As the recent news continues to illuminate the dire consequences of the sitting president’s abundance of terrible policy choices, including the stupidity, lack of planning, and resulting economic malaise in the wake of the illegal, unprovoked and unnecessary war of choice against Iran, I write to point out one more foible. Obscured by subsequent murders in Minneapolis, one case has received way too little media attention and commentary which, like bypassing Congress on the way to waging war (among other transgressions), illustrates the president’s abject disregard of and disdain for the Constitution, democracy and its fundamental components, including that pesky and time consuming requisite of “due process.”

Kilmar Abrego Garcia worked through the system for asylum, and obtained an order from an immigration judge expressly and specifically prohibiting the government from the exercise of its power to deport him to his prior home, El Salvador, where his life is at risk.

Enter Stephen Miller, the xenophobic, unelected and seemingly racist presidential advisor and his band of goons, who not only dispatched Kilmar to the CECOT torture prison in El Salvador, but did so in

defiance of a federal district court (Judge Xinis in Maryland) directing otherwise. After defiant deportation, Kilmar eventually received a unanimous decision from the otherwise reliably Supreme(ly Partisan) Court, splashing egg all over the faces of Trump and his DOJ lackeys, unanimously finding the abysmal lack of due process required that the government facilitate his return. (On the way back from the Supremes, Judge Xinis pointedly rebuked DOJ for its misrepresentations to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, sadly typical of DOJ misfeasance under Trump, drowning, so to speak, in uncooked omelet.)

Instead of neutral obedience to the unanimous Supreme Court decision, and wishfully hoping to de-yolk DOJ faces, the foolhardily indomitable lackeys then fabricated stale criminal charges so that Kilmar could return to the U.S., albeit to Tennessee rather than his home of several years in Maryland. Last week, yet another federal judge (Wesley Crenshaw, U.S. District Court) ruled that the government had failed to rebut the presumption that its prosecution of Kilmar was vindictive, so that, at long last, the criminal charges against him were dismissed (although another ill-conceived appeal by the government is expected, notwithstanding a well-reasoned opinion supporting the decision against the ever-so-rare success of the vindictive prosecution defense, suggesting DOJ fondness for self-egging.)

Though there is a shred of humor in Kilmar’s terrible travails, mostly in the form of embarrassment to DOJ, it’s important to call out Trump’s immigration policy for its heavy-handed lack of sympathy and empathy, and the heavy, personal toll extracted. Then again, Trump historically pulls every lever of due process in his own defense, multiply but unsuccessfully invoked in the cases, civil and criminal, against him and his corporation, resulting both in felony convictions, for which his personal punishment was hardly a slap on the wrist, corporate fines, and large civil judgments. On the other hand, concern for the process due his adversaries, real or contrived, has never been his thing.

Kilmar’s ultimate fate remains undetermined, as DOJ still wants to deport him to Africa (he would have agreed to deportation to Costa Rica, but the unkind and ungentle Trump Administration couldn’t bring itself to be anything but cruel and unusual to one who has remained hardworking, law abiding, unconvicted, and a Davidian stalwart for the rule of law against the evil and misguided Goliath.) Whether he is allowed to remain here with his U.S. family or not, his saga, so far, at least, is one of a shameful expenditure of effort and tax dollars, making a travesty of the rule of law. Not my president.

JOE DeCRISTOPHER

Lewisburg

Submitted by email