This is an even worse intentionally created jurisdictional black hole than Guantanamo Bay.
Abduct someone. Move them faster than their family, friends, and legal counsel can possibly follow. Get them on a plane to El Salvador. Put them in the CECOT hole. And then say "Aw geez, they're in Salvadorian jurisdiction now, nothing we can do."
Yes, Abrego Garcia is a Salvadorian citizen. He also had been explicitly granted protected status to remain in the US.
Nothing about this process prevents its application against US citizens. The detainee is pushed through a one-way valve faster than due process can be applied. If we do not protect the rule of law for immigrants who have been granted the right to stay here, we will also lose the rule of law for citizens.
> Move them faster than their family, friends, and legal counsel can possibly follow. Get them on a plane to El Salvador
The question is whether these folks would be better off if the abductors were obstructed. They’re no longer operating under the colour of law. Disabling vehicles, possible officers, or otherwise creating chaos that makes moving victims around starts to make sense. Because if the other side isn’t playing by the rules, it really doesn’t make sense for you to.
That's the unfortunate powder keg we're sitting on. Right now everyone's still generally keeping up appearances that the rules matter. It's getting pretty thin in places. The dance the Trump admin is doing with the courts over Abrego Garcia serves multiple purposes. It gives a veneer of compliance - DoJ lawyers are showing up to hearings, they are filing briefings, they are participating in the process. It would be extremely fair to say they're not participating in good faith, the strategy clearly intends to delay and deflect any meaningful implementation of the court's order to bring Abrego Garcia back to the US. But they are participating.
This appearance keeps a lot of folks on the fence. They want the big moment where it's super obvious that it's time to act. It doesn't work like that. This is how fascists gnaw away at the constructs that enable free societies.
> Invoking Article 1 of the Weimar constitution, which stated that the government was an expression of the will of the people, Hitler informed the court that once he had achieved power through legal means, he intended to mold the government as he saw fit. It was an astonishingly brazen statement.
> “So, through constitutional means?” the presiding judge asked.
IANAL but the Bill of Rights (first ten amendments) doesn't mention "citizens", only "persons"; the US constitution should in theory protect any human being, wherever they are and whatever country they're from, from attacks by the US government.
Definitely. But a lot of people are happy to look at what's happening with Abrego Garcia and say "it can't happen to me, I'm a US citizen."
Those people need to be actively reminded that once we discard due process and rule of law, your status does not matter. If the administration chooses to target you, you'll be on the other side of the valve before anyone can meaningfully intervene on your behalf to assert your rights.
There's a phrase "you can beat the time, but you can't beat the ride," meaning you can't do much about it if the police want to put you in jail for the night/weekend. They're going to subdue you, they're going to handcuff you, and they're going to book you. The validity of the charges or chance of successful prosecution does not matter, you're going to jail. You might bond out or get released as soon as you see a magistrate judge, but in the meantime you're going to jail.
If the "ride" extends all the way to a facility that is beyond the jurisdiction of US courts, then the ride and the time are one and the same. The executive is not only the enforcer but also the judge and jury. It is absolutely broken from a constitutional perspective.
Even if you ignore the legal side of things, it's crazy to me to see some argue that founding principles don't apply to non-citizens. "The government shall not abduct and send people to concentration camps, as long as they're American citizens" sounds completely bonkers and immoral.
This has been abused in the past and no one cared. Held in illegal prison conditions in the US? Take it to court, they just move you and you no longer have jurisdiction and the original illegal prison situation is never changed.
I no longer have access to Lexus but try searching using 'moot transfer loss/lack of standing/jurisdiction correctional facility'. US Prisons have sections of facilities so bad for potential mental damage inmates can only remain in them for 3 months max but nothing is done to enforce that limit. If inmates file and start to have success they do finally get moved but they then lose standing regarding the conditions (while other inmates are then put in the freed up unfit cell). The feds move jurisdiction strategically, not so much they lose 'good faith' from the courts but more than is acceptable when they are using it specifically to undermine access to the courts/civil rights, prevent rulings on cells/wings ruled unfit for more than short term, etc.
And when transfered you get diesel therapy. Every new prison situation presents threat to life risks, so being introduced to potentially a dozen new situations (you get placed in a new prison situation each nights stopover) during transit is something US inmates try to minimize (unfortunately timed transfers (oops, BOP mistake, sorry, we didn't mean for you to miss meals, just a timing mistake) causing missing breakfast/dinner so you often get just a single bologna sandwiches/orange in a day, plus the whole pissing yourself, inability to wipe yourself because you are shackled, and you aren't getting unshackled to use the toilet on your 12 hour ride, etc, etc google Diesel Therapy).
I see, so the general idea is that there are certain people in the federal govt that really have a mission, and the mission opposes these inmates.
To the point that they are willing to collaborate across states to rotate them around.
Confidence and morality are the underlying feelings across this part of the govt then, I am guessing. As a processed, your only solution now is to hope you get placed in the right moral category. That is a risk the processor is confident enough to take.
I think it's more that they are just people doing jobs, and what we see as sacred safety nets/constitutional protections they over time just see as limits to doing their job so they work around them. Sadly it's not super nefarious, just human nature. I mean these lawyers upset now knew it was being done previously, but again, only so much they can do in their job and they let it slide too. They were also part of the slippery slope. Again because ultimately they too are just doing a job. Human systems that defer to people (in the court given 'good faith') will get abused up to and just as far past the line as they can get away with. And once normalized the lines move further back.
The system of government our Constitution requires is rigid, expensive, and requires constant vigilance. We have chosen to go the window dressing route for a long time (just like Congress has chosen the easiest path) and that's something coming back on us now.
Not to be blunt, but isn't this the end of habeas corpus, if the federal government can black bag anybody they want to without a trial, and then maintain they have no ability to obey judicial orders to return them?
correct, and in another place they're claiming that the habeas petition that was filed to save another victim was invalid because it was filed in the wrong state, because the Feds had kidnapped the woman, then refused to say where they had taken her until she was safely in a friendlier jurisdiction. due process has already died.
Guantanamo is indeed a horrible authoritarian injustice but it is not the same. Gitmo is operated by the US government and people detained there can still have access to legal representation to challenge their detainment.
What is happening here is the US government sending people to a gulag operated by a foreign nation and then insisting that that's the end of it. There can be no meaningful challenge of your unlawful detainment. With CECOT your only opportunity to vindicate your rights is at the literal moment that you are grabbed off the street.
Guantanamo was Bush's attempt to circumvent habeas corpus by imprisoning people outside the country. The Supreme Court didn't let him get away with that. The El Salvador strategy is the logical next step to avoid habeas corpus, by using a prison that is foreign-operated not just located in a foreign country.
> Since its founding in 2002, Guantánamo Bay military prison has held 780 adults and minors from around fifty different countries, all of whom are Muslim. As of 2022, 732 of them (or 94 percent) have been released without ever having been formally charged. Nine men have died in custody, seven by apparent suicide and two due to illness. Of the thirty-nine remaining, thirteen have been recommended for release but remain imprisoned. Twelve out of the original 780 (or 1.5 percent) have been charged with or convicted of crimes and remain in Guantánamo. The remaining fourteen individuals continue to be held without trial in indefinite detention.
No, most of CECOT is prisoners arrested within El Salvador. Only a small section is previously US domiciled persons. The US only funded 300 of the available 40,000 slots. Most of them were from domestic gang round-ups, though I'm sure that process was highly imperfect.
So Mr. Garcia will be surrounded by a gigantic cohort of legitimate, full body 'MS-13' tattood, hard hitting gang members. If he wasn't in a gang before he likely is now, or getting the living shit beat out of him because he lacks gang protection.
I don’t believe there was any claim of asylum, rather he was ruled to be deported in around 2019, and held to be deportable on appeal, and then he failed to deport and was once again apprehended in 2025. His status changed when MS13 was designated a terrorist group (he was adjudicated to belong to MS13 during the deportation proceedings) which did away with his special request to not be sent to El Salvador.
