Trump administration must stop playing games on deportations

The Trump administration is dangerously defying federal courts while attempting a foolish public relations game to avoid revelations that its stealth deportations of migrants to El Salvador skirted even the most basic rules of fairness central to the nation's rule of law.

In two parallel cases, federal district court judges are asking the administration to provide information about the use of secret flights in March to move migrants it alleges are violent gang members from a Texas detention center to a notorious prison in El Salvador. Instead of explaining their actions, cabinet members and top officials are gaslighting the public.

The higher-profile case involves Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a sheet metal worker from Maryland married to an American citizen who is among the 200-plus men hastily hustled out of the country. A Justice Department lawyer who admitted to Judge Paula Xinis that Garcia’s inclusion on that flight was a "mistake" was fired days later for disloyalty. The administration continues to say, with no credibility, that it is powerless to have El Salvador return Garcia despite U.S. taxpayers paying the prison bill and that nation’s president saying he would effectuate the return if asked. 

Xinis on Tuesday told the Justice Department that it had two weeks to show her evidence that it was trying to "facilitate" Garcia's return. On Wednesday, the Justice Department filed an emergency appeal to avoid complying with her ruling. Less than 24 hours later, it got a five-alarm smackdown from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. In a unanimous ruling written by J. Harvie Wilkinson, an icon of conservative lawyers and judges, the panel said the failure of the Justice Department to cooperate "should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear." The panel especially was appalled that the administration is claiming it has a right "to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order."

If Garcia was returned for a hearing, he would remain in federal custody. If the administration makes its case that Garcia, who is here illegally, is a dangerous member of MS-13, he should be returned to El Salvador. That this process is difficult for the administration to accept can't help but raise concerns that what's really going on is a larger effort to destabilize our legal system.

Wilkinson best states the fears and the urgency involved in getting this resolved. His ruling concludes, "We yet cling to the hope that it is not naïve to believe our good brethren in the Executive Branch perceive the rule of law as vital to the American ethos. This case presents their unique chance to vindicate that value and to summon the best that is within us while there is still time."

Trump must avoid a showdown that diminishes both the presidency and the judiciary.