Does It Matter If He's a Criminal?

The Justice Department, with Attorney General Pam Bondi most unseemingly leading the charge, is on a campaign to paint Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man they have acknowledged was illegally sent to a prison used to house terrorists in El Salvador, as a bad guy.

We know Abrego Garcia came to this country illegally in 2011 at the age of 16. Since then, he has married, has a child, and is a father to his wife’s two previous children as well. Now, the government is painting him as someone with a criminal history, offering a “Gang Field Interview Sheet” from the 2019 arrest that led to deportation proceedings. The deportation was ultimately stopped by an immigration judge’s order, which remains in place today.

According to the documents Bondi offered, Hyattsville City, Maryland, police detectives saw four people “loitering in the parking lot” (something I’ve done a lot in my life, too; haven’t we all?) at a Home Depot. The detectives reported that as they walked toward the men, two of them reached into their waistbands and discarded several unknown items under a parked vehicle. Abrego Garcia’s attorneys said he was looking for work when he was taken into custody. The detectives did not believe him when he said he was not a gang member.

Of course, an immigration judge at the time saw it differently and entered an order withholding deportation because of the threat of persecution that “risked his life or his freedom” if he were deported to El Salvador. As we discussed previously, the Judge noted the fact that his family sent him to the United States after three moves failed to get them out from under a gang’s violent extortion threats. As to the government’s claim Abrego Garcia himself is a gang member, she wrote, “The ‘evidence’ against Abrego Garcia consisted of nothing more than his Chicago Bulls hat and hoodie, and a vague, uncorroborated allegation from a confidential informant claiming he belonged to MS-13’s ‘Western’ clique in New York—a place he has never lived.”

But the truth is, as interested as we all are in the backstory in a situation like this, it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that Abrego Garcia, criminal or saint, was denied his due process rights by the government, and in this country, people are entitled to those rights. Under our Constitution, people, whether criminals or not, whether citizens or not, are entitled to notice before action is taken against them and to a hearing in front of a judge to sort out any issues.

That’s the end of the story.

That’s why it’s utterly reprehensible that Pam Bondi would demean the office she holds to try to convince Americans that this is a bad guy. He might be. Although the evidence linking him to gangs is passably weak and seems suspect, it could be the truth. Even if it is, it doesn’t excuse what the government is doing. It doesn’t make it right for the woman who heads the Justice Department to refuse to follow a federal judge’s orders. It makes it worse.

“America is safer because he is gone. Maryland is safer because he is gone,” Bondi said in an interview on Fox News, with the White House pictured behind her. “And that woman that he is married to and that child he had with her? They are safer tonight because he is out of our country and sitting in El Salvador where he belongs.” “That woman.” “That child.”

The ones who are wrong here are Pam Bondi, Donald Trump, and the others who have forsaken the rule of law. Nothing they say can change the fact that they are the ones breaking the law here.

We’re in this together,

Joyce