Any of us is vulnerable to basically being kidnapped

Yeah, just yesterday I wrote about a book I read. Today’s book has been my “car book.” I keep one in the car to read when I am in a place where I may need to wait, like a doctor’s waiting room. I’ve been reading this one since last August and my trip to Stratford, Ontario. The book is Bad Gays, a Homosexual History by Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller. There are profiles of fourteen men who showed homosexual activity and also did bad things. In the Introduction the authors discussed Oscar Wilde and his lover Lord Alfred Douglas, known as Bosie. He caused a rupture between the two and Bosie’s father, the Marquess of Queensberry, sued Wilde for slander. Wilde lost. He was sent to prison that broke his health. We talk about Wilde’s importance to LGBTQ history. Why don’t we talk about Bosie? That’s the question that prompted this book. We should talk about the good and the bad. Some of the people profiled in the book are obviously bad. J. Edgar Hoover and Roy Cohn. Ronnie Kray who, with his twin brother, lived a gangster life in the mid 1900s in London. And the gay men of Germany’s Weimar Republic who promoted the rise of the Nazis. But some of them don’t sound bad. Roger Casement railed against the brutality of King Leopold of Belgium in his treatment of the people of the Congo. And Pietro Aretino, who wrote bawdy poems to criticize the actions of the Pope and Florentine officials in the 1500s and through his writings changed how sex was discussed. Other famous people profiled in the book are Hadrian, James VI and I, Frederick the Great, Lawrence of Arabia, and Margaret Mead. In addition to a profile of the person the authors also discussed how homosexuality was treated in that person’s time period and location. In some times and places men loving men was considered quite foul and illegal, in others it was approved of under certain circumstances. The last profile in the book is of Pym Fortuyn. He was a politician in the Netherlands in the 1990s and some of his rhetoric inspired far right groups around the world, including in America. Fortuyn was openly gay and became the head of his own political party. Muslims had been invited to the Netherlands as guest workers. When the economy was doing well and guest workers were no longer needed these Muslims decided to stay. That caused friction, as we well know here. Fortuyn and his followers were able to claim we are tolerant – so tolerant the head of our party is gay. But those people, the Muslims, are intolerant. We have to do something about them. Yeah, that is tolerance that isn’t. From page 290 of the book:

A new “benevolence” towards gays and lesbians in the public sphere on issues like marriage, [queer theorist Jasbir K Puar in her book Terrorist Assemblages] writes, “is contingent upon ever narrowing parameters” – of whiteness, of class position, and of adherence to gender norms. The married gay subject can then be defended by the state, and set off against supposedly terrifying terrorists who threaten the liberal freedom these subjects embody. This neat trick of reversal, familiar today as a key part of the far-right playbook in debates about the provision of healthcare to transgender children and the supposed scourge of “cancel culture” at universities, was pioneered by Fortuyn.

I enjoyed the book and recommend it. The story of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland dad mistakenly deported to El Salvador, generated a lot of news this week. A week ago his case came before the Supreme Court. They ruled all people to be deported must have due process rights respected. They upheld a lower court ruling saying Abrego Garcia must be returned to the US and the nasty guy’s administration must “facilitate” that return. On Monday Lisa Needham of Daily Kos wrote about the nasty guy’s response, which has been refusing to do so.

On the one hand, the Trump folks are too powerful and cannot be told what to do. On the other hand, they’re just widdle guys and cannot tell El Salvador what to do. On the third hand, sure, they made a mistake in removing Abrego Garcia, but it no longer matters because they changed the rules after deporting him. Oh, and on the fourth hand, they can’t tell you anything about the secret agreement to deport people to El Salvador, because it’s secret, duh. And on the fifth hand, they actually are following the order, so there. No matter which explanation is trotted out, they’re all equally disingenuous and unconstitutional.