He claimed asylum but it was denied because it was too late. After the deportation order there was an order of withholding from deportation, after which it appears he was granted some form of work authorization and parole with annual check ins.
Nevertheless I strongly believe if the US had just dumped him in a village in El Salvador none of this would be news. They have done that to US citizens and hardly anyone noticed. The real story is he was sent into an experimental contract foreign prison at the behest of the government and the violation of the withholding order provides the wedge to challenge it and eventually wedge to make it easier to challenge more happenings at CECOT. Even if he is an MS13 member, the government never used due process to withdraw the withholding of removal order that they are claiming should no longer exist.
*
In March 2019, Prince George's County, Maryland, police arrested Abrego Garcia and three other men in a Home Depot parking lot, where they were seeking work as day laborers.[2][19] One of the men claimed Abrego Garcia was a "gang member," but The Atlantic reported that, according to court filings, the man offered no proof and police said they did not believe him.[19] Abrego Garcia was never charged with a crime in connection to his arrest.[20]
Police handed custody of Abrego Garcia over to ICE for deportation proceedings. In those proceedings, the government claimed that he was a member of the MS-13 criminal gang because "he was wearing a Chicago Bulls hat and a hoodie" and a confidential informant claimed that he was active with an MS-13 group based in New York,[2] where he has never lived.[16] ICE relied on information from a form that was filled out by a local police officer who was suspended not long after for "giving confidential information about a case to a sex worker", and thus was unavailable when Abrego Garcia's lawyer sought more information.[21] Roger Parloff of Lawfare notes that since neither the officer nor the informant were cross-examined, the accusation went through two layers of hearsay to reach the immigration court. An immigration judge determined that the informant's claim[22] was sufficient evidence for the purpose of denying Abrego Garcia's bond request; another judge upheld that ruling on appeal, saying the claim was not clearly wrong.[18] However, no court has ever made a "full adjudication" of this issue.[18]
*
The evidence of him being a member of MS13 is dubious at best, and suspicious since he and his brother had fled to the US to escape gangs in El Salvador.
He didn't fail to deport, he applied for asylum and withholding of removal during the process. Asylum wasn't possible because it needed to be applied for within a year of arriving, but he was granted withholding of removal, which he'd maintained by checking in yearly with ICE since 2019.
Gitmo is a US naval base, thus considered American soil by US authorities. That's the difference.
Well . . . a difference. Something like 95% of Gitmo detainees were eventually determined not to be terrorists and were freed. I expect No Salvador to be a bit worse.
Yes, but Guantanamo should have been closed (Obama promised to do this! he didn't do it!) and the people who masterminded it should have been thrown in jail. But, no, we had to "look forward" and not punish the war criminals in our immediate past.
Obama did sign EO 13492 requiring Guantanamo to be closed, in fairness, with a deadline and everything.
He could have and should have done more, but the blame for that one mostly falls on Congress (at the time firmly controlled by Democrats) blocking said EO
"Close our terrible and unnecessary human rights black hole" was, sadly, too far "left" for a bunch of Democrats, and of course Republicans love that kind of stuff, so they weren't going to help.
I want to explain something here that is of utmost importance to these developments.
To be a citizen, you have 8th amendment protections against "cruel and unusual" punishment. As it is, it can be fiercely debated for involuntary servitude in foreign nations as "unusual" as it is, but prisons like the El Salvador one are innately cruel and unusual, watch any media or even El Salvador's brags about its techniques and methodologies last year.
To be sent there - or to any other country to do a bid - is to be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment, to be subjected to such as an American citizen is unconstitutional.
We, as citizens, really need to take a step back and decide if we're going to do something about this tyranny - and if we'll truly be our brother's keepers. If a post-Heller America in 2008 couldn't even agree on trusting the government to fairly regulate a constitutional right like guns, why trust them to define “heinous” or “violent” and not yank your 8th Amendment protections, as well? Once they can call you an “exception,” they can ship you off anywhere, even to some third-world prison, and say “tough luck.” That’s the same overreach we’re supposed to be wary of in the first place.
Partially, but that's not my point, because now U.S. Citizens are being threatened - at least verbally - on U.S. Soil. Just 2 hours ago, a press conference talked about Trump wanting to do the same thing to home-grown citizens [1]. Today's practice with Garcia is not just an appeal to the "slippery slope" argument (in case anyone wants to call fallacy, I'm shutting them down ahead of time), it's an appeal to the fact that Trump is actualizing the slippery slope and discussing - literally less than a week later - how he wants to use this situation as precedent to do the same to home-grown criminals - American citizens.
Also, Garcia was granted protected status to remain in the US, and had a separate court order saying he specifically couldn't be sent to El Salvador. They are no longer saying it like it is. Will they for us?
He's been in jail for a month. If he isn't dead or seriously injured, there is a high likelihood he has had to join MS-13 or Barrio 18 (listed terrorist organizations) just to survive while locked up with hardened gang members. Which according to the DoJ would make him ineligible for withholding of removal.
Does anyone know if this is true? That could create a real catch-22, toss someone into a prison full of gang members, make them join a foreign terrorist organization to survive, then invalidate their withholding because they are now a terrorist.
My speculation all along has been that he's already dead. Among other reasons, it's one of the main reasons they are fighting not only his return but any other type of hearing that he could attend.
If alive, as a prisoner, he would now have an awareness of the operations of the CECOT prison that would be too harmful for the El Salvador government to let the world know. If so, this would imply that no one can ever be released from CECOT.
Wikipedia says as much:
> The Salvadoran government does not plan to release any prisoner from CECOT,[19] and Minister of Justice and Public Security Gustavo Villatoro has stated that prisoners incarcerated at CECOT will never return to their communities.
It strictly and literally is a one-way destination.
It makes sense as there was the previous judicial order that he was NOT to be returned to El Salvador due to the risk of him being injured/killed by the gang members.
They are fighting his return out of absolutely hubris. They are pissing on the constitution, multiple levels of court, and even the Supreme Court. They're seeing what they can get away with.
I don't care how violently stupid someone is in their support of this garbage administration, if even the smooth-brained Trump supporter doesn't realize how grotesquely anti-American and dangerous this is, they aren't paying attention.
I've wondered since the start of this thing: why didn't anyone object to labelling MS-13, an ordinary gang, "a terrorist organization"? Especially, since even Trump admitted they did it so that they can go harder after them? I.e. not because they are actual terrorists, but just so they could apply the harsher terrorism laws against them. "We're using 'terrorism' which gives us extra strength. We've done a great job with MS-13, but now we're stepping it up to an even higher level."
If you read the last DoJ filing in the Garcia case, they claim the law invalidates orders of withholding for members of FTOs. I do not know if that is true or not, but I'm willing to believe it is.
So your question has been elucidated. They did it so they could invalidate parole or orders of withholding of removal by either labeling immigrants as in MS-13 or forcing them to join by tossing them in jail with gangs and then using it against them. It was a necessary precursor to the deportations.
But forcing him to join by surrounding him with gang members who would otherwise harm him, might be effective in killing his withholding of removal order, even if they have to drag him back to get it done.
1) "This guy is gang member."
2) Toss in jail, surrounded by the gang members he tried to escape. (Even if El Salvador thing gets stopped, same plan works in US)
3) Gang forces him to join
4) Now part of terrorist organization
5) "Terrorists are ineligible for orders of withholding."
What's true is that Trump's response here shows the mental gymnastics you're referring to are superfluous. The facts, laws, due process, etc. simply don't apply anymore.
"You're being alarmist/hyperbolic/paranoid. That could never happen here." - Everyone, to people like me, since the post-9/11 PATRIOT Act days.
Now that the reality is staring them in the face, suddenly folks want to know "what can we do?" Well, I'll tell you exactly what you can do:
Nothing.
I want to make this abundantly clear: you cannot undo this damage. You cannot roll back this clock. You cannot go backwards to a time before our elected leaders annihilated the global trust in American Empire, Business, and Institutions in favor of authoritarian ideals. We have had over thirty years of clear warnings about the outcomes of our policies, and nobody gave a fuck.
