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Notes -
The crux of the Abrego Garcia controversy is a dispute about who "morally" counts as an American citizen.
The rallying cry of the pro-Abrego Garcia camp is: "If they can do it to him, they can do it to any of us." In other words, they see no meaningful difference between him and a legal US citizen, and so there is no Schelling Fence that can be drawn between the two. On other hand, the pro-Trump camp who wants Abrego Garcia to stay in El Salvador are not at all concerned that they will be next, because in their view citizens and non-citizens are two morally distinct categories.
The slippery slope argument (e.g. Laurence Tribe yesterday, and Justice Sotomayor's concurrence) is that if the government gets its way with Abrego Garcia, there will be no legal obstacle preventing them from treating citizens in the same way.
But the thing is, this is already the case. The US government's treatment of citizens abroad is already effectively unconstrained by the law. The government can negotiate for the release of a citizen imprisoned by another country, but nobody would argue that the government is legally obligated to do this, and it's absurd to imagine a court compelling them to do so, because that effectively makes diplomacy impossible. (The US government must be able to value the citizen's return at less than infinity, or else they lose all negotiating leverage.) On the other hand, the government can drone-strike a citizen abroad without due process, and while that may stir up political pushback here at home, there are effectively no legal repercussions.
This is because, according to the constitutional separation of powers, foreign affairs are a quintessentially "non-justiciable political question". In common parlance this means: If you don't like what the government is doing, the proper way to fix it is through advocacy and the democratic process, not through the court system.
To which the pro-Abrego Garcia camp will gesture around at the crowd of protesters they've assembled, waving "Free Abrego Garcia!" signs, and say "Great, come join us. Here's your sign!"
But of course the pro-Trump immigration hawks see no need to take it up, because even if these protests have no effect, this does not in any way diminish their confidence that if a citizen were to be treated in the same way, then the backlash would be swift, universal, and sufficient to compel the citizen's return - no court order needed. For them, it is simply obvious that the failure of the Abrego Garcia advocacy has no implications whatsoever for the success of the hypothetical advocacy on behalf of a fellow citizen, and this is no cause for cognitive dissonance because citizens and illegal-immigrant non-citizens are two entirely separate categories.
Prior to anything else in the political life of a nation, there must be near-universal agreement on who constitutes the body politic for whose benefit the government exists and to whom they are accountable. If there is factional dispute over this basic question, then morally speaking there is no nation, but multiple distinct nations that happen to find themselves all mixed up in the same land. But I'm sure this is no great surprise.
AP and Reuters reports about today's developments:
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-meet-with-el-salvadors-president-amid-questions-over-deportations-2025-04-14/
https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-white-house-el-salvador-kilmar-abrego-garcia-ad338d6b4558a6aba80e8290fd3eece9
If Trump backs down, I wonder if ICE's fuckup will have ironically created the conditions for Garcia to make a valid an asylum claim in the US: Legitimate fear of persecution in your home country and the US being the first safe country you enter, following that threat. Bukele eliminated defendant's rights and personally called Garcia a terrorist:
Also, ???
If the US, by claiming he is a gang member, has caused El Salvador to persecute him, I would say they have indeed provided the basis for a valid asylum claim. I am not sure if this is true if he actually is a gang member, but given that the two pieces of evidence are a confidential informant and Chicago Bulls themed clothing (which the US claims is characteristic of both TdA AND MS-13... aren't gangs supposed to use DIFFERENT "colors"), I don't think that's been shown to any reasonable standard of evidence.
Yes, this is just Trump having made a deal with El Salvador about paying them to imprison gang members for him, and some underling having to find some "gang members" to deport in a hurry. "Oh, that guy was accused of being a gang member by someone without any credibility? Whatever, it will have to do."
I wonder how long it will take for the real gang members (if there are any being deported) to wisen up to the fact that murdering an ICE agent (or just a random civilian bystander) will immensely improve their outcomes (if they survive the encounter). Then they get a nice long trial in the US. Spending 20 years on Uncle Sam's death row before being fried likely has a much better QALY balance than spending the rest of your life in some El Salvador megaprison.
(This might also explain the selection. "This guy is suspected to run the local MS-13 chapter. He is investigated for three gang shootings, rape and drug trafficking. Should we round him up?" -- "Nah, that one might go out fighting, and I am not getting paid enough to take bullets. Uhm, I mean we might need him as a witness for gang-related crime later. Look, that one is accused of having a five-year-old kid with his American wife, and also wearing some clothing reminiscent of gang colors. He is probably not even packing and will never believe that we will haul his ass to some El Salvador prison complex before we have him cuffed.")
Why? Is there something that would prevent the U.S. from deporting immediately and letting El Salvador prosecute the case?
6th Amendment:
Obviously the 6th Amendment does not apply if the government is not prosecuting them, and a deportation proceeding is not a criminal trial. Foreign nationals being tried by foreign courts have no 6th Amendment case with the U. S. Government.
The US government could deport an illegal immigrant without indicting them for crimes they are suspected to have committed while in the USA, but your question was if there is "something that would prevent the U.S. from deporting immediately and letting El Salvador prosecute the case" and the 6th Amendment is that thing.
Crimes committed abroad are often prosecuted domestically, murder is illegal in El Salvador so he can be deported and then tried there.
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