The Abduction of Abrego Garcia from the USA into El Salvador Incarceration
Top: Photograph first published in this form at “Law Dork”
Introduction
The pressure of fast-moving events as we race down to a full form of a fascist state in the USA – is difficult to keep up with. However, some articles need not be written anew, when a good description is already given.
Heather Cox Richardson is far from being a Marxist. Indeed, she has often been an ardent shill for the Democratic Party (USA). Nonetheless, she is also an acute observer of the Trump lies and manoeuvres. Some more doctrinaire and sectarian Marxists cannot acknowledge that she might represent a progressive wing of academics. We believe this is a mistake. She also cites Timothy Snyder. We need no reminders that Snyder is a dangerous enemy of Marxist-Leninists on the history of the USSR. However, on the matter of Trump 2, he has something to say that we agree with.
Hence – we have no hesitation in reprinting this particular issue of her “Letters From An American”. She is an American professor of history at Boston College and specialises in the American Civil War period. In 2019, she began publishing a daily blog which she called “Letters from an American”, which has a wide following.
Richardson describes yesterday’s events in the White House. The newly inaugurated Trump 2 met with the self-described ‘coolest dictator’ President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele. Befitting his ‘coolness’ Bukele was as dressed down as had been President Zelensky of Ukraine. But unlike Zelensky who was humiliated for his dress-code and rebuked for his politics, Bukele was welcomed and treated as Trump’s “teenage son”.
These meetings in the White House of Trump and Cabinet with selected dignitaries, have become carefully staged events. Actually they can only be described as a modern form of ‘levee’ or ‘lever’:
“Emperor Charlemagne’s practice, when he was dressing and putting on his shoes, (was) to invite his friends to come in and, in case of a dispute brought to his attention, “he would order the disputants to be brought in there and then, hear the case as if he were sitting in tribunal and pronounce a judgement. . . By the second half of the sixteenth century, it had become a formal event, requiring invitation. In 1563, Catherine de’ Medici wrote in advice to her son, the King of France, to do as his father (Henry II) had done and uphold the practice of lever. Catherine describes that Henry II allowed his subjects, from nobles to household servants, to come in while he dressed. She states this pleased his subjects and improved their opinion of him.
This practice was raised to a ceremonial custom at the court of King Louis XIV.”
Wikipedia
This modern ape-ing of a long-dead custom by Trump, accurately reflects his self-aggrandizement.
On this particular occasion, it was of course designed to further mock the judiciary and the self-lamed Supreme Court. We have discussed elements of this debased pinnacle of the USA judiciary – including the case of Abrego Garcia – at “Theses on Trump 2 and the USA Ruling Class” MLRG.online 14 April, 2025.
Richardson’s piece reproduced here, is specifically about the ramifications of the illegal deportation of Abrego Garcia from the USA to the dungeons of El Savador’s President. The implications of all this are drawn out by Heather Cox Richardson as follows (Letters April 14, 2025) The underlying intent of the USA government is to extend this process to any dissenters in the USA whether of American citizenship or not. This Trumpian intent is made clear by Richardson.
Extract From “Letters of An American” April 14th, 2025
“Today, U.S. President Donald J. Trump met in the Oval Office with the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, along with a number of Cabinet members and White House staff, who answered questions for the press. The meeting appeared to be as staged as Trump’s February meeting with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky, designed to send a message. At the meeting, Trump and Bukele, who is clearly doing Trump’s bidding, announced they would not bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia home, defying the U.S. Supreme Court.
Bukele was livestreaming the event on his official X account and wearing a lapel microphone as he and Trump walked into the Oval Office, so Trump’s pre-meeting private comments were audible in the video Bukele posted.
“We want to do homegrown criminals next…. The homegrowns.”
Trump told Bukele. “You gotta build about five more places.”
Bukele appeared to answer, “Yeah, we’ve got space.”
“All right,” Trump replied.
Rather than being appalled, the people in the room—including Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Attorney General Pam Bondi—erupted in laughter.
At the meeting, it was clear that Trump’s team has cooked up a plan to leave Abrego Garcia without legal recourse to his freedom, a plan that looks much like Trump’s past abuses of the legal system. The White House says the U.S. has no jurisdiction over El Salvador, while Bukele says he has no authority to release a “terrorist” into the U.S. (Abrego Garcia maintains a full-time job, is married to a U.S. citizen, has three children, and has never been charged or convicted of anything.) No one can make Trump arrange for Abrego Garcia’s release, the administration says, because the Constitution gives the president control over foreign affairs.
