The wrongful deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia poses a looming threat to the right to due process in the U.S., said Melissa Rogers, a former executive director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships.
Garcia is the undocumented immigrant whisked to a prison in El Salvador in March despite a 2019 court order barring his deportation to that country.
Melissa Rogers
The Trump administration initially admitted the incident was a mistake but then sought to justify the action by accusing the Maryland resident of being a member of the international gang MS-13. The White House also has ignored the U.S. Supreme Court and other courts’ rulings ordering Garcia be returned to the U.S.
The situation should have everyone in the country, including nonimmigrants, concerned that it could happen to them, Rogers explained during an episode of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty’s “Respecting Religion” podcast.
“It also shocks the conscience about its implication and its inescapable logic,” she said. “By the administration’s logic, it could pick up American citizens off the streets of our country and send them to vicious prisons in other countries where torture is common and without any due process and without any delay.”
And even if a given case were to be proved a mistake, the administration “could simply say ‘Oops, well, too bad. We are not going to do anything about it.’ And that’s what’s happening right now to a human being,” said Rogers, a Baptist and Baylor University graduate.
Amanda Tyler
Podcast co-host and BJC Executive Director Amanda Tyler said the nation is teetering on the brink of losing its constitutional form of government.
“We’re living through history,” Tyler said. “This feels like one of those pivot moments in history to me, for our country and for our world. There are also profound ramifications of this situation on due process, the rule of law and freedom for everyone living in our country, including U.S. citizens.”
Especially troubling is the administration’s outright disregard of federal court orders supporting Garcia’s release from El Salvador’s notorious CECOT Prison and return to the U.S., said co-host Holly Hollman, general counsel and associate executive director of BJC.
“What are we going to do? What is this president going to do to comply with the law and the constitutional structure that we have where the court is supposed to be the final arbiter of what’s required under the Constitution?”
Referencing a lower court order, the Supreme Court ruled April 10
the government was required to “‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s
release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it
would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.” Federal judges have not minced words with the administration in a series of rulings over its handling of the Garcia case.
Holly Hollman
“To this day, the government has cited no basis in law for Abrego Garcia’s warrantless arrest, his removal to El Salvador, or his confinement in a Salvadoran prison. Nor could it,” Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson in their separate statement regarding the unanimous ruling .
“The government now requests an order from this court permitting it to leave Abrego Garcia, a husband and father without a criminal record, in a Salvadoran prison for no reason recognized by the law. The only argument the government offers in support of its request, that United States courts cannot grant relief once a deportee crosses the border, is plainly wrong.”
The justices also reminded the administration it is still bound to honor the 2019 immigration court ruling prohibiting Garcia’s deportation because he faces credible threats to his life in his native El Salvador. “That means the government must comply with its obligation to provide Abrego Garcia with ‘due process of law,’ including notice and an opportunity to be heard, in any future proceedings.”
Failing to heed court rulings poses a clear threat to American justice, Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, a Reagan appointee to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, said in an April 17 ruling.
“The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process.”
“The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order,” Wilkinson said. “Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done. This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.”
The White House could preserve its reputation by complying with the courts in this case, Wilkinson added. “We yet cling to the hope that it is not naïve to believe our good brethren in the executive branch perceive the rule of law as vital to the American ethos. This case presents their unique chance to vindicate that value and to summon the best that is within us while there is still time.”
Rogers urged people of faith to contact representatives and senators and not to take their right to due process for granted.
“Our faith really has something to say about this, that this is wrong,” she declared. “Our citizenship requires us to stand up and to say to our government that this is wrong and that they must return this person from El Salvador and that they must stop this action and other actions which deprive people of due process.”
Falling short in the effort could be costly, she warned. “If there isn’t due process for every one of us, then there is not due process for any of us because any of us, including American citizens, could be picked up by the government and treated this way or in some similar way.”
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