The Old World is Dead (https://green.spacedino.net/the-old-world-is-dead/), and you cannot get it back. What we can do now, is move as quickly as possible to distance ourselves from the failed American state, its authoritarian regimes, and the sycophant companies and entities that enabled it. That means ditching American media, American goods, American services, and American capital. It's going to mean ostracizing an entire country and its people, and accepting the suffering that will bring until a new country (or countries) arise from its ashes, willing to cooperate on the global stage once more.
The only bright side is that countries who open their doors to persecuted minorities from America (LGBTQ+, non-white, neurodivergent, the disabled) are likely to reap immense brain gains as a result. America has failed, but the new world order has yet to be established - so if you want your country to have a seat at the table, now is the time to hoard (ex-)American talent and integrate them into your own society.
The other day on here, I likened this to taking a bunch of steps toward a cliff, then jumping off, and then asking "what can I do to stop this?!"
We're in the "free-fall" portion now. All we can do is wait and see how far we fall before striking the ground. The time to stop it was during any of the steps we took toward the cliff's edge.
Because - speaking from a lot of experience, both personally and professionally - human beings hate bad news. They reject the wet blankets, the naysayers, the doomers, the party poopers...you get the idea. I mean, the fact we have so many metaphors for the act of being the person giving a group bad news, should tell you how poorly humans look on it. Humans want to believe the sun will rise tomorrow, the birds will sing, the lines will go up, and everything will be fine (or better) than it was yesterday.
This attitude is especially prominent in tech. There's a very real desire to immediately replace whatever was old with whatever is new, regardless of utility or viability. We're participants in (or supporters of) a system of startup-expansion-acquisition-repeat that only focuses on building something new that has a perceived valuation, not something that's actually beneficial. There's no attitude to look back or be objective, because tomorrow will just be better anyway. So when your business leaders, capital investors, regulators, engineers, and developers are all "high on their own supply" of new > old and complex > simple, that attitude seeps out into other aspects of society as a whole.
Nobody likes naysayers who are right. It's just our curse, I guess.
> I mean, the fact we have so many metaphors for the act of being the person giving a group bad news, should tell you how poorly humans look on it.
Who told you this? Because science shows again and again that humans respond stronger to negative stimuli than positive. This is also why media is mostly filled with bad news, and "good news only channels" always fail.
BTW we have so many words for people who bring bad news unnecessarily exactly because people overreact to bad news, and quite often it reaches comical proportions, and needs to be called out. Like the guy who shows up at a party just to tell everyone that every beer shortens the lifespan for one minute.
And even if what you say is true, think about it: this is a mechanism that has somehow evolved across all cultures independently. Either this, or it is a biological atittude, predating the idea of "culture". Therefore, it's not a stretch to assume that it has its purpose, and "people doing whatever they have been doing for thousands of years" is NOT a reason to panic.
>science shows again and again that humans respond stronger to negative stimuli than positive.
just because we respond more doesn't mean we like it more. they only trust the fear instillled on them by whatever authority they worship. They will dismiss it from peer and even family. That's one factor in why the nuclear family is shredding apart as a concept.
> they only trust the fear instillled on them by whatever authority they worship
Of course they do. Imagine walking down the street, seeing a homeless guy on drugs yelling that the end is coming, and being shit scared that the end is truly coming.
Yes. But again, this authority is "people they see on TV" over their trusted family and friends (who I assume, aren't homeless doomees. I hope). That's just such an inverse of the human element.
> That's just such an inverse of the human element.
It's almost like believing your village's shaman more than your own family. Or believing your priest more than believing your family. Or believing the king more than believing your family. Truly unprecedented times we've found ourselves in.
Yes, exactly. You're being facetious but I don't go to my metaphorical priest for opinions on the best fashion. I don't go to a shaman for financial advice. And I don't trust a king telling me my kid is fine as she's clearly not breathing. We had centuries of specialization to not rely on one all knowing person for everything. Through TV it's not even like you can consult such people anyway.
I'm not even entirely convinced most actually trust the administration. I've just seen enough people who'd rather die than ever admit they were wrong. Not much you can do at that point of fatal pride.
Hard disagree, people were quick to believe that migrants were eating pets, that trans people were taking over the country, that cancel culture was destroying free speech, even that a cabal of satanic pedophiles were operating on a pizza place. Not only they were willing to believe, but actively pursued media that agreed with their biases of how awful things really were and how worse were getting.
Just in case you haven't read it, I can recommend this excerpt from "They Thought They Were Free." [1] It describes this exact feeling of "maybe I'm just being dramatic" during the rise of the Nazis.
As someone who grew up next to a former concentration camp, the main takeaway when talking to survivors was: If you give the benefit of the doubt, you won't believe fascism has taken over until it's too late. You should talk to your friends and close ones and draw a line somewhere. Maybe it's once a US citizen gets send to El Salvador. Just something to agree on. Once this happens normal is over and we need to act. And organize locally don't stay on your own during these times.
brave of you to log on, survey the smoldering corpse of the republic, and tell someone to grow up. when your descendants claw through the ruins of the fallen world, hunting for the name of a single righteous soul, they’ll find your comment and say: this... this was our Cicero.
Thanks for letting me know! I took down e-mail signups since it looks like it'll require Mailgun after all, which I'd rather not get into the weeds over when I'm really just putting thoughts down at the moment.
If you have an RSS Aggregator, the main URL has an RSS feed (green.spacedino.net/rss). Less e-mail clog, easier updates, though Ghost's RSS feed isn't exactly terminal-friendly if that's your jam (mainly due to mixed media).
I might get around to fixing e-mail in the future. Appreciate the heads-up though, thank you!
Yes, stop being so histrionic. Democrats will win midterms, Congress will be in a dead lock, and hopefully the DNC will learn from its failures and put a real candidate in.
I remember this same "sky is falling" rhetoric when Bush got reelected. Time moves on and the world will heal.
I'm beyond done with people trying to say my lived experiences and the lived experiences of others are somehow invalid, hyperbolic, or over-exaggerated. And I'm done being nice to people trying to gaslight the lived experiences of others.
> Snow has divided the sequence into two main parts: three novels of Lewis Eliot’s direct experience, Time of Hope, Homecomings, and Last Things ; the rest, eight in all, are novels of his observed experience with “flickers of inner experience.”
Are the demographics of gun sales going to suddenly shift dramatically? We are evidently deep into 'tree of liberty' stuff.
We have been the most well-armed nation in the world for less actual material reason than most countries in the world have ever had. Not being disappeared into a concentration camp indefinitely seems like a justification for lots of people to go down fighting.
The thing is, immigrants as a whole are less likely to commit crime than American citizens. If the administration was actually targeting violent criminals, I don't think there would be such outcry. However, there just aren't enough people like that to move the needle, so the bulk of people getting caught up in this are people who are just living their lives and trying to get by, i.e. soft targets that the governments knows can't put up much of a fight.
