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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.
It's all play acting. Most of the American's that are "frightened" about this deportation don't actually think they are at risk for being deported. Where would they even deport actual Americans that didn't come here as looters? Most of em are from parts of Europe. You're gonna threaten someone by deporting them to the UK? Germany,? Scandinavia? Most of the left supposedly want that.
What they think is at risk, and correctly as this is what the actual fight is over, is the shadow government. By circumventing all the procedural nonsense and bureaucracy that the establishment has built to defend it's own interests Trump eats away at their power. The arguments they are posting here are the same sort of fake outrage and concern they were pushing about Elon gutting USAID or how social security was going to collapse and stop working if you audit it, or really anything touching any of the many other appendages of the shadow government.
Against my better judgement, I've decided to stop lurking and make this account specifically to tell you (at the admitted risk of being uncivil) that you are VERY fucking wrong on this- and that you should consider 'updating your priors', as the local lingo goes, in order to better reflect your hated outgroup's theory-of-mind accordingly.
I'll grant you this much; In the nightmare scenario that Trump does start deporting US citizens to El Salvadoran gulags, I'd probably be pretty far down the list of people to target; after all, I'm not a felon (at least, as far as I know), I'm white, I'm male, and otherwise generally inoffensive to MAGA sensibilities aside from my leftism...
...But a lot of my friends would be a lot higher-up on that list than me, as would most of my family (by virtue of being even more actively outspoken than I am), and if they do get targeted, I'm liable to quickly get a lot more radical- and thus a lot higher on the list as well.
El Salvador, of course. As Trump just clarified earlier today.
That particular bit of outrage and concern wasn't fake either. You should perhaps consider updating your theory of mind on that as well.
Consider the possibility when someone tells you they're against something, maybe they are, in fact, against it on the object-level, as well any other deeper levels you care to psychoanalyze.
And to respond to your and @The_Nybbler 's responses to @Amadan- ...It's not "play acting" or "method acting"** either. I assure you, I genuinely do worry about this.
I'm sure you genuinely believe that you think you can tell I'm lying by my "crocodile tears" & 'revealed preferences' over COVID measures, the January 6th protestors, and other perceived injustices from "our team"... But consider the possibility that the bespoke realities of others differ from yours, and the screen that you (and most of the other posters on TheMotte, seemingly) is showing a very different picture than the screen that I (and most other liberals & leftists in this country) are watching.
**To the latter poster- I'd respond that the most common way to 'Live the role of someone who believes Trump will deport US citizens for being political enemies' is to actually be someone who believes Trump will deport US citizens for being political enemies- which I believe he likely will unless he starts getting real pushback on this kind of shit real quick.
A bit of an aside, but how did you end up with a network of family and friends who arrived in the US illegally from El Salvador after having to leave due to pst affiliations with MS13?
Like that’s a very strange scenario, and I’m wondering what circumstances landed you in a situation like that?
I don't- I probably could've been more clear, but when I said that my friends & family would be higher up on nightmare-scenario government list of people to target, it'd be for different reasons.
In the hypothetical scenario where Trump & co start going after their perceived domestic enemies, I figure that trans people & outright socialists would be the next logical group to get hit after immigrants, and since I move in a lot of circles where both are highly over-represented, that concerns me by proxy. Several of my friends are already considering moving states, since the deep-red legislatures they live under have already made it exceedingly clear that trans people aren't welcome.
Oh… I know you’re not going to believe me, but I feel I have to say this for your mental health.
They will be fine. You have literally no reason to worry that Trump is going to deport them to El Salvadorian prisons. You have no reason to worry about anything other than that they may not be able to use their preferred bathroom or may not be able to receive hormones through Medicare anymore. Whilst I imagine those things matter to them, they’re not a big deal in the grand scheme of things and mirror the kind of frustrations that near all other people in the USA have to deal with from time to time.
Well, I hope you're right about that.
But while not every slippery slope has to be slid down, the sliding we've seen in the first three months alone doesn't exactly fill me with confidence.
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