Don't Be Silent About Due Process
Demand the Trump Administration Bring Abrego Garcia Back From El Salvador
The lesson of the Holocaust was not that the Nazis were uniquely evil. The lesson was that anyone can become a Nazi. This is what we’re seeing in America right now via the invocation of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act.
People are being snatched off the street and thrown into vans by plain clothes law enforcement officers unwilling to even identify what agency they work for. People showing up as required for what used to be routine meetings with authorities are being led out in handcuffs. Students who may have shown sympathy for Palestinians are being targeted by vigilantes with little to no evidence of unlawful behavior.
These individuals are being transported to holding facilities hundreds of miles away from where they were detained, denied the right to counsel, and kept incommunicado. And the executive branch of the government says it’s looking at giving US citizens the same treatment.
There can be no doubt at this point that our country has crossed the line into being an autocracy. The time for reasonable people in polite society to contemplate this matter is over.
We have a man and his minions at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue who think they are above the law. Given the opportunity, the circle of those targeted for extra-judicial treatment, whether it’s by incarceration or economic blackmail, will continue to grow.
From the Holocaust Encyclopedia:
“What distinguishes a concentration camp from a prison (in the modern sense) is that it functions outside of a judicial system. The prisoners are not indicted or convicted of any crime by judicial process.”
The cornerstone of our legal system and the rights enumerated in the Constitution and Bill of Rights is the Magna Carta, signed in 1215 by King John of England. It stipulated that no free man would be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law
The Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution incorporates the due process clause, ensuring that individuals cannot be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. It says this applies to person(s). There is no mention of citizenship status or perceived criminal record.
By sending off plane loads of individuals to another country for incarceration, the Trump administration has failed to honor the Constitution.
By paying El Salvador $6 million to house those deported from the United States in an immense and brutal prison there, Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, the administration is in violation of the law prohibiting payment to “units of foreign security forces” — which can include military and law enforcement staff in prisons — facing credible allegations of gross human rights violations.
The 1997 Leahy Law refers to two statutes – one applying to the State Department and one covering the Department of Defense – that prevent U.S. funds from being used for assistance to foreign security forces that have credible allegations of gross violations of human rights such as torture, extrajudicial killing, enforced disappearance or rape.
What Americans don’t understand about CECOT is that the inmates are basically supposed to stay there until they die, which is why there are no rehabilitation services offered. El Salvador doesn't have the death penalty, and CECOT is essentially a substitute, known for torturing and starving inmates.
So when the US sends people to CECOT, it's giving them life sentences, sometimes for things as minor as having a tattoo that was misinterpreted.
Now that the President of the United States has used the tiniest opening left by a unanimous Supreme Court decision to say he is powerless to to return Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, it’s no longer a question of when US District Judge Paula Xinis will demand sworn testimony from Justice Department lawyers, not get it, and start holding them in contempt.
Legal niceties might prevent Xinis from jailing DOJ personnel, but that’s exactly what she should do if she wants to see a resolution of the issues in her lifetime. Underlings in the Trump administration have been playing a game of cat and mouse when it comes to openly defying court orders, and the President himself is obviously following legal advice by saying he has no intention to defy the judicial branch’s rulings.
During a White House media event for El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, the president’s minions took turns repeating lies and misinformation about the circumstances of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia’s being sent off to the gulag for gangs with no due process.
Supposedly, Garcia, who was under a court’s protection from being sent to El Salvador, is such a bad person / evil doer that kidnapping and life imprisonment was necessary. The government, other than ‘we say so,’ has failed to present evidence to back those claims.
Unions, including SMART, the Building Trades Union, and Unite Here, have joined together to send letters and calls to Congress.
Abrego Garcia is a SMART Local 100 first-year apprentice who currently works full-time to support his young family. He came to the United States as a teenager 15 years ago, and according to his attorneys, he was legally authorized to live and work in this country and had fully complied with his responsibilities under the law. He did not have a criminal record in the United States.
A comment caught on a hot mic between Trump and Bukele has the President telling his Salvadoran counterpart that “home-growns are next” and that El Salvador would “need to build about five more places” to hold American citizens.
Asked about the possibility of departing US citizens to El Salvador, Trump said his people were “looking into it.”
From Politico’s reporting on the meeting between Presidents Trump and Bukele:
While violent crime in the U.S. is at or near record lows, Bukele portrayed the country as besieged by criminals and was explicit Monday that the U.S. should emulate the approach of El Salvador, which now has the highest per capita incarceration rate in the world.
“You have 350 million people to liberate. To liberate 350 million people, you have to imprison some,” Bukele said. “We’re very eager to help. … We know that you have a crime problem, a terrorism problem that you need help with. And we’re a small country but, if we can help, we will do it.”
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In The Supreme Court’s Redistribution of Rights, Allison Gill says the gig is up. No longer can we hope that the guardrails of the judicial system will keep our democracy safe.
I know folks are saying Trump is defying a Supreme Court order by refusing to bring Abrego Garcia home, but it seems more like Trump is gobbling up the 15 years of loopholes they’ve created for him to become a dictator. It’s true that the Supreme Court said he should facilitate Garcia’s return from the torture prison in El Salvador, but they also left the definition of it up for debate - adding that the lower court must show due regard and deference for his total power in the realm of foreign affairs.
It’s no accident that Pam Bondi, Stephen Miller and Trump himself are continuing to use that language over and over again as they refuse to return the innocent Maryland father to his family. That language was a gift from the high court for Trump to exploit. And if the Supreme Court decides that Trump has done all he can to “facilitate” the return, then he will not be in defiance of the order - but rather in lockstep with what the corrupt court has been more than happy to help create.