(2019) "In March 2019, Prince George's County, Maryland, police arrested Abrego Garcia with three other men in a Home Depot parking lot where they were seeking work as day laborers.[2][8] One of the men claimed Abrego Garcia was a "gang member," but The Atlantic reported that according to court filings, the man offered no proof and police said they did not believe him.[8] Abrego Garcia was never charged with a crime in connection to his arrest.[20]"
"Police handed custody of Abrego Garcia over to ICE for deportation proceedings. In those proceedings, the government claimed that he was a member of the MS-13 criminal gang because "he was wearing a Chicago Bulls hat and a hoodie" and a confidential informant claimed that he was active with an MS-13 group based in New York,[2] where he has never lived. [15] An immigration judge determined that the informant's claim[21] was sufficient evidence for denying Abrego Garcia’s bond request, and another judge upheld that ruling, saying the claim that Abrego Garcia was in MS-13 for purposes of the bond determination was not clearly wrong.[19] However, no court has ever “full adjudicat[ed]” this issue.[19] Abrego Garcia has consistently denied any connection to MS-13.[22]"
(2025) "On April 5, the Department of Justice appealed the ruling to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.[39] The following day, Judge Xinis issued a 22-page opinion reaffirming her previous ruling. The opinion stated the deportation "shocks the conscience" and was "wholly lawless."[35] She also said that while there were previous assertions that Abrego Garcia was a member of MS-13, the government has presented "no evidence" Abrego Garcia was a member of MS-13 and had essentially abandoned that argument in her court.[35] The judge noted that while the government had presented no evidence that Abrego Garcia was a member of a gang, by publicly labeling him a member of MS-13, the government had placed Abrego Garcia at risk in the detention facility because El Salvador "intentionally mixes rival gang members" in the facility.[35] Xinis stated in her opinion: "Defendants seized Abrego Garcia without any lawful authority; held him in three separate domestic detention centers without legal basis; failed to present him to any immigration judge or officer; and forcibly transported him to El Salvador in direct contravention of [immigration law]."[35] "
The random accusation that he was in MS-13 despite committing no crimes, that this warranted deportation despite entering no immigration courts, that it did not just warrant deportation but a proprietary black site torture camp, is identically as valid as the accusation I am making right now that you are a member of MS-13 because of the clothes you're wearing right now (which are Known To Be Worn By MS-13 Members), and must be disappeared by the authorities immediately. You have no opportunity to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that you're not a 'terrorist'; It is to be stipulated.
I'm not expecting the average German to rise up against Hitler. Unfortunately.
But the average German Jew? Maybe they have more incentive to be prepared? If guns are readily available?
This isn't in the category of "to save their life, they started carrying weapons". This is in the category of collective defense - "To provide a deterrent, they started carrying weapons, just to make their abduction/murder costly". It doesn't make sense (for most) to sacrifice their lives just for their residency - getting deported is not the end of the world. But if the result is "You get thrown into a torture/slave/deathcamp and forgotten for the rest of your short life", that changes the calculus a great deal.
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
Honest question, what recourse does someone in this situation even have? Would the ICC take this case? Are there any penalties that would (in theory) apply to either country?
I mean, hypothetically, Bukele could be arrested if he was a defendant in such a suit... except for the fact that ICC member states regularly let wanted war criminals pass through their airspace, or withdraw from the ICC entirely in order to harbor wanted war criminals. In effect the ICC is the USCC, and therefore limited to doing/enforcing things in the interest of the U.S. at any given time.
And, for the record, Netherlands is a member of the EU Common Security and Defence Policy, which would mean that would be an act of war against the EU as a whole.
Four Republican Congresscritters (House of Representatives), and four Republican Senators, could announce their intent to caucus with the Democratic party from this point forward, consistent with their oath and legal obligation to support and defend the Constitution against an emerging dictatorship. And then force a vote to change the leadership of the House and the Senate.
It would require a simple majority vote. That's all.
The power of the purse can be taken back by Congress. It can reorganize the committees and resume investigations and oversight where there has been none.
> The power of the purse can be taken back by Congress.
Given that the executive branch is ignoring judicial branch rulings, and is ignoring legislation, what makes you think they won't ignore more legislation?
When it comes to boots on the ground, donald and elmu's doge crew made sure they are the ones controlling the systems which control the flow of the money, thus they are the ones controlling the money.
This is a legitimate constitutional crisis. If the executive can just ignore the direct orders of the court and the rights of both citizens and residents by simply renditioning them to a foreign country without a trial then all of our systems and laws in place no longer matter.
Yeah, seriously, unless I'm missing something if the Supreme Court unanimously checked him on this and he said "LOL, no, get wrecked" then, what? Like, that's the ball game. Total authoritarian power checkmate, right?
As usual, beware of the military-industrial complex. Just like with Iraq, they will get what they want at the cost of the taxpayer. We will get nothing back but less stability.
No due process for noncitizens means no due process for citizens either. We're all now at the mercy of ICE/CBP goons. If they have a bad day, simply being a straight white dude ain't gonna save anyone.
> If they have a bad day, simply being a straight white dude ain't gonna save anyone.
This is the thing to remember as the current regime uses this El Salvadorian prison as a beta-testing gulag. We'll soon see more hints that they will be built within our borders, and all actions leading up to that are conditioning the population for acceptance of this idea, especially for the folks that support the regime.
Thing is, even they will not be safe. The rules will never be made clear save for "if you're not with us, you're against us," so people who thought they were being loyal will start getting snatched up along with the rest of the dissenters, agitators and whomever else they don't like.
Yep. Fascism always needs an enemy. If it succeeds at completing its mass violence against the current enemy it will simply redefine its current allies as enemies. "They'll never come for me" inevitably fails.
So, HN has deleted this off the front page after about 20 minutes, and sure, they generally want to avoid "political" stories but the simple fact is that when a "political" story reaches a certain legal of magnitude it becomes the only thing of real importance. This is an issue of seismic importance for the tech world, or at the very least the US tech community, whether HN accepts that or not.
he wasn't deported, he was legally in the US and then randomly got kidnapped by the US Federal Government, who then paid the El Salvadorian government to him put in a super maximum security prison for no reason, indefinitely. the US government is now refusing to comply with a court order to bring him back.
the US media has absolutely no ability (or interest) in grappling with the reality of the situation they have helped cause.
According to who? Why do you think this is somehow the case?
The contract between the two countries is only for 1 year, and that doesn't mean everyone will even stay there that long.
In what scenario does indefinite detention make any realistic sense even for the best-case scenario of its intended purpose i.e. rightfully-deported violent criminals?
Do you honestly think the US is actually sending anyone to indefinite detention who has not received a life sentence in court?
I'm not saying what's going on isn't wrong or that there aren't other huge problems with it, but your response to me just seems even more out of touch with reality than the current situation itself.
The biggest problem I personally have with this is the administration's complete lack of empathy. Not once has anybody in the executive branch apologized for wrongly deporting anyone, made any attempt at saying they should be brought back, or that they were going to try, or that they even wanted to try. Instead they're seemingly actively doing everything they can to prevent lifting any useful fingers whatsoever.
El Salvador's government has stated they have no intention to ever release inmates from CECOT—it's permanent.
They have no rehabilitation programs and do not intend to establish such. There is no intent that the prisoners ever leave.
The plan with these US-sourced prisoners may be different from the ones El Salvador put there themselves, but apparently that's entirely up to Bukele now.
[EDIT] And regardless, "who knows when?" is indefinite.
Garcia's defense argues the opposite as you and claim it is a one year contract with disposition at the discretion of the US. In fact a large portion of their argument relies on this claim as it's their basis as to why the US has meaningful control over his fate.
Judge Thacker's opinion was citing it. They are reflecting a contract based on evidence since the government has failed to properly record it. It just doesn't exist in the form you'd like, such as a written formal contract entered into the record.
Quite often contracts are never 'seen' and instead prosecution surrounding them involve gathering evidence, in this case including 'memos' and direct statements of heads of state.
You should write Xinis and Thacker your frustration and tell them you object. The rest of us recognize he was under no obligation to meet your evidentiary standards, and that they clearly presented a contract is in place.
Not only is it material, it's a lynch pin to the entire case! If you keep reading:
>Considering these facts, and with no evidence to the contrary provided by the Government, the district court properly determined that “just as in any other contract facility, Defendants can and do maintain the power to secure and transport their detainees, Abrego Garcia included.” Dist. Ct. Opinion at 12. In its filings before this court, the Government makes no more than a naked assertion that Abrego Garcia “is in the custody of a foreign sovereign over whom America has no jurisdiction.” Mot. for Stay at 9. But the record demonstrates otherwise. There is no indication that Abrego Garcia has been charged with a crime in El Salvador or is being held there pursuant to the laws of El Salvador. On the contrary, Abrego Garcia is a detainee of the United States Government, who is being housed temporarily in El Salvador, “pending the United States’ decision on [his] long term disposition.” S.A. 149. Thus, the district court’s order does not require the United States to demand anything of a foreign sovereign.
