1. United States
2. Kan.
3. Letter

Last night a historian offered this analysis: “This evening, lawyers for DOJ told a federal court that the administration does not believe it has a legal obligation to return Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to the U.S., despite a court order to do so. Let’s be very clear about exactly what’s happening here: President Trump is claiming the power to ignore the due process of the law guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, declare someone is a criminal, kidnap them, send them to prison in a 3rd country, & then claim that there is no way to get that person back. Make no mistake: as Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, & Ketanji Brown Jackson recently warned, if the administration can take noncitizens off the streets, render them to prison in another country, & then claim it is helpless to correct the error either because the person is out of reach of U.S. jurisdiction, it could do the same thing to citizens. Trump has said he would “love” to do exactly that, & would even be “honored” to, & Bukele has been offering to hold U.S. citizens. Dasha Burns & Myah Ward of Politico reported Friday that former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince is pitching a plan to expand renditions to El Salvador to at least 100,000 criminal offenders from U.S. prisons & to avoid legal challenges by making part of CECOT American territory, then leasing it back to El Salvador to run. When White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt says, “The president's idea for American citizens to potentially be deported, these would be heinous violent criminals who have broken our nation's laws repeatedly," remember that just days ago, Trump suggested that a former government employee was guilty of treason for writing a book about his time in the first Trump administration that Trump claimed was “designed to sow chaos and distrust” in the gov’t. Here’s the thing: Once you give up the idea that we are all equal before the law & have the right to due process, you have given up the whole game. You have admitted the principle that some people have more rights than others. Once you have replaced the principle of equality before the law with the idea that some people have no rights, you have granted your approval to the idea of an authoritarian government. At that point, all you can do is to hope that the dictator & his henchmen overlook you….”