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The 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals declined to lift the order on the executive to "facilitate" the return of Abrego Garcia and I recommend reading it
It's written up by judge James Wilkinson III, a Reagan appointee and Bush era short list candidate for the supreme court and he's quite well respected in the legal profession. This guy has been a conservative for longer than many people here have even been alive, and the stance of seasoned judicial figures like him with old style "respectable" political ideologies are an interesting way to see the change in the rest of politics.
Most importantly in that it incidentally addresses many of the questions and concerns people have about this whole situation.
Like does it matter whether or not the executive's allegations against Garcia are correct?
What does the Supreme Court's decision actually say?
An interesting difference between the role of the executive and the rule of the judiciary
Are the claims that this could be used on citizens valid?
On the contradictions between both government's public claims of authority and/or responsibility.
Are there previous major examples of an executive following a court order it did not like?
And if you're wondering "Why do the courts even get a say here to begin with about the executive's actions?", here's a basic primer.
I suppose I'm just not enough of a lawcuck to understand why this is being blown up into such an ordeal. The guy is an El Salvadorean citizen, was not in the US legally, and could have been deported to any country (besides El Salvadore) and then, from there, immediately deported again to El Salvadore and this would have somehow been fine. But because some braindead or politically captured bureaucrat rubber stamped his paperwork where he claimed he'd be in danger if he returned to his own country they granted a targeted stay of deportation, which precipitated this entire clusterfuck.
The guy was married to a US citizen ("Jennifer Vasquez Sura", okay...) who had filed a restraining order against him. Not exactly Elite Human Capital. The wife had two children from a previous relationship who are "disabled". Garcia's own child is also "disabled". This context is supposed to engender some kind of sympathy, I suspect, but as someone who actually interacts with people of this socioeconomic strata I am more inclined to believe they were scamming government benefits, and the wife's current PR blitz is a consequence of her smelling blood in the water chasing a fat legal payout.
I will freely concede that it would be alarming if the Trump administration deployed this "strategy" to consign innocent American citizens to a third world gulag without legal recourse or due process, but I don't think Trump is "based" enough to do that. (No, the off-hand comment he made to Bukele about sending "homegrowns" does not count, as it was clearly about -- legally -- sending convicted criminals to serve out their sentences more cheaply than can be done domestically.) This attempt to force the executive to (presumably, temporarily) return one particular illegal comes across as political theater and legal chicanery. Frankly I'm hoping Trump makes a show of retrieving Garcia on Air Force One, landing in the US for a photo op, then clasping him in chains and loading him back on the plane, to dump him in Argentina or somewhere else -- from where he'll be repatriated straight into El Salvadore's "black site prison", hopefully for life.
There was some minor procedural error, therefore we must make an elaborate show of correcting it, at great expense, to achieve an outcome that will immediately collapse back to the current status quo. This is your brain on legalism.
Honestly, why the cruelty? I confess, I don't understand it. If some guy, at the age of 16, invaded my very own home and lived in my basement for decades without my knowing, siphoning my electricity and water or whatever, I would not wish this on him.
If you think that prison is cruelty, you are just propagandized. Most people housed in that, or US prisons actually, would historically have already have been executed.
As an excuse for torture, "well, at least we haven't killed them" is not any kind of gotcha. Unless you think torture is never 'cruel' because at least it's not murder, it's a meaningless argument.
Most of the people in that prison deserve a worse fate if half the accusations against them are true.
"Worse" is a confusing term in this context. There is a sense in which being killed is "a worse fate" than being tortured - but torturing someone is a worse thing to do, and a worse thing for a society to condone. I can respect someone who's killed a man, even if I didn't approve of his actions. I couldn't really, fundamentally respect a torturer even if he'd committed torture as part of some trolley-problem with a terrorist and a ticking time-bomb with which I could find no logical fault. By the same logic, I do not want to be part of a society, or indeed, if at all possible, species, which condones torture as punishment, ever, for any reason.
I do not think it wise to empower the state to torture people, but that's not because nobody deserves to be tortured.
My post was intended to be agnostic on the question of whether some people abstractly 'deserve' to be tortured. What I am sayng, what feel in my gut, is that the act of torturing is wrong. Not just "a power we shouldn't give to the state" - wrong. Torture is depraved, an act which stains anyone who commits it. "This sinner deserves Hell", even if it's true, is no excuse to become the Devil yourself.
(I am also against the death penalty for the same reason. But my moral sentiment that killing is wrong is nothing next to my burning certainty than torture is wrong, wrong, WRONG.)
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