Readers who don't want a "downer" read, and who want that positive cheerleading we get from MSNBC, can skip today's post.
I am trying to be realistic.
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| Trump calls Abrego Garcia "a foreign terrorist." |
While he came here illegally as a 16-year old, an immigration judge in 2019 granted him legal status, finding that he faced gang violence if returned to El Salvador. That finding is the basis for the most recent judicial order that he NOT be deported. The government sent him to El Salvador anyway.
My conclusion that the Abrego Garcia rendition is popular for Trump is based on four premises.
***Partisans are partisan, and Republicans who have gotten accustomed to Trump's lawless and willful style aren't going to abandon him. They like Trump's swashbuckling.
***A huge majority of voters across the political spectrum think Biden failed to deal with illegal immigration and they were impatient for somebody stop dithering and to do something.
***Native-born Americans aren't personally worried that they are going to be rounded up and sent to prison.
***A majority of Americans don't feel all that sorry for Abrego Garcia. He came here illegally. In 2019 he was legally allowed to remain due to danger from gang violence if he returned to El Salvador -- but a great many Americans don't care much about that detail. He is a foreigner. We hear President Trump say he is a terrorist. Who really knows? And we have busy lives.
Biden let the immigration problem get out of hand. It grew intolerable to a great many people.
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| Biden let this happen. It was out of scale. |
I personally am pro-immigration, but I saw an emerging political problem, and I urged Democrats to deal with it, and they didn't until it was too late. Americans voted for the guy who said cruel, rough, get-rid-of-them-all things. Sensitive Democrats are dismayed by images of shackled people led off American planes, but a great many voters think this was high time.
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First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist. . .
We hear the early warning. Today it is the lawless rendition of Abrego Garcia and citizen political activists with unpopular points of view. Eventually it could be targeted political opponents like Alexandrea Ocasio-Cortez, Josh Shapiro, and Gavin Newsom. If Trump can do it to Kilmar Abrego Garcia he can do it to anyone. The U.S. Supreme Court said he is immune if it is done as an official act.
Democrats are making the constitutional argument. Follow the Constitution. Remember the rule of law. Hold the line. But we have already learned that the constitutional argument doesn't motivate very many people. It doesn't motivate the people who could put brakes on Trump: Republican representatives and senators who could vote against their popular president to defend Constitutional standards. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger tried that and promptly lost their jobs. Lindsey Graham tried that for one day, got yelled at in an airport, and switched back to being a Trump sycophant. Republicans like their leader more than they care about the niceties of the Constitution. Besides, Trump asserts a pretext: We are in a state of war. Of course, we are not in a state of war, which can only be declared by Congress, but Trump says we are at war. Take his word for it.
Recall that Pastor Niemoller's lament does not presume that people look ahead and act in the face of future peril, even after trade unionist and Jews are added to those rounded up.
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.
Americans can ignore the peril and hope for the best. Trump has gone after law firms, but those are few in number. He has bullied media companies, but they are few. He targets research universities, but they are few. He has targeted former staff, but they are few. He condemns former Vice President Mike Pence and former Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, but they are still free to walk around. So far he is just targeted enemies, and if you aren't an enemy, you are okay. Keep your head down.
Trump is carrying out a profound change in American government and he is getting away with it because so far people are okay with the results. They aren't themselves getting hurt. Not yet.
A recession would change that.
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8 comments:
The negative disinformation surrounding immigration legal and otherwise is so pervasive that even liberals promote it. How about this:
"There is not nor has ever been an immigration problem in the United States."
"Net net" it's a positive, economically, culturally and most importantly, morally.
