Democratic lawmakers led by Sen. Chris Van Hollen say they are willing to go to El Salvador to seek the release of a man who the Justice Department says it mistakenly deported there — a plan that has gained steam after the country’s president said during a visit to the White House that he would not send the man back to the U.S.
At first I dismissed this idea as bullshit, but at this point, wouldn’t it be so much fucking easier to just bring him back? There has to be some reason they aren’t, and I sure don’t believe the “they don’t want to set a precedent” line floating around.
I see three possible reasons:
He’s dead
El Salvador and the US don’t want anyone to speak about what’s going on in the prison
Trump wants to use this as a test. If he can get away with this, he can get away with sending most anyone.
D) All of the above
Ooooffff, I just had a horrible thought:
During the Holocaust, the Nazis wanted to prove they weren’t running death camps, so they invited the Red Cross to visit a fake town they had the Jewish prisoners build and then pretend to run.
He might be alive and possibly even being treated well and the Trump admin selected him and turned him into a firebrand just to “dispel” all the death/work camp “rumors.” If they’re already taking so many notes from the Nazi playbook, this really could be their attempt to instill complacency in the masses and to give more ammo to the MAGA town criers.
Of course, all of this is just wild speculation, even if based on precedent. If this is all intentional, planned, and they play their cards right, they likely could release him just before or after the Democrat lawmakers visit with him describing how fairly he was treated and that the people charged with his care acknowledged this was all an error while taking care of him. This would provide all the cover they’d need to convince everyone that the “system” works and they’re only imprisoning “real criminals.” Once political adversaries start getting swooped up, this whole current scenario could be cannon fodder to claim protestors are crying wolf.
I hope I’m completely wrong and that incompetence will be the name of the game. But there are no good scenarios left either way. This shit needs to end.
Idk for sure, just speculating, but I think they don’t care about the actual individual. It’s not about him.
They’re asserting power, defying the supreme court. It’s that simple. This is authoritarianism. This is how it plays out.
Again, speculation. They start with these types of acts, if they succeed their way, disobeying law gets normalized, and they can continue and do even worse.
If I’m correct, checks and balances is falling, or has fallen. This is what authoritarianism looks like.
I don’t even know what would be “best” for Kilmar considering he came to America to flee gang violence in El Salvador so…
On the one hand: It is very probable that they just don’t have any records. And it is finding one guy based on a photo of him from a month or two back in a giant mass of “hispanic men”. So it is going “block” by “block” to line everyone up and compare them to a photo. Keeping in mind that his appearance has likely changed due to having his head shaved, stress/terror and, likely, violence.
And the other is that he is probably dead. Because he was thrown in a “maximum security” concentration camp with many of the gangs he fled from.
There’s a reason he had fled to the US and was protected with asylum, and a reason that the US was not supposed to deport him back to El Salvador. He was probably dead as soon as he was sent back.
Yeah like wouldn’t it just be best (from their perspective) to get it out of the news cycle, come up with better legal bullshit, and continue the concentration camp deportations in a month or so?
I mean they’re talking about revoking the citizenship of prisoners and trying to naturalize the land in El Salvador so they won’t have to answer to anyone because it will be considered “domestic” transfer. They could just bring him back and then ship him back when they do that.