Jonathan P. Baird

The nasty underside of the Trump immigration agenda keeps gaining visibility. Deporting as many as possible as quickly as possible while disappearing due process is the name of the game. Smearing and demonizing those who are caught in the ICE machinery is also part of the game plan. The Trump regime always say they are deporting “the worst of the worst” but that is a big lie. The deported could be your co-workers, a graduate student or some unlucky person with a brown skin.

While Americans have been told these mass deportations will make America great, I would submit the erosion of due process is a grave danger for all of our rights. Taking away rights from a disfavored group creates precedent for taking away rights from everyone else.

With so many court decisions playing out, it can be difficult to sort out which ones are most consequential. Back in June, the U.S. Supreme Court decided one case on its unexplained shadow docket that deserves attention. In the case of D.V.D. v Department of Homeland Security, the Supreme Court ruled the government can deport non-citizens to third countries without prior notice or an opportunity to challenge that deportation.

A lower court had required 15 day notice before deporting non-citizens to countries other than their country of origin but, without rationale, the Supreme Court overturned the order. The Court majority didn’t appear to have a problem with deporting non-citizens to places they have never lived and to places where the deported person doesn’t speak the language or have any ties.

No-notice deportations raise the risk of sending non-citizens to countries where they are likely to be tortured or killed. The reason the 15 day notice matters is that it allows the opportunity to seek counsel and to have a hearing where evidence can be presented about the dangerous situation they may face if deported.

At first glance, I could not believe the Supreme Court was going along with allowing deportations to a third country. It didn’t seem right. You might think otherwise but the due process requirement applies to all persons regardless of immigration status. It is a constitutional right.

There is also the matter of international law. The principle of non-refoulement prohibits deporting people to unsafe third countries where they could face persecution or torture. The principle especially comes into play when migrants are sent to countries known for violence, instability and human rights abuses..

These issues have been raised in the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case. The government recently threatened Abrego Garcia with deportation to Uganda, a country with which he has no association. Now they say it will be Eswatini, a tiny African nation formerly known as Swaziland. Abrego Garcia came to the U.S. in 2011. He is the husband of a U.S. citizen and father of a U.S.-born child and he was the guy who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador in disregard of an immigration judge’s order that he not be removed.

The Supreme Court ruled he was deported illegally and said the federal government had to facilitate his return. Although they said they could not do it, the feds did bring him back but they immediately re-arrested him on human smuggling charges related to a 2022 traffic stop.

Because Abrego Garcia stood up and exercised his constitutional rights, he became the monster poster boy of the Trump regime. With no evidence, Trump, Vance, Miller, Bondi and Noem have all relentlessly tagged him as a “violent terrorist”. They have poisoned the water around Abrego Garcia’s case by slandering him so much. What we have witnessed is a prototype in creating a demon in the public mind.

The threat to deport Abrego Garcia to Uganda (and now Eswatini) came in the context of a plea deal the government offered. They said he could be ultimately deported to Costa Rica if he pled guilty and served jail time on the human smuggling charge.

That charge appears to be a fraud manufactured by prosecutors. No case was ever brought up in 2022. Now, to make their human smuggling case, the government uses informants who they offer deals on their own criminal or immigration charges in exchange for desired testimony. The case could not smell more.

Abrego Garcia has not accepted the plea deal and a federal court judge has ruled that he cannot be deported from the U.S. before his trial in October. He also has filed an asylum claim. You would never know that Abrego Garcia originally left El Salvador to escape gangs.

No one outside the Department of Justice knows why the Trump regime picked Uganda or Eswatini for Abrego Garcia. It is a calculated act of cruelty meant to harm. Sending someone to an unknown place where they don’t even speak the language is bad. Whether that place is dangerous is at least an open question but the Trump regime acts like concern about torture or persecution is a joke.

During the Great Depression and in the years after World War 2, an estimated two million people were forced to leave the U.S. because they were suspected of being Mexican. In that period, Mexicans were blamed for taking American jobs and public resources. It turned out that over one million were American citizens who were wrongly deported.

With deportations, we are seeing a very similar thing happen again.