The nasty guy’s minions also gave various reasons (again, all of them disingenuous) on why the nasty guy, as powerful as he is, just isn’t able to tell El Salvador what to do. Put another way, the administration can’t be bothered to invent a passable explanation. On Monday afternoon Franco Ordoñez and Danielle Kurtzleben of NPR reported that El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele visited the nasty guy in the Oval Office earlier that day. In addition to reviewing the meeting they reported:

During Bukele's Oval Office visit on Monday, Trump and his team said it was up to the Salvadoran government to decide whether to return him. Bukele said he would not do that. ... Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said the matter was up to Bukele. "He's a citizen of El Salvador, so it's very arrogant even for American media to suggest that we would even tell El Salvador, how to handle their own citizens," Miller said.

I see a little detail here that didn’t register at the time and I hadn’t noticed any other news story talk about it until I had NPR on this afternoon. The detail is that Abrego Garcia is indeed a citizen of El Salvador. He came to the US about 15 years ago to escape gang violence and is a legal US resident. And none of the claims the nasty guy and his minions have said against Abrego Garcia are true. Also on Monday afternoon Walter Einenkel of Kos discussed the meeting between Bukele and the nasty guy. He titled his piece, “Bukele and Trump pretend they can’t return wrongfully deported man.” I see now he also said Abrego Garcia is a citizen of El Salvador. In the comments of a pundit roundup on Kos exlrrp included a tweet from Will Stancil:

They’ll pressure a NATO ally to release a sex trafficker and racketeer but they won’t pressure a tiny dictatorship to return a man it’s holding on our behalf, who they admit they sent there by accident.

Stancil includes headlines from a story of the nasty guy pressuring Romania to return brothers Tristan and Andrew Tate, charged with sexual misconduct, organized crime, and money laundering. Beside it is a story saying, “The Trump administration contends it has no duty to return illegally deported man to the US.” Hasn’t the nasty guy’s rhetoric included a lot about deporting the people who have committed crimes (or his minions have accused of crimes), yet they wanted actual criminals to be returned to the US? I’ve never considered this logical. A bit further down in the comments Steve Inskeep of NPR has similar sentiments:

If I understand this correctly, the US president has launched a trade war against the world, believes he can force the EU and China to meet his terms, is determined to annex Canada and Greenland, but is powerless before the sovereign might of El Salvador. Is that it?

On Sunday Scott Detrow of NPR discussed the case with Harvard Law Emeritus Professor Laurence Tribe, who cowrote a New York Times op-ed about the case and included the line, “we should all be very, very afraid of the implications of this case.” Detrow asked him to explain. Tribe said:

The reason I think was made even clearer by Justice Sotomayor in her concurring statement. She said the government's argument implies that it could deport and incarcerate any person, including U.S. citizens, without legal consequence, as long as it does so before a court can intervene. Think about what that means. What that means is that literally any of us - whether we are from Venezuela or were born in the United States, whether we are immigrants or not, whether we are citizens or not - any of us is vulnerable to basically being kidnapped by masked agents of the United States government who don't tell us why they're picking us up, perhaps never to be seen again because we are located somewhere in a dungeon, a prison cell, rotting away, whether it's in El Salvador or anywhere else in the world. ... They've taken the position that even if it's clearly illegal and the government admits it, they say too bad, too late, oops. The person is gone, and we cannot get him back. And all nine justices reject the idea that suddenly, the greatest nation on Earth is powerless and its courts are powerless just because someone is outside the country. That's not the law.

The Supremes may have unanimously said what the nasty guy did was against the law, but Tribe says they wrote the opinion in yellow. The Supremes said the lower court should clarify the situation and include the deference towards the executive branch in executing foreign affairs. But this isn’t a foreign policy issue. Also, the courts have demanded the administration explain the steps it’s taking to make the return happen. To that they are saying we haven’t done anything. Tribe:

If he is not released in the next few days, that will be a signal to everyone in the country that they can be detained indefinitely by stalling maneuvers on the part of the Trump administration, or any future presidential administration, unless courts get there before the government can move. It's a very deadly game in which the government is told, if you take people who are perhaps ideological opponents of the administration, immigrants, citizens, what have you - people that the government would like to get rid of the way people have been disappeared to gulags throughout history - if you want to get rid of them, here's how you do it. You just grab them quickly and disappear them. That's where we will be if he's not returned.

