Kilmar Abrego Garcia, or Why Due Process Matters

In March, Mr. Abrego Garcia was rounded up with a bunch of other folks and deported. But, instead of just being sent back to El Salvador, he was tossed into the nasty CECOT prison. Here's one of many articles on this matter: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/04/16/van-hollen-demands-abrego-garcia-release/83119729007/

The Trump administration first said he was mistakenly deported, claiming that tattoos made him a suspected gang member. If tats = guilt, then they might want to tell that to the daughter of a woman I've known for a good 55 years. But I digress.

Now, the Trump administration is claiming, oops, our bad, we meant to say that Abrego Garcia actually is a member of the notorious M-13 gang. So, we were right to deport him. Also known as, we meant to do that.


But let's provide the benefit of the doubt, and say that he is as awful as the Trump administration claims him to be. After all, he's no saint.

But that has nothing to do with his right to due process. Citizenship status doesn't mean diddly in the US when it comes to the right to due process.

According to the Fifth Amendment, "No person shall be ... deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law". No person. It's not "no citizen" or "no innocent person" or "no person who's the color we prefer". No. Person. And according to the Fourteenth Amendment, "...nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." Once again, this amendment is, in this section, addressing anyone.

Due process means everything from knowing the charges being made against you to your accuser having to prove their allegations in a court of law. It includes the possibility of bail, and the assistance of competent legal counsel. It means you don't just get a law book thrown at you and are told, well, something in there must be something you did. We're just figuring it out now. No. The party making the accusation(s) has to be specific. And they have to prove those accusations. With actual proof and not just, "Hey, we figure he's guilty because good lord he sure looks it."

Unfortunately for Mr. Abrego Garcia, he's become the ultimate hot potato. The Trump administration claims they can't get him released because that's a presidential power (the question of which branch has which power has never stopped them before), so if the president doesn't feel like it, or prefers golfing that day or whatever, then Mr. Abrego Garcia will have to rot in prison for another day or two or twelve because the president's golf game is far more important.

And, apparently, the US president is terrified of the might of El Salvador (all while claiming he's getting China to eat out of his hand when it comes to tariffs. Yeah, sure, right, right).


On the El Salvador side of things, their president has essentially said, well, we're not gonna just send a gang member to the US. What kind of people do you take us for?

People living under a dictatorship. Those are the kind of people I take you for. Because, remember what I said above about due process?

It hasn't happened either here in the United States, or in El Salvador.

Why does this matter to you?

Because democracy dies in the dark. And because even if Mr. Abrego Garcia is the devil incarnate, the most hardened criminal to walk the face of the earth, he still deserved a trial. He deserved a chance to defend himself. He deserved the kind of treatment we used to reserve for even the worst criminals, where we actually bothered to find out if they truly were guilty. Not this "move fast and break ****" nonsense which DOGE thinks is how you do, well, anything.

You don't do that with people. Not even with people you hate, not even if you're 100% justified.

DOGE is a rant for another day, so I will stay on topic.

Mr. Abrego Garcia—if he still alive at all—has been treated worse than the Allied forces treated captured Nazis at the end of World War II.

I leave you with this story.

In law school, I was close friends with a guy who was a member of the Young Republicans' Club. This was a good 35, 40 years ago. We kept in touch on and off, and he told me about having been arrested for some reason or another. He wasn't convicted. IIRC, the charges (whatever they were; I honestly can't recall, except that it wasn't anything violent) were dropped.

He said to me that for him, it used to be that the Fifth Amendment and its provisions were things which he didn't care about. It was never going to apply to him.

Until one day, it did.

And he said he was grateful that it exists. That he understood, finally, what it was all about, and why it existed, and why it mattered. I wish I could ask him about the Abrego Garcia matter, but my friend passed away over 5 years ago (it may be 10 by now).

If Mr. Abrego Garcia can be just grabbed out of a Home Depot with no charges and not even a coherent indication of why he was being grabbed, then so can you or I.

Think I'm being overly dramatic? Tell that to American citizen (born in Massachusetts), Nicole Micheroni. Who, it just so happens, is an immigration lawyer. She received a letter telling her to "self-deport". She said it looked like spam, and not like anything officially from the government.

Imagine just binning that email. Imagine going to Home Depot in regular old knockaround street clothes, the kind of togs you'd wear to paint your guest room.

And being yanked out like a criminal, because you look like someone who would be guilty, according to ICE. And seeing El Salvador from inside a notorious prison. And having your rightful release be delayed, over and over again, because no one wants to take responsibility. Or no one wants you telling the world that there are such abuses going on. Or the guards just killing you, because your protestations of innocence are just some boring broken record to them.

Due process denied for one person means it can be denied for anyone.

Don't sweep this incident under the rug. It's important.

Because you could be next.