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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 7, 2025

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Interesting article. Let's read it.

The big picture: The Trump administration fought a lower court order to return of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Salvadorian national who the government erroneously deported, arguing the judge's order imposes on the president's foreign policy powers.

Okay. "Erroneously deported". Maybe this is liberal media slander. Let's see where the link goes.

A Salvadorian national living in Maryland legally was wrongly deported to El Salvador, the Department of Justice has admitted in court papers filed Monday.

They admitted it? Maybe this is spin from the ... biased reporters at ... Axios? Well, let's click.

It's a filing by the government, defending their position. From the "Statement of Facts"

Plaintiff Abrego Garcia is a citizen and native of El Salvador, and his coplaintiffs are his U.S. citizen wife and five-year-old child, who reside in Maryland. Compl. ¶¶ 4–6, 42. Both Abrego Garcia and his wife work full-time to support their family.

During a bond hearing, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) stated that a confidential informant had advised that Abrego Garcia was an active member of the criminal gang MS-13.

Although Abrego Garcia was found removable, the immigration judge granted him withholding of removal to El Salvador in an order dated October 10, 2019.

On March 15, although ICE was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador, Abrego Garcia was removed to El Salvador because of an administrative error. Cerna Decl. ¶¶ 12–15. On March 16, a news article contained a photograph of individuals entering intake at CECOT.

Okay ... so he was protected from removal, and ICE should not have removed him and admits so, but did so anyway due to an error.

And he was not merely "removed" to another country, but sent to a notorious prison for gang members, where it's unclear if he'll ever be able to leave. Due to an "administrative error". Without any due process to determine, for instance, whether he was actually a member of MS-13, whether this confidential informant's claims were true. When previously he was married to a US citizen and raising a five year old.

Let's read your second paragraph again:

Not to blackpill too much, but the country is basically doomed. When judges can override issues of national sovereignty - literally there is NOTHING more important than a country deciding for itself who to let in and who to expel - the illegal immigration issue in the US will never be solved. It's over, there's just no way to solve it. The millions who came in will never leave.

What?

How did this sequence of thoughts occur to you?

Most illegal immigrants are not protected from removal. For those that are protected, there are ways to remove the protection, whether that be via executive orders (as trump has revoked TPS for many groups of illegal immigrants), laws (Republicans, in theory, have a trifecta, and could nuke the filibuster at any time for something of such great importance) or proceedings in courts. Even then, if the administration simply wanted him gone, they could have expelled this person to freedom in a foreign country, instead of a prison that El Salvador advertises as a hellish place you can never leave, and perhaps gotten a friendlier ruling.

The Trump Administration is not getting similar orders to return the over 275 other people sent to CECOT, because they weren't sent because of an "administrative error" like this one.

How does an order demanding this man return have anything at all to do with the ability of the Trump administration to deport illegal immigrants in general?

Okay ... so he was protected from removal, and ICE should not have removed him and admits so, but did so anyway due to an error.

And because people are often confused, one has to reiterate -- he was protected from removal by a ruling from an immigration judge that is part of the Executive Branch. The same branch that made an oopsie and removed him.

This isn't even two branches of government jostling over it -- for example if the 2019 order was from an Art III court (i.e. the judiciary). It's the league of morons in the same branch!

I think you misread. He was subject to removal but not specifically to El Salvador. If they removed him to any other country it’d be fine.

I re-read my comment and I don't think I implied otherwise?

You stated:

“Okay ... so he was protected from removal, and ICE should not have removed him and admits so, but did so anyway due to an error.”

He was not protected from removal. He was protected from going to El Salvador; not removal per se.

Ok I see, that was worded weirdly, and I should've clarified that, but this supports my main point that this ruling does nothing to prevent Trump from carrying out deportations in general

On the same page! The problem is the district court judge is now willfully misreading the SCOTUS opinion.

You and @curious_straight_ca may be talking past each other:

Okay ... so he was protected from removal [to El Salvador], and ICE should not have removed him [to El Salvador] and admits so, but did so anyway due to an error.

Perhaps in your mind, the mistake is only where he was sent, not how the mistake occurred, but ICE never tried to send him anywhere other than El Salvador (so far as I know...) the remedy being ordered by the court isn't that he be sent "anyplace other than El Salvador" (the judge wants him back in the USA, presumably for the purposes of investigating ICE's compliance with relevant court orders; it'd be embarrassing to bring him back, due to having fucked up intra-branch - not even inter-branch - approval for deportation, just to re-deport him correctly, but that's on ICE for being sloppy...), so a miscommunication occurs, due to lack of specificity.