The only thing that’s being “facilitated” and “effectuated” is the end of democracy.
It’s time to take our power back. No one is going to do it for us.
The only questions to answer at this point are “how long do we have?” and “which path of resistance will we take?”
Step one has to be to make the return of Abrego Garcia a non-negotiable demand. Let the calls for his freedom fill the streets, the media, and every public forum.
At Law Dork, Chris Geitner explains the importance of this call:
Why do they not bring Abrego Garcia back?
That would, ultimately, destroy the plan.
The Trump administration wants to create a Schrodinger’s box — quite literally, the CECOT prison is that box — where anyone can be sent under an agreement between the U.S. government and El Salvador’s government but at which point the U.S. government can claim to no longer have any authority because people within that box are in the custody of a foreign sovereign.
If they can get Abrego Garcia out of the box, the plan does not work.
And Trump’s goal of sending Americans to foreign prisons will have failed. As it must — by way of the administration itself, the courts, Congress, or the people.
I’m not finished with the subject of what is to be done, but I do know that solidarity and community need to be the foundation of whatever actions get taken.
This article was shared with The Jumping Off Place.
Do we need cocoa-free chocolate and is it nice? By Chris Baraniuk at BBC News
The selection before me is just a smattering of the non-cocoa containing alternatives to chocolate that are creeping into the European retail market right now. Their makers have spied an opportunity, partly because real chocolate prices are soaring.
"The average increase in price for chocolate was 9% over 2024," says Richard Caines, principal analyst in UK food and drink research at market research firm Mintel. "In January just gone, it's shot up by 14%."
That's the retail price of chocolate. The wholesale price of the key ingredient, cocoa – which is made from fermented, roasted and ground cacao beans – has increased by an astonishing 300% in 2024.
***
Happy Tax Evasion Day! - DOGE is stealing your tax revenue and giving it to rich cheaters by Paul Krugman
I’d argue that this means that lax tax collection has a moral as well as a financial cost, because it specifically rewards bad behavior. It takes us down the road toward a society where anyone who plays by the rules is a chump — a Leona Helmsley society in which only the little people pay taxes.
Not that pointing this out would deter Trump and Musk. After all, wealthy tax evaders are their kind of people.
“Taxes,” declared Oliver Wendell Holmes, “are what we pay for civilized society.” But these days barbarians are in control.
***
A whistleblower's disclosure details how DOGE may have taken sensitive labor data by Jennifer McLaughlin at NPR
In the days after Berulis and his colleagues prepared a request for CISA's help investigating the breach, Berulis found a printed letter in an envelope taped to his door, which included threatening language, sensitive personal information and overhead pictures of him walking his dog, according to the cover letter attached to his official disclosure. It's unclear who sent it, but the letter made specific reference to his decision to report the breach. Law enforcement is investigating the letter.
"If the underlying disclosure wasn't concerning enough, the targeted, physical intimidation and surveillance of my client is. If this is happening to Mr. Berulis, it is likely happening to others and brings our nation more in line with authoritarian regimes than with open and free democracies," wrote Bakaj, his attorney, in a statement sent to NPR. "It is time for everyone – and Congress in particular – to acknowledge the facts and stop our democracy, freedom, and liberties from slipping away, something that will take generations to repair."
In part because of the stymied internal investigation and the attempts to silence him, Berulis decided to come forward publicly.
The article was shared with The Jumping Off Place.Do we need cocoa-free chocolate and is it nice? By Chris Baraniuk at BBC News
The selection before me is just a smattering of the non-cocoa containing alternatives to chocolate that are creeping into the European retail market right now. Their makers have spied an opportunity, partly because real chocolate prices are soaring.
"The average increase in price for chocolate was 9% over 2024," says Richard Caines, principal analyst in UK food and drink research at market research firm Mintel. "In January just gone, it's shot up by 14%."
That's the retail price of chocolate. The wholesale price of the key ingredient, cocoa – which is made from fermented, roasted and ground cacao beans – has increased by an astonishing 300% in 2024.
***
Happy Tax Evasion Day! - DOGE is stealing your tax revenue and giving it to rich cheaters by Paul Krugman
I’d argue that this means that lax tax collection has a moral as well as a financial cost, because it specifically rewards bad behavior. It takes us down the road toward a society where anyone who plays by the rules is a chump — a Leona Helmsley society in which only the little people pay taxes.
Not that pointing this out would deter Trump and Musk. After all, wealthy tax evaders are their kind of people.
“Taxes,” declared Oliver Wendell Holmes, “are what we pay for civilized society.” But these days barbarians are in control.
***
A whistleblower's disclosure details how DOGE may have taken sensitive labor data by Jennifer McLaughlin at NPR
In the days after Berulis and his colleagues prepared a request for CISA's help investigating the breach, Berulis found a printed letter in an envelope taped to his door, which included threatening language, sensitive personal information and overhead pictures of him walking his dog, according to the cover letter attached to his official disclosure. It's unclear who sent it, but the letter made specific reference to his decision to report the breach. Law enforcement is investigating the letter.
"If the underlying disclosure wasn't concerning enough, the targeted, physical intimidation and surveillance of my client is. If this is happening to Mr. Berulis, it is likely happening to others and brings our nation more in line with authoritarian regimes than with open and free democracies," wrote Bakaj, his attorney, in a statement sent to NPR. "It is time for everyone – and Congress in particular – to acknowledge the facts and stop our democracy, freedom, and liberties from slipping away, something that will take generations to repair."
In part because of the stymied internal investigation and the attempts to silence him, Berulis decided to come forward publicly.
