Subject: Rule of Law
Last night, Nick Miroff of the Atlantic reported that Trump administration lawyers admitted, in a court of law, that immigration officials mistakenly deported an individual with protected legal status to El Salvador’s “Terrorism Confinement Center.”

Kilmar Abrego Garcia fled gang threats in his native El Salvador in 2011, when he was 16 years old, and came to the United States. He has lived here since, has no criminal record, works full time as a union sheet-metal apprentice, is married to an American citizen, and is the father of a five-year old child who is a U.S. citizen. He was accused by an informant of being a member of MS-13, which his lawyer has strenuously denied and for which there seems to be no proof. He was never convicted of or even charged with any crime.

In 2019, Abrego Garcia filed an application for asylum and an immigration judge granted him legal protection from being sent to El Salvador based on legitimate fears of persecution and torture.

The administration admits in its court filing that it “was aware of this grant of withholding of removal” at the time it violated that court order and sent Abrego Garcia off to prison in El Salvador anyway.

And yet, the administration now claims that there is nothing a U.S. court can do to rectify their willful mistake. And they apparently have no intention of doing anything on their own to bring Abrego Garcia home.

As Abrego Garcia’s attorney told Miroff, “They claim that the court is powerless to order any relief. If that’s true, the immigration laws are meaningless—all of them—because the government can deport whoever they want, wherever they want, whenever they want, and no court can do anything about it once it’s done.”

What’s more, it seems that there are other innocent victims of the Trump administration suffering in El Salvador’s prison.

From its unlawful invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, to the frantic removal of these men already in custody in the United States to a brutal prison in a third country—the Trump administration had demonstrated purposeful contempt for the rule of law. They have compounded this contempt by defending their actions with demonstrable lies and misdirection.

So I’d go further than Abrego Garcia’s lawyer. If this reckless and lawless action by the administration is allowed to stand, it’s not just the immigration laws that are meaningless; it’s the rule of law that is meaningless.

There’s been much discussion in recent months of what the other branches would do, and of how the public would react, if the Trump administration were brazenly to defy the law and attempts by U.S. courts to uphold the law.

That’s no longer a hypothetical question. That future is now. The crisis is upon us. We’ll be judged as a nation by how we respond.

William Kristol