiating with, too," he said. "If it's a homegrown criminal, I have no problem. Now, we're studying the laws right now — Pam [Bondi] is studying. If we can do that, it's good." Hmmm. I wonder who he’s negotiating with? Russia has lots of prisons. So does North Korea. Maybe Hungary will step up for a fee.
No one can ever say again, Who knew? If we are to be blessed with the protections of due process afforded to all person from the actions of the State, then when the Supreme Court gets its next chance to rein in Trump’s lawlessness, it must stop fucking things up by adding “lifeline” language like it did in the 9-0 order to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return. In that order it unnecessarily added that the district court should give “due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.” Since then, Trump has relied on that language to argue that NO court has the right to tell a president how they can conduct foreign affairs, as if hustling off a person to anther country’s prisons without due process is engaging in foreign affairs. Instead, the Court must be absolutely unequivocal that there is no qualified due process that deprives a person of any protections from the arbitrary acts of the government.
And the Democrats must stop listening to the consultants and strategists who are afraid of getting “sucked into” the Republican’s lies that Democrats want to protect undocumented immigrants and terrorists. A majority of Americans, including those who strongly support Trump’s broader immigration policies, aren’t being sucked into the lies, particularly when when asked about the details of Trump’s plans to render people to the prisons of another country.6 Instead, every Democratic Senator and House member should follow the strategy of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. They should charter a big plane, fly all together to El Salvador, and protest and stay there until Abrego Garcia is released and returned.
As for the next rally and protest, we should channel Howard Beale, the great character from the 1976 movie Network, and all scream: “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”
There is significant declassified evidence of the United States’s knowledge, if not direct involvement, of the coup and the likelihood of significant human rights abuses. For years, the U.S. was actively hostile to any populist, left-leaning government in Latin America, including Chile, Nicaragua and Venezuela. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/southern-cone/2021-03-23/argentinas-military-coup-what-us-knew.
https://icmp.int/about-icmp/.
https://www.history.com/articles/mothers-plaza-de-mayo-disappeared-children-dirty-war-argentina.
https://icmp.int/about-icmp/.
Using the federal military on U.S. soil has rarely been done. Instead, real civil disturbances have been quelled by a State’s National Guard, as in the riots after Martin Luther King’s assassination. Trump had earlier ordered Pam Bondi and Marco Rubio to advise him by April 20 on whether he could invoke the Insurrection Act. As of this writing, they have not yet reported to Trump.
“But even as the argument continues, the ground beneath it is shifting. Immigration isn’t an “80-20 issue” for Trump; it may not even be a net positive at all. Four recent national polls now show approval ratings for the president’s handling of immigration policy underwater. It’s at 45 percent approval versus 46 percent disapproval as of April 21, per Reuters-Ipsos; 45 percent approval versus 50 percent disapproval as of April 9, according to Quinnipiac; and exactly the same 45 percent approval to 50 percent disapproval ratio as of April 22, according to Economist-YouGov. And in a big new Pew poll that closed on April 13 respondents were 48 percent positive on Trump’s handling of immigration and 52 percent negative.” https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/polls-trump-approval-rating-immigration-going-south.html.