Marcy Wheeler of ‘Empty Wheel’ noted that:
“All the people who should be submitting sworn declarations before [U.S. District Court] Judge Paula Xinis made comments not burdened by oaths or the risk of contempt, rehearsed comments for the cameras.”
They falsely claimed that a court had ruled Abrego Garcia was a terrorist and insisted the whole case was about the president’s power to control foreign affairs.
As NPR’s Steven Inskeep put it:
“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 April 6, Judge Xinis wrote that:
“there were no legal grounds whatsoever for [Abrego Garcia’s] arrest, detention, or removal.… Rather, his detention appears wholly lawless.” It is “a clear constitutional violation.”
The Supreme Court agreed with Xinis that Abrego Garcia had been illegally removed from the U.S. and must be returned, but warned the judge to be careful of the president’s power over foreign affairs.
At the Oval Office meeting, when Trump asked what the Supreme Court ruled, deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller said it had ruled “9–0…in our favor,” claiming:
“the Supreme Court said that the district court order was unlawful and its main components were reversed 9–0 unanimously.”
Legal analyst Chris Geidner of ‘Law Dork‘ called Miller’s statement “disgusting, lying propaganda.”
He also noted that when the administration filed its required declaration about Abrego Garcia’s case today, it included a link to the Oval Office meeting, thus submitting Miller’s lies about its decision directly to the Supreme Court. Geidner wished the administration’s lawyers: “Good luck there…!”
Legal analyst Harry Litman of ‘Talking Feds‘ wrote:
“What we all just witnessed had all the earmarks of a criminal conspiracy to deprive Abrego-Garcia of his constitutional rights, as well as an impeachable offense. The fraud scheme was a phony agreement engineered by the US to have Bukele say he lacks power to return Abrego Garcia and he won’t do it.”
As Adam Serwer wrote today in ‘The Atlantic’, The
“rhetorical game the administration is playing, where it pretends it lacks the power to ask for Abrego Garcia to be returned while Bukele pretends he doesn’t have the power to return him, is an expression of obvious contempt for the Supreme Court—and for the rule of law.”
Serwer notes that if the administration actually thought there was enough evidence to convict these men, it could have let the U.S. legal process play out. But Geidner of ‘Law Dork’ noted that Trump’s declaration this morning that he wanted to deport “homegrown criminals” suggests that the plan all along has been to be able to get rid of U.S. citizens by creating a “Schroedinger’s box” (Our emphasis -ed) where anyone can be sent but where once they are there the U.S. cannot get them back because they are “in the custody of a foreign sovereign.”
“If they can get Abrego Garcia out of the box,” Geidner writes, “the plan does not work.”
On August 12, 2024, in a discussion on billionaire Elon Musk’s X of what Trump insisted were caravans coming across the southern border of the U.S., Trump told Musk that other countries were doing something “brilliant” by sending streams of people out of their country:
“You know the caravans are coming in and…who’s doing this are the heads of the countries. And you would be doing it and so would I, and everyone would say ‘oh what a terrible thing to say.’”
He continued:
“The fact is, it’s brilliant for them because they’re taking all of their bad people, really bad people and—I hate to say this—the reason the numbers are much bigger than you would think is they’re also taking their nonproductive people. Now these aren’t people that will kill you… but these are people that are nonproductive. They are just not productive, I mean, for whatever reason. They’re not workers or they don’t want to work, or whatever, and these countries are getting rid of nonproductive people in the caravans… and they’re also getting rid of their murderers and their drug dealers and the people that are really brutal people….”
Scholar of authoritarianism Timothy Snyder explained the larger picture: “On the White House’s theory, if they abduct you, get you on a helicopter, get to international waters, shoot you in the head, and drop your corpse into the ocean, that is legal, because it is the conduct of foreign affairs.” He compared it to the Nazis’ practice of pushing Jews into statelessness because “[i]t is easier to move people away from law than it is to move law away from people. Almost all of the killing took place in artificially created stateless zones.”
Yesterday, Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) requested a meeting with Bukele today “to discuss the illegal detention of my constituent, Kilmar Abrego Garcia.” He said that he would travel to El Salvador this week if Abrego Garcia “is not home by midweek.”
Judge Xinis has set the next hearing in Abrego Garcia’s case for tomorrow, April 15, at 4:00 p.m.”
Find full letter at: 14 April, 2025; “Letters From An American” here.
