Abrego Garcia update
By Good news and bad news:
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose mistaken deportation to El Salvador became a political flashpoint in the Trump administration’s stepped-up immigration enforcement, was returned to the United States on Friday to face criminal charges related to what the Trump administration said was a large human smuggling operation that brought immigrants into the country illegally.
His abrupt release from El Salvador closes one chapter and opens another in a saga that yielded a remarkable, months-long standoff between Trump officials and the courts over a deportation that officials initially acknowledged was done in error but then continued to stand behind in apparent defiance of orders by judges to facilitate his return to the U.S.
The development occurred after U.S. officials presented El Salvador President Nayib Bukele with an arrest warrant for federal charges in Tennessee accusing Abrego Garcia of playing a key role in smuggling immigrants into the country for money. He is expected to be prosecuted in the U.S. and, if convicted, will be returned to his home country of El Salvador at the conclusion of the case, officials said Friday.
As for the charges that were the price for the Trump administration actually deigning to comport with the law, they would appear to be trumped up in every sense of the term:
The decision to pursue the indictment against Kilmar Abrego Garcia led to the abrupt departure of Ben Schrader, a high-ranking federal prosecutor in Tennessee, sources briefed on Schrader’s decision told ABC News.
Schrader’s resignation was prompted by concerns that the case was being pursued for political reasons, the sources said.
What are the odds? Speaking of lawless:
[autocorrect from “despots” obviously]
Still, all in all due process is better than no due process.