Instrumental here is 'contract facility.'
The District court and Thacker's quote cite the El Salvador facility as a 'contract' facility. On that basis they argue it is not a demand on a foreign sovereign, but rather a detention by the USG.
No, what's critical is not the existence of a contract or not, but whether the US has actual control over the prisoners. That part is undeniable regardless of a contract. Xinis derives this view not from evidence of a contract, but first and foremost from the fact that to have lost control of the prisoners would involve having discarded the INA entirely, which the executive obviously cannot do.
From immediately before your quote:
> Surely, Defendants do not mean to suggest that they have wholesale erased the substantive and procedural protections of the INA in one fell swoop by dropping those individuals in CECOT without recourse
My issue with your phrasing is the assertion that El Salvador is somehow a 1-year relationship or detention. We have no evidence beyond an AP report about a memo that this is the case. Neither we nor the judges know what the terms of this agreement are. For the judges' purposes, the terms are irrelevant beyond "does the US have control," which of course they do.
> My issue with your phrasing is the assertion that El Salvador is somehow a 1-year relationship or detention.
Nobody is going to hold prisoners from another country indefinitely for free.
Where there's money, there's some kind of agreement. Even if it's completely unspoken and unwritten (which I doubt either way).
If the money stops, so would their acceptance of droves of new deportees.
Not to mention that $6M for 300 people indefinitely is nowhere near enough... but for 1 year it certainly makes a lot more sense, I think that comes out to $20k/yr per person, which is cheaper than what it costs the US to do the same.
Nobody is doubting the existence of an agreement. I am asserting that we have no way to be certain about any of the terms of said agreement, given that no one has seen it.
(And as a side assertion, that the Trump administration is breaking the law by not having said contract available for at least the judge, if not the public).
>[EDIT] And regardless, "who knows when?" is indefinite.
I would have saved the typing and just put this. indefinite can be 2 days, or 200 years. He was never given a sentence and this very article shows the intent to release anyone.
If he was being held under that contract, then it wouldn't be correct for the DoJ lawyers to say he's outside of US jurisdiction. But they keep claiming that he's under El Salvador's jurisdiction. They say they can't ask for him back, it's out of their hands.
That's fundamentally incompatible with the idea that El Salvador is holding him at their direction and under a limited time contract.
Indeed. And then what would be the point of the contract? Nobody is going to hold prisoners from another country indefinitely for free, even El Salvador, that just Does Not Compute (TM). I would much prefer to assume the DOJ is simply lying and that they are wrong, as to me that seems extremely likely.
> According to who? Why do you think this is somehow the case?
Bukele says he doesn't forsee ever releasing anyone from CEDOT and has specifically ruled out doing so in this case. Trump says he's powerless to get him released.
> In what scenario does indefinite detention make any realistic sense even for the best-case scenario of its intended purpose i.e. rightfully-deported violent criminals?
Slave labor, which is what the people in CEDOT are being used for, again per their own president.
> Do you honestly think the US is actually sending anyone to indefinite detention who has not received a life sentence in court?
And yet Bukele's Justice Minister (sorry misremembered not Bukele himself) has said they will "never return to their communities" and somehow we are unable to get back this one man. Saying everyone is lying to openly defy a Supreme Court order when they can get him back anytime just by asking, and he'll be released "sometime" is not the comfort you seem think it should be.
I mean I don't trust the guy either, and readily acknowledge he may be lying or even could just change his mind at any moment. That doesn't somehow make the situation better. We have a bunch of people now held at the whims of a capricious dictator, and our own leader is sending them more people, and suggesting sending our citizens, while claiming it's impossible to fix any mistakes, because "who knows what that guy will do, I can't control him"
Not to mention we have already found out from Van Hollen that Garcia was already transferred out of CECOT over a week ago... the place supposedly "no one can leave from". Nobody in the media really seems to care though.
> The contract between the two countries is only for 1 year, and that doesn't mean everyone will even stay there that long.
Where did you see this contract? I follow quite a few lawyers in this space who have been asking to see said contract and AFAIK it hasn't been produced. Can you link to it please?
> Do you honestly think the US is actually sending anyone to indefinite detention who has not received a life sentence in court?
Uhh... yes? This person hasn't just not received a life sentence, they weren't even charged.
The government thus far refuses to even admit there is a contract, let alone if it applies to the prisoner in this case.
I think the judge is beyond frustrated and I would expect contempt charges to start flying pretty quickly, particularly after the government seems to keep flaunting her orders.
But from what I roughly understand, Xinis own documents don't have direct reference to a contract. They rely on AP's reporting of such a contract. So it's legally pretty ephemeral as of now.
Yet another law brokenm since such foreign treaties and contracts should be publicly documeted. But what does that matter at this point?
It was in the defenses own filing. I don't have the link off hand but look up last week's filing of the case and they dug up that the contract was for 1 year, after which the US will decide the disposition of the prisoners. They used it as part of their argument that the US still maintains control over the prisoners, since the contract stated the US has control over their disposition.
It should be findable on either PACER or court listener, although all the ones I read were pdf from various news articles.
FYI because it can be misleading here, "the defense" is Kristi Noem/DHS/the US Government.
Kilmar Garcia has never been charged with a crime and is not a defendant in any case whatsoever. He is a kidnapping victim who is suing his kidnapper.
Into the main topic: I looked and don't see any such filing. I can find references to a memo from El Salvador claiming that it's 1 year for $6 million. I can't find a contract though, so the evidence suggests no such contract has been produced. Curious if you're willing to link directly to it though!
Here's what the aforementioned filing states:
> According to a memorandum issued by El Salvador’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the agreement provides that the detainees will be held “for one (1) year, pending the United States’ decision on [their] long term disposition.”
I.e. referencing a memo, not a contract. This is unusual/illegal as any contract that USG signs over $25,000 must be reported.
>El Salvador’s ministry of foreign affairs confirmed that it “will house these individuals for one (1) year, pending the United States’ decision on their long term disposition.” S.A. 149 (quoting Matthew Lee & Regina Garcia Cano, Trump Officials Secretly Deported Venezuelans and Salvadorans to a Notorious Prison in El Salvador, ASSOCIATED PRESS (Mar. 15, 2025), https://apnews.com/article/trumpdeportations-salvador-tren-a... (emphasis supplied)).
>The Government undertook this action pursuant to its agreement with El Salvador, wherein the United States paid El Salvador six million dollars to hold detainees “for one (1) year, pending the United States’ decision on [their] long term disposition.” Dist. Ct. Op. at 6
A federal judge recognized the imprisonment service agreement in trade for money.
That's a contract.
You can semantic-smith all you want that a memo cannot present the contract. A contract can be referenced without there being some big document that says 'contract' on it. Everyone else but you knows what it is. Whatever you reply next will just be word-garbage to try and refute that. Judges in this case aren't buying it, and they aren't buying your case that informal arrangements are nothing but memos.
So you can show me this contract in the Governmentwide Point of Entry, as is required under FAR Part 5?
No, you can't. You can try to escape the substance of the argument with phrases like "semantic-smith" if you'd like, but law is semantics.
And no, the judges referencing the memo that claims such an agreement exists does not indicate that judges "buy it" that there is a contract. The case before them is not about contracting compliance and public records, so they wouldn't be interested to bottom out that issue. The quoted language is not even allegedly from any agreement, contract or not, formal or informal. The quoted language is from a memo about the alleged agreement.
Edit to your edit:
> they aren't buying your case that informal arrangements are nothing but memos.
Ah, so it's "an informal arrangement" now? Interesting change of heart you've had. Our government is not allowed to make "informal arrangements" that involve shipping human beings to foreign governments and paying them several million dollars per year, for all sorts of very obvious procurement and budgetary reasons, even aside from the human rights issues.
Trump & co pulled one over on you. Just because it's not in the GPoE does not mean it doesn't exist.