This is an example of how those in power create a body of facts to suit their agenda. Much legislation is passed this way. In the case of Kilmar Garcia, the Trump administration is creating a body of facts to confuse the public about what is and isn't relevant for purposes of keeping him in El Salvador. For example, it's not relevant for the Supreme Court that Kilmar Garcia entered the United States illegally. It is relevant that he had lawful status when the government removed him to El Salvador; he had "withholding-of-removal" status. But the Trump administration doesn't want the public to focus on the admitted mistake it made in removing him. It wants instead to undermine the public's respect for the judicial branch and Trump in particular wants to be seen as a crime fighter on the level of a superhero. That's an effective political strategy for the Trump administration for obvious reasons. Congress and the executive branch will readily make simple matters into seemingly complicated ones, and they will use simplistic half-truths to sell simplistic "solutions" to complicated problems; they do this to push whatever the agenda happens to be. The courts usually have to be more exacting than Congress or the executive branch in analyzing problems; and courts are often stuck with the mistakes that are made by the executive and legislative branches, so that people suffer regardless of whether we wish it were otherwise. Anyhow, the Supreme Court's ruling about Kilmar Garcia isn't complicated; you can look it up in SCOTUSblog.
We live in a democracy. People in border states and in northern cities that got inflows of immigrants voted their frustration with the immigration chaos. THEY thought it was a problem. For there to be mass immigration, there needed to be order and rules. Hispanic communities themselves revolted. Pro-immigration people downplayed order and accentuated the right to enter but failed to have the infrastructure to manage what they allowed. If progressive and activists on issues want make progress, they cannot simply claim they are the virtuous and accurate ones They need to sell it. Biden couldn't sell it and did not try, and no one else stepped up. This is a democracy. Virtue needs to be sold. And it is darned hard to sell disorder. People didn't see the long term benefit. They did see the disorder. Within a certain echo chamber everyone knows that immigration is a good and necessary thing, but who was out there managing the crowds crossing the border? The Democrats were in power, but they didn't do it. So America pays an awful price for that neglect. Trump stepped up with a cruel solution, and people preferred that to the immigration-lobby assertion that immigration was ok. Tell that to people in the border towns.
Your neighbor's landscaper might be an illegal alien with a fake i.d. Ditto for the motel maid who just cleaned your room, and the roofer, and the laborer on the school construction job. Pillars of our community--major donors to important charities--rely on such workers in our agriculture. JPR reports the "guest workers" plant the trees for our reforestation outfits; JPR doesn't report that a lot of these people are using fake i.d.s and bogus social security numbers to appear to be legal; and employers are willfully ignorant of this. So, if immigration is a problem such as the public thinks it is, why doesn't it seem to occur to our saviors (Democratic and Republican) in the federal government to crack down on the employers. Most illegal aliens come here to work. And we let the employers who hire them get away with that.
Garcia's illegal entry is relevant. It's what makes him deportable, as adjudged already, then approved on appeal, in 2019. (Garcia's wife's domestic violence protective order is irrelevant).
My understanding is he did not have "lawful status" here when Trump's people removed him to El Salvador; it was unlawful to remove him to El Salvador (only). Not the same thing.
How it plays in Peoria includes the foregoing, plus the reported nonexistence today of the rival gang which was the basis for his do-not-remove (to El Salvador) status. Politically moot?
The legalities from here are beyond me. Surely Garcia can't be held in an El Salvadoran supermax indefinitely just because Trump pays them to do so? Maybe NOT politically moot, then?
Trump and the Republican "solutions" just might cause a recession, depression or at least double digit inflation. For the moment it's trading one chaos for another.
BTW It's colossally stupid to not bring him, and others, back for due process, such as it is. But, as the Brits say, "there you have it".
The person who would have been president in 2016 if it weren’t for Vlad the Impaler helping Trump has said: “If they can ship Kilmar Abrego Garcia to a foreign prison — accused of no crime, with no trial — they can do it to anyone.” She urged Americans of conscience to stand up and resist the administration. Unfortunately, all most Americans care about is money, so in a way it’s a good thing Trump is destroying the economy along with the rule of law.
For full photographic context, I suppose we could also use the pic of Senator Van Hollen sitting at what looks like a restaurant or cafeteria table with Mr. Garcia, who is clad in a clean sport shirt and stylish Kansas City Chiefs ballcap. They didn't have that in the prison cupboard, I'm guessing. Odder and odder.....
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