Geoffrey Ingersoll, Editor at Large, Daily Caller
The suicidality of liberal politics never ceases to amaze.
The latest losing battle they’ve chosen is over a “Maryland father” who was supposedly deported in error. The poor guy, with an American wife and disabled child, just ended up on a Trump deportation flight and dog walked into a Salvadorian prison.
The Department of Justice admitted to an “administrative error” that resulted in the deportation of Salvadoran national Kilmar Abrego Garcia despite receiving “protected legal status” from an immigration judge. To get this out of the way: That’s bad, they admitted it’s bad, and they should really be dotting i’s in this regard (if anything, to give liberals and their media allies no room to complain).
His wife apparently recognized it was him in a video El Salvador posted because of his tattoos and scars.
And that’s just the first hint that maybe the “error” wasn’t really much of an error.
Daily Caller Senior Editor Amber Duke spent the day yesterday reading all the primary source documents on the case. She did it in part so she could understand the story outside the prism of the establishment media that was “reporting” on it.
You can watch her debate the case and leave her libertarian cohost rather cornered on the matter.
The Cliff’s notes are convincing.
Left off much of the reporting about his first apprehension – outside a Home Depot, go figure – was that he was among several members of the MS13 gang at the time. Not just members, to be clear, but identified as “ranking” members of the gang.
So he’s friends with officers in the most violent gang in America, check.
Then a confidential informant identified Garcia’s gang nickname. Like when you’re baptized in the Catholic Church, entrants into a gang get jumped in and receive a new name specific to their gang. Garcia not only had an alleged gang name, but the informant identified his specific rank in the gang.
In his first two immigration hearings, he didn’t dispute or “effectively dispute” these details, Duke says.
Rather than appeal, after several years of being in the country illegally, he filed a separate claim seeking asylum. He argued that MS13’s rival gang, Barrio 18, in El Salvador was targeting him and that’s why he needed to be in the US. The third judge granted his temporary protected status.
Oddly, Duke points out, none of his siblings needed to flee the country. Perhaps because Garcia was actually in MS13 in El Salvador?
This is a real “quacks like a duck” situation, no?
The kicker: Now that he has been deported, he’s not claiming potential persecution from a rival gang, he’s claiming that prison conditions in El Salvador are so terrible, that he absolutely must be returned to the US.
Seriously.
Did we get the wrong guy? We definitely didn’t do it the right way, that much I’ll give. It should be airtight. But if I were a betting man, I’d say the residents of Maryland should consider Trump’s “administrative error” a blessing from God.
Going further: I genuinely don’t think the bar should be that high, actually. His decision-making process is clearly flawed. What would he do with the globe’s golden ticket opportunity of living in the US? Hang out with bad hombres at a Home Depot, apparently.
For their part, liberals are more than willing to sacrifice public safety for proper rendition to administrative bureaucracy.
Render unto the absurd and obscene system we’ve devised, they demand.
As a result of the process, they want an MS13 gang member to still be sitting outside your Home Depot as you walk in with your wife and kids.
I don’t.
My bar is way lower for people who entered this country illegally. Hell, even legally. There’s been much ado about kids with student visas getting snatched off the streets for being involved in protests.
Imagine being granted the opportunity to study at one of the most prestigious universities in the world as a foreign guest, and using that opportunity to rabble rouse about Israel and Gaza? Is your decision-making sound?
In my regime, you’re out too.
Kicking it with MS13 at Home Depot? Out. And I’ll even go lower. Spend too much time gawking at women on the train? Out. Smells funny on an elevator? Get on the plane.
I’m not sorry either. Coming here is a golden ticket. It’s not for guys who think it’s cool to make friends with gang members, if Garcia wasn’t one himself, which he probably was. It’s not for C students either. It’s not for people who plan to disrupt public peace even one iota, from gang members to campus protestors.
Get ‘em out.