It appears to be an informally arranged contract. Federal judges and 'memos' also recognizes this contract. Bukele and Trump publicly have reiterated much of the terms. I do not know if you will ever see a single traditional looking contract paper you desire, but the evidence is everywhere, not the least of which that the memos statements and actual reality of El Salvador taking prisoners on behalf the US and publicly stating they have an agreement to do it.
What? I am not claiming there is no "agreement", duh.
You can't fly aircraft full of prisoners into a foreign country and have a televised propaganda show depositing them into a gulag without "an agreement."
Great job moving the goal posts and answering now to my original point: the USG has not produced evidence of a contract, as they are legally required to have and present.
Neither I, nor you, nor the public, nor the judge actually know what the terms of any agreement actually are. We know only what appeared in a memo written about an agreement.
Sorry but there's no way you thought I was suggesting the US just unilaterally put people in a foreign prison, lol. Good luck lifting those goal posts.
You're punching your fist into the air because the contract is not in a form you'd like. In the same judgements, judges go on to either call, or quote the calling of the facility as a 'contract' facility after establishing the contract agreement.
> The contract between the two countries is only for 1 year
Ty's red herrings about court filings and so on are just that: red herrings. All sources lead back to exactly one piece of information, which is an AP article about a memo from El Salvador about an agreement. That AP article claims the memo says the following:
"El Salvador confirms it will house these individuals for one (1) year, pending the United States’ decision on their long term disposition"
That's it. It does not say "only" for one year. There is no information about the renewal terms. There is no information about what happens after one year. No one has produced the full set of terms of this agreement, and no one has produced evidence (as is required under US law) that an actual signed contract even exists (as is required under US law).
That is my understanding and that is indeed a separate issue that appears to be still underway. It was reported that Democrats in Congress already asked DHS for a copy of the contract on April 8 but I have not heard any updates on that yet.
But Occam's razor here... what's more likely? That the sky is falling and the US can and will now send people to their (presumed) death without any charges or day in court whatsoever (while you sit here accepting it, doing nothing), or that this is not actually the beginning of the end of the entire country in one fell swoop?
> But Occam's razor here... what's more likely? That the sky is falling and the US can and will now send people to their (presumed) death without any charges or day in court whatsoever (while you sit here accepting it, doing nothing), or that this is not actually the beginning of the end of the entire country in one fell swoop?
Given that they've been sent to a brutal prison involving torture and forced labor, and that the people who sent them there are now claiming they have no power to bring them back?
Yeah man Occam's razor says we have a dictator doing and end run around the constitution, not that they are just being held for a few months before their trail date.
> what's more likely? That the sky is falling and the US can and will now send people to their (presumed) death without any charges or day in court whatsoever (while you sit here accepting it, doing nothing), or that this is not actually the beginning of the end of the entire country in one fell swoop?
Thank you for asking. The answer to your question is the first answer. It's not a matter of "can", it's a matter of "did, and publicly plans to do it more".
That Trump 47 is true to his word and will keep boiling the frog if we don't stop him. I'm pretty tired of giving the BOTD to an administration that has so far done all teh bad things they promised (oh sorry. "joked about") and none of the good things.
April 19th is the next national protest. I've been going to fight for the constitution, due process, and rule of law since this all began.
The time isn't 2 years from now to change this at mid terms. There won't be a free place to speak or protest by then yet alone a free election system at the pace this is happening.
What happens when the US starts "deporting" US citizens to the custody of foreign strongmen? As is he is repeatedly saying he intends to do. Would anything change, or will it continue the same way—SCOTUS orders Trump to "facilitate" citizens' access to "due process"; foreign Trump affiliate says "no", and that's that. (?)
- "President Trump just said he was open to sending American citizens convicted of violent crimes to President Bukele’s prison in El Salvador. Trump had a similar response when Bukele first offered to jail convicted American criminals in February. “I’m all for it,” Trump said, adding that his attorney general was studying whether the idea was legally feasible. “If it’s a homegrown criminal, I have no problem, no,” he said, adding: “I’m talking about violent people. I’m talking about really bad people.”"
That's correct. The Constitution as-written gives the Judiciary no ability to implement its own orders, forcing it to rely on the Legislative or Executive Branches to enforce compliance. With the Legislature abdicating its own checks and balances, it effectively gives the Executive complete control.
The only remaining options aren't pleasant, but the short-list:
* The Legislative Branch turns on the Executive and begins stripping its power through laws or impeachment (unlikely, given the sycophants in both parties who championed this outcome)
* States secede from the USA, citing the lack of legitimacy of the current Federal Government in its flouting of the Constitution (unlikely, given the spineless cowards in most State Governments more preoccupied with becoming the next President or Senator themselves)
* The people revolt, waging a civil war against themselves and finding a new path forward
I really don't think most folks understand how bad this is. People like me are accused of being hyperbolic or alarmist, but the current situation really is equivalent to a CEO firing his Board (Congress), locking out auditors (the Judiciary), and jailing dissident workers or contractors (this case), all while letting his buddies raid the accounts under the guise of reducing inefficiencies (DOGE and Technoligarchs). The closest parallels really are Nazi Germany, Maoist China, and Stalin's Russia, and none of those had a "happy ending".
In the short term, trust is obliterated. In the long term, we're a crumbling empire who has to sacrifice far more than we will ever benefit, just to get an equivalent seat at the table again. For the next several generations (inclusive of the current ones), times are going to be bleak.
The Judiciary can deputize anyone to be their Marshals, if the executive prevents the existing Marshals to faithfully follow legal court orders.
If that fails, the Judiciary could also in theory declare the executive in breach of their oaths and urge the military, state and other federal officials, and the public at large to follow their own oaths to the Constitution.
But at that point it’s just a civil war with more legitimacy. It’s still the right move for the court to make in the situation where they can no longer force the executive to follow the law.
Trump: they demand you, they love you, they love what you do...
Bukele: {something about supporters}
Trump: you know what I want to do? Home-grown criminals are next. {louder, to his senior staff in the room} I said HOME-GROWNS are next. The home-growns. You've got to build about five more places.
What distinguishes a concentration camp from a prison (in the modern sense) is that it functions outside of a judicial system. The prisoners are not indicted or convicted of any crime by judicial process.
Yup. I genuinely don't see any reason to fight this hard against it othewise. Basically, something about the release or status of Garcia must be so horrid that even for Trump its a convictable scandal. so:
1. he'd dead and he pushed to make sure he had no due process
2. He's in such a near dead state that it would spark outcry that may even penetratie the propoganda.
3. any unedtied footage of the prisons would bring immediate allusions to concentration camps and make enough of the conservative size realize the US is falling into facism,
It would be really interesting to see the list of people who flag these news. At this point, I mostly browse HN by clicking on COMMENTS so I can see the actual stories that got flagged (that always have to do about democracy being eroded by Trump)
Only the mods know who they are and a that point, deleting your account is a better move than leaving any potential internet footprints if they are truly scared.
> You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. (Laughter/applause) Right? (Laughter/applause) They're racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic – you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people – now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks – they are irredeemable, but thankfully, they are not America.
Hilary was only wrong about two things: It's not half of his supporters it's 100% and they're not "deplorables", they're monsters.
I'm usually happy to flag news, politics. I'm happy with HN being for anything intellectually interesting, and nothing else.
America is being attacked from the top, Donald Trump gaining and abusing more and more personal power every day in an apparent attempt to become an autocrat, meanwhile he and the dictator of El Salvador sit in the White House and just about the ONLY power you will see these two disclaim is that they "don't have the power" to bring this guy back.
The ONLY thing I can see that makes this not intellectually interesting is just how sad and maddening it is. That definitely detracts from the curiosity of it all. But it's hard to imagine historians will find it remotely uninteresting.
>I'm happy with HN being for anything intellectually interesting, and nothing else.
Hard to be intellectually curious when you're living in fear, and potentially in a future war torn country. I understand some reasoning for this mindset, but I'm glad you realize how dire this is an an attack on the very core systems that allow such curious discussion.
