The Trump administration said a Salvadoran man who was mistakenly deported and then brought back to the US on criminal charges will “never go free” on American soil, even though a judge ordered his release.
Kilmar Ábrego García was deported in March as part of an immigration crackdown. Government officials said he was removed in error, but they were unable to bring him back.
Earlier this month, he was sent to the state of Tennessee, where the justice department charged him with human smuggling.
The judge overseeing the case said on Sunday that Mr Ábrego García should be released from custody while he awaits trial. But she noted immigration officials would still have the power to detain him.
So much for “innocent until proven guilty”.
It’s important to remember that it actually doesn’t matter if Garcia is guilty of any crimes. They might eventually prove that he committed treason, or murdered puppies, or raped someone, or some other crime actual Republicans have actually been convicted for without facing consequences. His guilt or innocence is not as important as the process we use to determine guilt or innocence. You’ve hit the nail on the head, but I think it’s bigger than anyone imagines. Without “innocent until proven guilty,” we literally have no laws. There are no legal foundations below that one, and everything is built upon it. It is to the law what thermodynamics is to cuisine. Without it, there’s nothing else. We could talk in theory about recipes (legislation), but you can’t heat or cool things. We could eat raw ingredients (natural law) but only if it doesn’t require refrigeration, that’s just eating naturally ocurring local food. You might think that’s a good thing, but a return to a state of nature is the opposite of civilization.
Trump doesn’t even get that far. He stopped at the words “due process” and said “Nope.”
ftfy
So, that phrase doesn’t actually appear in the US Constitution, but the Fifth Amendment does explicitly guarantee “due process”, and the concept of “innocent until proven guilty” has always been seen as directly tied to that
I think the idea is that if he’s acquitted, they’ll just deport him somewhere other than El Salvador, which they can legally do.
He missed his window to apply for asylum years ago, so the non-removal order protecting him applied specifically to deportation to El Salvador. He can be sent elsewhere, and with Trump trying to open concentration camps elsewhere, I think he’ll eventually end up in a different torture prison.
I hate this reality.
Does him being kidnapped to a gulag on mistaken identity not make him eligible for the visas you can get if a crime is committed against you?