Why Facebook Grandpa is Wrong About Kilmar Abrego Garcia

Let's get this straight, once and for all.

The Trump Regime Administration has just celebrated its first 100 days in office. Unbelievably, it's this president's second first 100 days in office, and wow: If we thought he made a splash the first time, we hadn't seen anything yet.

And I fear we still haven't, given the approximately 3.75 years that remain of this term. So far, we’ve weathered Trump’s harebrained economic policies, his scorched-earth slashing of signature American programs at home and abroad, like Americorps and USAID (which by itself may constitute a death sentence by malaria for thousands of poverty-stricken Africans), pulling research funding from the nation's most esteemed universities if they allow peaceful anti-Israel protest, and too many other shenanigans to name. But there's one single move that has truly horrified the blue part of the country, and it has continued to inspire fear and real outrage for nearly half of those 100 days - and counting.

I refer to the illegal deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

Abrego Garcia, born 1995, is from El Salvador. And yes, he came to the United States illegally in 2012, when he was just 16 years old, after being targeted for conscription by local gangs. Heartbreakingly, he was the second of his parents’ children to be secreted out of the country and into the presumed safety of the US when his mother's business was extorted by the local Barrio 18 gang, with the threat of her sons’ conscription into the gang if she would not comply with their demands for money.

The teenage Kilmar made his way northeast to Maryland to live with his brother, Cesar, the first son to be spirited away from the danger of the Salvadoran gang. In Maryland, Kilmar set up a life, and until March, he had lived in Maryland since 2012 without being convicted of any crime.

Correct: not even gang membership.

But yes, he's had legal trouble. In 2019, Abrego Garcia was arrested with other Latino men standing outside a Home Depot, hoping to pick up day-labor gigs, as is common. He was accused of being a member of the gang MS-13, with the proof thereof supposedly being his tattoos, his Chicago Bulls hat, and the word of a “past and proven reliable confidential source” who claimed that Abrego Garcia held the rank of “chequeo" within the gang. It turns out that MS-13 has no “chequeo" rank, however, and in other gangs that do use the concept, it’s applied to a potential recruit who is not yet a gang member.

So all of this threw Abrego Garcia's status into turmoil. After a couple of immigration bearings, the wheels of deportation were starting to turn. In response, the young man filed for both asylum, which he was too late to receive, as well as for “withholding of removal" status, presenting evidence to an immigration court that he would be in particular, specific danger if sent back to El Salvador. In this, Abrego Garcia was successful. The status was granted, and he was released from custody to resume his life. Later in 2019, he became a father when his wife, Jennifer Sura, delivered their baby.

The young family

Two other legal encounters - one related to a protective order against him by his wife (which she subsequently dropped, saying they had worked out their disagreement as a family) and another related to speeding and swerving out of his lane - failed to see Abrego Garcia charged with anything. The matters were dropped, and he seems to have focused on his family and furthering his career.

And then, in a 2025 "administrative error,” he was deported to an El Salvadoran megaprison that is little better than a gulag.

One of the Holocaust’s most notorious concentration camps - Dachau - compared to the CECOT prison Kilmar Abrego Garcia is currently rotting jn

This despite his very clear "withholding of removal” status. In fact, Abrego Garcia's status technically allows him to be deported anywhere except to El Salvador, although most "withholding of removal” people stay in the US indefinitely, legally working and residing here - but, crucially, without a green-card path to citizenship - as long as they check in with ICE at appointed times each year, which Abrego Garcia did.

So technically, the government had the right to deport him to, say, Uzbekistan or Vanuatu or Madagascar or France - anywhere except the place ICE had ruled in a hearing that he'd be in special danger: his birthplace of El Salvador.

Okay, let's stop for a moment.

If you are not sympathetic to this unfortunate “administrative error" that no one feels the need to correct, despite the overwhelmingly Republican SCOTUS voting 9-0 that the administration must “facilitate" his return, you are likely thinking a few things after reading this short synopsis. Let me guess:

"But he came here illegally in the first place!”

“But they had an informant saying he was in MS-13!"

“But he beat his wife! That's the kind of person the Dems want to take care of, instead of law-abiding American citizens!”

Sigh.

Here's the thing: None of that matters.

Deporting him would have meant accusing him of and finding him guilty of a new crime. Remember, the fact that he came here illegally at 16 was already dealt with in the issuing of the "withholding of removal” status.

Have you heard the phrase "innocent until proven guilty?” That phrase comes from the bedrock of American legal theory: the procedure known as "due process.”

Screen-cap courtesy of factcheck.org

Did you know that if you're standing on American soil, you're entitled to due process? It's true. You could be a Canadian, sneaking through the Yukon and into Alaska, and be entitled to due process.

You could be a Cuban, making for the Florida Keys by boat. You could be an eccentric Bulgarian who has hired a plane to fly you to and then let you skydive out and land in Ohio: You'd still be entitled to due process. If you had to do it the very hard way, you could physically journey from Mexico or even Central America and enter through Organ Pipe Cactus National Park in Arizona. You'd still be entitled to due process (and could probably get your hands on some tweezers and Neosporin, too).

Good Lord, you could fly from Sweden to take a Caribbean cruise, fall off the ship, and wash up in Puerto Rico. You’d find yourself both wet and entitled to due process.

I've heard so many grown-ass adults - people with degrees! People who are in charge of the safety of small children! - insist petulantly that there is no presumption of due process for a person who has immigrated illegally. And folks, that is just not true. It terrifies me that so many people think it is.

Speaking of grown-ass adults who are wildly misinformed about the most basic of concepts, I know of one 78-year-old Facebook Grandpa who thought that the Arial-typeface characters, “M S 1 3," which his own toadies Photoshopped onto a picture of Abrego Garcia's knuckles, were actually part of the tattoo.

He's the damn president. And he brought his own interview to a staggering, mortifying halt insisting upon the veracity of the obviously-faked image several times, even as the reporter repeatedly tried to help him save face.

Let the

The Bulwark

‘s Tim Miller show you how much confidence you should have in US judgment and leadership at the executive level. Personally, I think this video is worth at least two of Biden's "We finally beat Medicare!” gaffes:

Anyway. The correct take on the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia - and anyone else on US soil - is that he could be alleged to be a murderer and he'd still be entitled to a trial in which he could attempt to show that the government's accusations are incorrect.

He could be suspected of being DB Cooper and he'd still be entitled to a fair trial.

He could be thought to know where Jimmy Hoffa is buried and he'd still be entitled to a fair trial.

There could be 25 people willing to swear that he was the damn Zodiac Killer, and he'd still be entitled to a fair trial!

(And wow, I'm really dating myself here, so I'm going to move away from this line of inquiry right now.)

But please, let us all see, let us all grasp that no one in the United States is legally considered a criminal until an apparently illegal act occurs, is brought to police attention, charges are filed, a trial is conducted, and the person is found guilty. You can't just point and shriek, “He's a criminal!" before the trial and expect that everyone will just decide to skip the hassle of proving it. That's not how it works here.

And do people understand that it’s designed not to work so unfairly here? Why do they think people from all over the world have scrambled to get to America in times of fear and trouble? It's not just the great siren call of capitalism.

Not for nothing, you know, but if we allow this to happen, someone could accuse us.

And we would be left with no recourse. We might say, "No, I'm not!” but it wouldn't matter. No one would listen. We’d just get stashed in some detention center, then herded onto a plane bound for a prison in some other country, where no one actually serves a term. No one comes out alive: they stay there until they die.

This is happening.

It's happening now.

If you don't join your voice to the chorus insisting that this treatment stop, it could happen to you.