We have multiple university professors strongly considering fleeing to Canada as a small sample. It's pretty clear how such moves will affect the long term abilities for a site like this to operate.
To be clear I'm advocating that if someone is flagging this due to it not being intellectually interesting, that they reflect on whether that's actually true or if it's just that fear or anxiety are getting in the way.
I certainly don't want all news on this topic to be here; there's plenty of places to get that. But we definitely could discuss it here in ways which aren't accessible many other places if we take on the rather difficult task of finding some curiosity about the what exactly is going on.
I recall the President of El Salvador tweeting that this was being turned into what is essentially a labor camp ("zero idleness program") to pay back the costs of constructing and running CECOT.
Moreover, if I'm keeping track of the cases correctly, this person was specifically protected from being returned to El Salvador because of persecution. Disgusting.
Secondary to the primary horror of Trump's current attempts to apply this to citizens: It is also a direct attack on one of the other key points of societal failure, which is trust in police. Yes, yes, we were already way below where we need to be, but it was still the case that when an innocent non-black person encountered police, the majority of the time the feelings they might have ranged from trust to simple nervousness. An enormous caveat to law enforcement is that we trust officers with the power to order people to do things. If a cop orders me to come with them without a great explanation, I'm going to verbally protest, ask to see their badge, whatever - but I'm going to physically comply, because we agree to give cops this power, and, crucially, because there could be a legitimate reason, or an innocent mistake, and even absent that, I have a general feeling about the ceiling on the worst things that could realistically happen to me (since I'm a citizen, white, etc).
But now, a bright line has been crossed. Anybody in a group that Trump supporters hate has to consider that there is a non-zero chance an encounter with the wrong type of law enforcement could end with being tortured in a foreign prison. In a nation governed by fear, my mind is not nearly as clear on priorities and risk assessment when the cop asks me to come with him without a rock solid explanation. That's dangerous, for everybody, including the police.
"White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller also chimed in, saying: "So it's very arrogant, even for American media to suggest that we would even tell El Salvador how to handle their own citizens. As a starting point, as two immigration courts found that he was a member of MS-13," "
The PoS Miller says that so Fox News has a clip to play. Meanwhile in court under oath they say the exact opposite, admitting it was an 'administrative error' Garcia was deported at all.
Agents of the government have given multiple sworn statements in court that removing him from the country was both an error and in violation of the law.
I suppose that the solicitor general can say that they perjured themselves. Much more reasonable is that Miller is a lying sack of shit spewing lies on TV.
These people, being just about everyone vaguely related to the Trump administration, lie through their teeth. And, it's perfectly legal to lie.
When they're in front of Congress, typically their tunes change. Sometimes even then they don't. Will they be charged with Perjury? Perhaps, when hell freezes over. Sometimes, it requires a ballsy journalist to reveal the truth, even when the truth should be obvious.
It’s not worth speculating beyond that. From a purely cynical view, it’s better for the rule of law if he is alive as he can be a test case. If he’s dead, that is likely a different court case that could get assigned to a different more credulous or craven judge, plus burn out some time.
If you read the exact report, you realize why you want to be cynical.
No one was actually met with, no was even called. The lawyer constantly use language to the effect of "to my understading" as means to try and distance himself as far from the case as possible to minimize any potential contempt/sanctions on his end.
No one in America legitmately knows what's going on as of now. Maybe Trump does now but we know how that goes.
for the people having trouble keeping track, this is the end of due process for everyone, including US Citizens who might imagine they're immune - even if a slightly better US government didn't want to kidnap US Citizens, if there's no process, there's no chance to demonstrate your US Citizenness before you're in a slave labour camp in South America, where the US Government will lie and say they can't get you back from even if they wanted to.
I’ve said this before, but I’ll repeat it for emphasis. The administration wants the power to enact summary justice on the street: immigrants, protestors, political rivals, same as every other authoritarian regime in the last century. Currently, there is no mandate to just execute people without due process. So the lovely humanist wonks in Trump’s orbit came up with this brilliant solution. Just send undesirables to Guantanamo-Salvador and pretend nobody has the jurisdiction to bring them back. Same result.
In other words, when you read news like this, you should be reacting the same way as when you hear about third-world death squads lining up dissidents against the village wall and dumping their bodies in a well. The impact of the violence has been sanitized and laundered, but the net result is mostly the same.
El Salvador has 1 in 60 people in jail, up there with the worst of Stalinist Russian.
If the US doesn't have control over who it sends there, the crimes of Trump & his ICE are far worse, far more in violation of the constitution. If this weren't horrific monstrosity to circumvent habeas corpus maybe perhaps this wicked act could scrape through the courts.
Its just so fucked how much misanthropy is running the world. Hating other people is powering the growth of such deeply sick rises to power.
I strongly recommend a tour of the Grievances of the Declaration of Independence. Ironically a document shown to Bukele before his situation down. The things being done are absolutely wild tyrant shit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievances_of_the_United_State...
> El Salvador has 1 in 60 people in jail, up there with the worst of Stalinist Russian.
and the president has a 91 approval rate, consistent with what you'd expect when you go from the murder capital of the world to the safest country in central america
Though, y'know, also consistent with Stalinist Russia.
Generally, those sorts of approval ratings for an executive leader (you do see them sometimes for non-executive heads of state, though in that case they can be seen as less alarming) are a serious red flag; they're generally a dictatorship signal. No-one is _that_ popular.
Same, but I wouldn't call an open demolishment of American democracy a slightly negative story though. It's a complete 180 from the post-WWII rules based order we're talking about and people attempting to rationalize the flagging as if this was just another mundane news not worth discussing should be ashamed of themselves.
This really is the end of everything. Troops deployed domestically. Citizens blackbagged and sent to gulags for the rest of their lives with no process. There is no more law one this position is reached.
I'm really tired of this song and dance at this point of being alarmist for trusting every little thing Trump says he'll do, no matter how crazy.
This is the exact opposite of the Boy who Cried Wolf. How many sheep need to be eaten before you trust the shepard? Or you know, the wolf who keeps saying "I'm going to eat these sheep"?
It is the act of not jumping to conclusions that makes us better than him. I understand completely that if he could get away with it, he would detain citizens, but I am not convinced yet that he can. If we jump the gun, we are no better than him.
How is it "jumping to conclusions" to take what the president of thr United States says at face value?
>I understand completely that if he could get away with it, he would detain citizens, but I am not convinced yet that he can.
He already did. Thars the issue. Visa holders are already citizens. Do I need to to show you thr footage of a college woman being kidnapped off the street by un-badged men?
“US citizen” and implying some higher necessity of honoring his rights is a false dichotomy, Under the U.S. Constitution (especially the 5th and 14th Amendments), all “persons” (not just citizens) are entitled to due process protections. Further, even outside of his applicability to INA, he was explicitly granted a Withholding of Removal, and was specifically barred from any removal with the end destination being El Salvador. The Supreme Court also unanimously ruled his deportation as illegal. This is settled law through ANY and EVERY avenue you look at it. There are no straws to grasp.
Hello, allow me to weigh into your allegedly subjective discussion with an objective agreement to what the other poster said:
> If "oopsy-doopsy, it was a mistake" has no remedy then there is no remedy when it is a citizen who gets sent to a gulag.
What's more, now that the executive branch is disobeying direct orders from the judicial branch, what recourse do you think you'd have if you got on the wrong executive branch official's bad side?
In this particular case, I believe the judicial branch is ignoring an agreement with a foreign country to never send anyone back. I truly believe the executive branch to be powerless at this point to undo their mistake. Neither branch holds power over a foreign country. Just admitting the mistake was a positive step, which means they do care at least a little bit to not repeat it.
Imagine for a moment that the judicial branch orders the executive branch to get Iran to release some American prisoners. The ruling to return the El Salvadorian is well-intentioned but even more absurd, considering the person is a citizen of El Salvador.
Thank you for responding. I realize you have some beliefs and opinions about things, legal and otherwise. I do, too! Indeed, most people have beliefs and opinions about things.
