ArcaMax

WASHINGTON -- Salvadoran migrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia is the rope in the tug-of-war between the Trump administration and progressive Democrats who don't really want to see Washington enforce federal immigration law.

Abrego Garcia sneaked across the U.S. border around 2012 -- under President Barack Obama. Last month, President Donald Trump deported Abrego Garcia to El Salvador via a plane full of other illegal immigrants.

Abrego Garcia denies that he is a member of MS-13, but two administrative law judges and the Trump administration say otherwise.

It turns out that Abrego Garcia's removal to El Salvador was the result of an administrative error. The error, as the U.S. Supreme Court noted, was that a judicial withholding order forbade the 29-year-old's removal to El Salvador specifically. The big bench has directed the Trump White House to "facilitate" Abrego Garcia's return, but Trump and El Salvador President Nayib Bukele are not inclined to comply, although the Salvadoran government did move him out of the country's Terrorism Confinement Center.

And now, because of this error, Democrats desperate to score points with voters have hitched their wagon to Abrego Garcia.

As Rep. Yassamin Ansari, D-Ariz., proclaimed on X, "If there's not due process for Kilmar, there will be no due process for anyone." It's one of those mantras Democrats repeat so frequently that they might even believe their rhetoric.

Pro-enforcement Republicans, however, have a cause that I believe resonates more with American voters: rule of law.

Rule of law was conspicuously absent during Joe Biden's lone term. U.S. net migration grew by more than 2 million per year, with about 60% entering illegally, The New York Times reported.

So the math for many Americans feels like: 8 million to 1.

Note to Biden and fellow Democrats: When you had the chance, you forgot to change the law.

What's more, big media's efforts to paint Abrego Garcia as an otherwise rule-abiding resident have hit some speed bumps.

"We had to paint the guy as Ward Cleaver," Democratic strategist Dan Turrentine lamented on 2Way's "The Morning Meeting," which streams on YouTube.

As Fox News reported, Abrego Garcia's wife reported that her husband beat her twice in 2020.

"At this point, I am afraid to be close to him. I have multiple photos/videos of how violent he can be and all the bruises he (has) left me," wife Jennifer Vasquez alleged in 2021, according to Fox News.

But she did not continue with the case. "Things did not escalate, and I decided not to follow through with the civil court process," Vasquez, who is the mother of Abrego Garcia's child, later explained.

The feds released documents that show Abrego Garcia's brushes with the law.

The Maryland resident got on the radar of Prince George's County Police Department in 2019, when he was found loitering with known MS-13 members who possessed illicit drugs.

The Tennessee Star recently reported that in 2022 Garcia was pulled over as he was transporting seven people while driving without a valid license.

Yes, the now 29-year-old has not been convicted of any crimes. But as Mark Krikorian of the pro-enforcement Center for Immigration Studies noted, "He's an illegal alien anyway."

That alone is grounds for removal.

"The Democrats consider the border to be a ratchet, and once you get across, nobody ever has to leave," Krikorian offered.

If every individual targeted for removal gets months of costly delays, the system cannot work. I believe in due process, but where's the process in a feckless system that has operated at a glacial pace?

So now, a ratchet may work against a man who entered the country illegally as a teen but later found employment as a union sheet-metal worker and helped raise his 5-year-old son. I'm guessing he never saw this coming.

Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X.

----

Copyright 2025 Creators Syndicate, Inc.