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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.
Do you not believe the woman he married is a "US citizen"? What basis do you have for that?
You seem to have strange assumptions about people's state of mind when the first thing you think of when someone engages in PR to help return a family member from a notoriously violent prison to the country they were illegally deported from is that they are "chasing a fat legal payout" instead of maybe wanting to help out their family member who had an injustice done to them. Of course her children having quoted "disabilities" is further evidence for this somehow, alright.
This attempt by the executive to pay to imprison a man in a foreign country after making an administrative error that they now refuse to admit is what actually comes across as theater and (il)legal chicanery.
Apparently it is "my brain on legalism" to demand due process and rule-following from the authority that governs everyone's lives and controls untold power. The founders would be seizing in their graves.
Did you miss the details where the wife in question filed a restraining order against him for repeatedly beating her to the point of injury? That seems to have ended in dismissal when she didn't show for the final hearing, so maybe she was just playing games.
"Brain on legalism" is a nice way to say "I think a lot of people are full of self-serving shit". Are you one of the three genuinely principled civil libertarians who is also routinely incensed at, e.g., Democrat governors blatantly ignoring court orders regarding the 2nd Amendment?
There are two more?!?!?! tears of joy
Then you recognize that we have not in fact been operating under "rule of law" previously?
Do you believe that enforcing "rule of law" here will increase its enforcement elsewhere? If so, why do you believe that?
If you do not believe that, why is one form of selective "rule of law" preferable to another?
Violations of the rule of law don't cancel each other out - us "three genuinely principled civil libertarians" don't "tap the sign.*
Law is a social construct, and as a social construct it depends on consensus and common knowledge for its function. It works if people believe it works, that "rule of law" actually functions in some reliable fashion.
Undermine that belief sufficiently, and people stop believing in it, and "rule of law" stops functioning in specifically the way that you are now observing: people stop honoring appeals to the rules, because they've seen those rules bent or broken in too many other cases and so no longer trust them.
I do not accept your appeals to the rules, because I have long since observed that my appeals to the rules are systematically ignored. I do not expect the rules to protect me when I need them to, so I have no incentive to expend effort or value to ensure the rules protect you when you need them to. I too used to make appeals to "rule of law"; I did so for many years. Now I don't do that any more, even when the law is purportedly on my side, because I understand that it is pointless.
Enforcing the law is costly. People bear the cost willingly when they believe that all bear it equally. When they no longer believe this, they generally stop being willing to bear the cost.
Hence violations not cancelling each other out.
Is "you" in reference to me, specifically, or a rhetorical device?
The claim is not that violations cancel each other out. The claim is that sufficient violations invalidate the construct, by destroying the trust necessary for it to operate. "but it's the rules, you have to follow the rules" is not a workable answer to "no one else is following the rules, why should I?"
It's a reference to the arguments you're presenting here, irrespective of any personal details or history of yours beyond these arguments in particular. You specifically are arguing in support of our existing social systems. I am pointing out that the actual history of how those social systems actually operate seems to badly undermine your arguments.
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