The role of the judicial branch, and of each judge, is to listen to all those beliefs and opinions as appropriate, and decide which one is correct, and to make orders as necessary in furtherance of that aim.
That has happened, and the administration then disobeyed the orders and asserted that the judges' judgements were invalid (an irrelevant personal judgement, because they are not the judge).
So, that's where we're at now. With that in mind, please address the posts to which you replied, specifically, the below 2 points:
> If "oopsy-doopsy, it was a mistake" has no remedy then there is no remedy when it is a citizen who gets sent to a gulag.
> What's more, now that the executive branch is disobeying direct orders from the judicial branch, what recourse do you think you'd have if you got on the wrong executive branch official's bad side?
You're being specifically asked to talk through your options and choices in such scenarios. What would they be? We'll take turns: You play the part of the victim; I'll play the part of the administration; we'll game it out. POV: You're walking down the street and a group of 7 or 8 plainclothes individuals wearing masks surround you, restrain you, and force you into an unmarked vehicle. Maybe one of them says they're a cop, but otherwise they refuse to say anything while they transport you to a foreign gulag. You are not permitted a lawyer, you are not permitted a phone call, and nobody, no family, no lawyers, no judges, not even your local police department, is notified what is happening to you. PERHAPS (it wouldn't change the outcome, but whatever) unbeknownst to you or them, this is a case of mistaken identity.
Let me put it this way. If lots of random citizens start getting picked up on the street and get disappeared by sending them permanently and without a trial to the gulag, I will dissolve all my assets and leave the country. It could take me a whole year, but I will do it. During this period, I will minimize attention and travel. The writing will be in the wall, but it's not there yet. US citizens remain unaffected for now.
Your question is completely unfair because the probability of it happening to a random person of a certain group before happening to say a thousand others from the same group is close to zero. As such, you are not playing fair in any sense. I could have completely dismissed your question, but at least I answered the more realistic version.
That means your response is completely unfairer! ;)
Seriously though, multiple people asked you that question, so it's not my question. That may be a clue that it isn't actually "unfair". But I don't doubt that you nonetheless hold your opinion that we're unfair and you're fair. Now that you've said your opinion, it'd be awesome if you answer the question we asked you.
> the probability of it happening to a random person of a certain group before happening to say a thousand others from the same group is close to zero
Ignoring for a moment that it's impossible for something to happen to 1000 people without first happening to the first of them: your position assumes that it isn't bad if this happens to a single person (maybe you), even though it is.
Beyond that, I'm not sure we're qualified (data-wise) to judge the probabilities you mentioned and whether they're close to zero, given the data we have available. If you think we are, then I submit the probability is close to 100%. We can then average our two estimates to get to a probability 50%, still well worth considering when you answer.
Anyways, it'd be much appreciated if you could go ahead and answer the question multiple people are asking you. I believe you are a talented human capable of answering questions which you personally think are unfair and which others don't think are unfair.
Your question is pretty much the same as asking someone what they would do when confronted by any kidnappers or thieves. Who the specific kidnappers or thieves are hardly matters. You don't need me to tell you that the goal of any kidnapped individual is to creatively try to escape if the alternative is a short life in the gulag. Capture a guard, change clothes with them, and escape. As such, your question adds no new insight.
I respectfully don't agree with your opinion here -- the question multiple people asked you, is what it is. There's no point relating it to a totally different question when we could simply discuss it directly.
It reminds me of the current situation we're discussing -- the administration, when pressed by a judge to answer what they've tried so far towards returning their victim, refused to do so, giving some pretext about fairness or whatever. The judge essentially responded, okay, thanks for the opinion, but just because you have an opinion about the question doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't answer it.
Same goes here: a personally-held opinion that a question is unfair, or biased, or mean, or like this or like that, doesn't mean one can't or shouldn't answer it. What kind of meaningful discussion can be had when everyone avoids answering questions that they don't like, or whose answers make them uncomfortable, and they justify it by claiming that they personally hold the opinion that the question is "unfair"? Bor-ing!
> Capture a guard, change clothes with them, and escape
See? That said, is this really your proposed recourse for someone (US citizen or otherwise) deported to the gulag in question by the current administration (mistakenly or otherwise)? Seriously?
> Just admitting the mistake was a positive step, which means they do care at least a little bit to not repeat it.
Why is this an appropriate conclusion?
Stephen Miller went on TV to say that this man is a terrorist and is in the right place, despite sworn statements from the solicitor general that this was a mistake. I see absolutely no reason to believe that the Trump administration sees any reason to prevent further errors.
> Imagine for a moment that the judicial branch orders the executive branch to get Iran to release some American prisoners.
Hey look, a completely different situation. Here the US sent this person to El Salvador and is paying the Salvadoran government to house people we send there. Not even remotely comparable to the Iranian government capturing somebody.
If this starts happening to too many random citizens, I will see the writing on the wall. I will begin immediately to dissolve all my assets, send them to crypto and or foreign bank accounts, and move out of the country. Their war is not my war. It will take me a whole year, but I will do it. I don't know where I will go.
> dissolve all my assets, send them to crypto and or foreign bank accounts, and move out of the country
Is there some type of polymarket where I can place a bet that you don’t do this and neither does anyone else and the US housing market goes up another 4% next year?
I’ve just been hearing this same type of thing since the war in Iraq began (albeit with less cryptocurrency back then) and it’s a little exhausting at this point.
It depends entirely on whether Trump uses his private armed force (ICE) to detain citizens or not. If you can't handle what-if scenarios, you will eventually run into one that does transpire. Yes, we would like to bet that he won't, but with him we never know.
There's nothing stopping moderators, owners or the founder from fighting the gaming or at least making a public statement addressing the destruction of the society which has benefited them so greatly. But alas...true values are revealed in times of trouble.
This community is becoming a moral embarrassment and nearly not worth participating in any longer.
> what it proves is that users will flag unsubstantive flamewar posts on Hacker News, regardless of the topic or the commenter's position on the topic. This is a good thing!
I think it has to pass the moderators bar for acceptance: is this just antoher "MOT", or will it generate "curious" discussion. Combine that with the fact that the HN site gets a lot of these submissions and it's sort of a phenomenon that I like to call "no one goes there, it's too crowded!".
"Curious" discussion requires a free and open society and a sense of personal security. If that doesn't exist, then no one will dare make statements online that could result in persecution in the real. If they want to protect curious discussion, then they need to protect the society that fosters it.
But again...they are free to make public statements denouncing what is happening without having to interfere in the moderation. Yet they have not done so. Why not?
Instead, what do they ask for?...For people to "make good new things".
But sometimes, obstruction or even destruction is just as "good". One doesn't watch a cancer grow and say "hmmm....what good thing can i create in response?" No. You fucking destroy the cancer.
They don't want that though. "Good new things" are profitable. Destruction isn't. (Unless it's the destruction of moral constraints.)
And worse yet, destruction will inevitably result in the downfall of some of their very close friends and acquaintances. It's no surprise they aren't saying anything.
(I realize your response is neutral, or I at least read it as such, so please don't take my comment as an attack on you.)
Like it or not, that kind of statement plays right into Trump's playbook.
I also simply don't believe it. Because by that logic any AI topic as of late should be flagged as well. People just want to enjoy their circus even as the bombs outside go off.
Further, the people who have purchased this situation for us, and the wealthy tech VCs who are staying silent now, are all people this community once admired.
Abduct someone. Move them faster than their family, friends, and legal counsel can possibly follow. Get them on a plane to El Salvador. Put them in the CECOT hole. And then say "Aw geez, they're in Salvadorian jurisdiction now, nothing we can do."
Yes, Abrego Garcia is a Salvadorian citizen. He also had been explicitly granted protected status to remain in the US.
Nothing about this process prevents its application against US citizens. The detainee is pushed through a one-way valve faster than due process can be applied. If we do not protect the rule of law for immigrants who have been granted the right to stay here, we will also lose the rule of law for citizens.
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