That’s true also of citizens. This scenario is based on avoiding due process. Without it the administration can claim the person isn’t a citizen. Due process is to make sure the claims are true. Even if Abrego Garcia is returned soon, the nasty guy is so extreme that unless he says he won’t do it again, there isn’t much solace.

The whole point about a police state isn't that it always acts to silence people or to imprison them or to torture them. It's that the sword of Damocles hangs over all of us all the time. That has an enormous chilling effect. We've seen it with law firms. We've seen it with respect to universities. And sure, it would be good if Mr. Garcia were released, but until the government begins to recognize and act in accord with the recognition that it is bound by the law and not just by its own preferences, we will all be in great danger.

On Monday morning Michel Martin of NPR spoke to Kim Wehle, professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law. Wehle said part of the issue is the Supreme Court ruling that made a distinction between “facilitating” and “effectuating” and seemed to say Abrego Garcia doesn’t need to be returned as long as the nasty guy can cite foreign policy. But, Wehle said, foreign policy does not supersede the core constitutional right to due process. About Lawrence Tribe saying not even citizens are safe... Emily Singer of Kos wrote on Monday:

In yet another disgusting display in the Oval Office, President Donald Trump said he wants to send U.S. citizens to El Salvador’s notoriously violent prison where he's currently sending immigrants without due process and against court orders. During his Monday meeting with El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, Trump was caught on camera saying that "homegrowns are next" to be sent to CECOT, the Salvadoran prison where people are housed in inhumane conditions, including without mattresses, pillows, proper nutrition, time outside, and access to family or lawyers. "The homegrowns. You gotta build about five more places. It's not big enough," Trump told Bukele, apparently referring to U.S. citizens who he wants to send to CECOT. When Trump was later asked if he would send U.S. citizens to CECOT, he didn’t hesitate to say yes. "If they are criminals, and if they hit people with baseball bats over the head, if they rape 87-year-old women, yeah. Yeah. That includes them. I'm all for it," he said.

Sending citizens to CECOT “should send shivers down the spine of every American.” In the US incarcerated people are still protected by the Constituion’s 8th Amendment prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment and the 14th Amendment requiring due process. Singer then detailed how CECOT would definitely be cruel and unusual punishment.

If Trump is refusing to comply with court orders to return immigrants from El Salvador, who’s to say he won’t send journalists or political adversaries there next?

On Tuesday Oliver Willis of Kos reported that several Democratic members of Congress are preparing to go to El Salvador to try to get the release of Abrego Garcia. Willis also reported:

Garcia is a father of three. His wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, has said she is “very scared” for his safety while he is being held in El Salvador. Garcia was granted protected status in 2011 after a U.S. court determined he “could be persecuted by gangs” if he returned to his native country.

The gangs didn’t get their chance to persecute him. Dictator Bukele and his cruel prison did. One of those Democrats wanting to go to El Salvador was Sen. Chris Van Hollen. This afternoon Mary Louise Kelly of NPR spoke to Van Hollen who was in El Salvador. He said he got about three miles of the prison when he was stopped by security and told he wasn’t allowed to go any farther. He said this trip was only to check on the health of Abrego Garcia. On Wednesday Singer reported that GOP Rep. Riley Moore of West Virginia did go to El Salvador and did get into the notorious CECOT prison. But his trip wasn’t to try to free, or even see, Abrego Garcia. This trip was so that he can appear in photos with prisoners as background. In one photo he even gave two thumbs up. Singer called this “torture porn.” Moore wrote on X, “I leave now even more determined to support President Trump’s efforts to secure our homeland.” Singer wrote:

According to the Holocaust Museum's definition, CECOT is a concentration camp. A concentration camp, the museum says, “is a site for the detention of civilians whom a regime perceives to be a security risk of some sort. What distinguishes it from a prison (in the modern sense) is that incarceration in a concentration camp is independent of any judicial sentence or even indictment, and is not subject to judicial review.” Indeed, 90% of those sent to CECOT had never been convicted of a crime, while 75% have never even been arrested, according to Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council.

This nasty guy dictator may not build concentration camps on US soil. Instead, he may pay El Salvador to do it for him. That way the disappeared lose their Constitutional rights – though by then the Constitution will have been shredded.