Toronto Let’s be clear. It’s great news that the Trump government has been forced by constant protests, agitation, legal action, and court decisions to finally return unlawfully deported and arrested immigrants to freedom. Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia from Maryland has finally been returned from an El Salvador hellhole where he had been detained for three months after having been mistakenly deported. A Guatemalan man who had been deported illegally to Mexico was more quietly returned. The government also changed its tune over his arrest and threatened deportation of a Russian scientist at Harvard for failing to declare scientific samples she was carrying in her luggage after it became clear she was going to prevail on her immigration suit.
There’s good news in all of these situations where the administration has had to step back under pressure, but none of these situations feel like real victories as much as a change of venue for the struggle. No one can pretend these are situations prove that the administration has returned to governing under the rule of law. What we are really seeing is abuses of power in different forms and a refusal – a classic problem of Trumpism – to either concede defeat or admit and learn from their mistakes. In fact, not only do we not see any recognition of the rule of law, but even more distortion of the prosecutorial powers of the Justice Department.
These immigrants are only being released after charges and indictments are fabricated as a cover story for the administration’s abuses of power. One paper called the charges and “offramp” the Trumpers were using to avoid direct – and losing – confrontations with the Supreme Court and federal judiciary, but these actions are simply further examples of impunity. They allow the government to continue the fiction, especially in the Abrego Garcia case, that he’s still a criminal, they just got the charges wrong earlier. In the Russian scientist’s situation, a minor technical problem of not having declared something in her baggage, the immigration equivalent of a speeding ticket with a small fine, is now a huge issue and a federal case. All of this means more time and expense for people, their families, and supporters trying to get them justice, even as the government tried to move them out of the limelight. Sharing emails of congratulations within minutes of the news with comrades at CASA over Abrego Garcia’s release which they have worked so hard and been so instrumental in achieving, my friends told me they were already in meetings with the lawyers and family trying to figure out the next steps.
Make no mistake. The government has still not relented or acknowledged that it is now willing to give all of these immigrants the due process promised under the US Constitution, even as the judge continues to demand it for the El Salvador prisoners. As the ACLU and other lawyers representing all 140 of the immigrants sent on the same plane to El Salvador’s prison without any apology in this case have said, and the Mexico case proves once again that the US could have returned everyone immediately despite their insistent lies to the contrary. They just obfuscated and detained people while they hustled behind the scenes to use their power for more abuse and mischief by criminalizing innocent people, who happen to be immigrants.
With each new situation, we run out of metaphors. Calling something Kafkesque or as Orwellian and reminiscient of scenes from 1984 loses its sting when there is no shame in the White House or Justice Department and Attorney General Bondi or the press secretary can spout falsehoods and word salads without blinking an eye. I’ve often quoted an old ACORN leader’s definition of a rationalization as “nothing but a lie in the skin of a reason.”
None of this diminishes the importance of our small victories, even as it underlines our continuing challenges and struggles as we are forced to realize that with a government unhinged some of our wins are simply a temporary reprieve and respite in a recurring war that is a long, long way from over.