Of Course, America Can Deport People. But It Has To Follow the Rules.

on Apr 15, 2025

SAN DIEGO -- President Donald Trump is giving deportations a bad name. In fact -- in a workaround intended to defy the Supreme Court -- Trump has turned one case into an international incident.

Trump is getting help from Attorney General Pam Bondi and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller. The enablers are twisting the law into pretzels and mangling the English language to cover up the administration's mishaps, misdeeds and misbehavior.

You will find all of these things in the maddening case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old Maryland man who was last month wrongly deported to El Salvador by the Trump administration. Without due process, the husband and father of three was sent to a notorious Salvadoran prison where he could remain for the rest of his life. Abrego Garcia was in the United States legally and was incorrectly identified as a member of the Salvadoran gang MS-13.

Three different Trump administration officials -- Immigration and Customs Enforcement official Robert Cerna, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer and federal prosecutor Erez Reuveni, who handled the case -- all admitted that Abrego Garcia was wrongly deported to his native country of El Salvador due to an "administrative error."

And the Supreme Court, in a rare 9-0 ruling, ordered that the administration return Abrego Garcia to the United States.

Reuveni was fired by Bondi for being disloyal and going off script. He was also made into a scapegoat by Miller who, in a post on X, called him "a saboteur, a Democrat."

The story took a bizarre twist when, during a recent visit to the White House, President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador made clear that he would do Trump's dirty work by refusing to return Abrego Garcia. Describing the deportee as a "terrorist," Bukele mocked the idea that he would "smuggle" such a person into the United States.

"Of course I'm not going to do it," Mr. Bukele said.

Let's get a few things cleared up.

First, if you are in the country illegally -- either because you crossed a border without authorization or overstayed a visa -- you are 100% deportable. There is nothing inherently wrong with the concept of the United States forcibly removing from its soil someone who shouldn't be here in the first place and thus doesn't have the legal right to remain here. Like any other country, the United States has the right -- indeed, the responsibility -- to preserve its national sovereignty by controlling its borders and deciding who may enter legally.

Yet having said all that, ICE makes mistakes all the time. U.S. immigration officials frequently remove people they shouldn't while failing to remove other people who ought to be removed. Besides, not everyone who can be deported should be deported. Discretion is an essential part of any branch of law enforcement. With regard to immigration enforcement, it needs to be used more carefully than it has been in the past.

Simply put, we deport people because those who come to this country need to follow established rules about how to get here. That works both ways. When U.S. immigration officials remove people, they also must follow established rules about how to get them out of here.

Meanwhile, oddly enough, the part of the narrative that administration officials seem most determined to dispute is that Abrego Garcia is a human being who deserves respect, decency and fair treatment.

Annoyed by how media is referring to Abrego Garcia, Miller wrote in a post on X: "He's not a 'Maryland man.' He's an illegal alien MS-13 terrorist from El Salvador. The corporate media wants so badly for our country to be flooded with foreign criminals."

Staying on message, Bondi wrote on X: "This is not a 'Maryland man' this is an illegal alien from El Salvador whom two judges have ruled is part of MS-13, a foreign terrorist organization. El Salvador doesn't want to give him back--nor do we want him back."

I immediately flashed back to grainy black-and-white photos I've seen in U.S. history books. Black men marching for civil rights in the South during the 1960s held signs that read simply: "I AM A MAN."

That's how sick America used to be. It had a raging fever that was so strong that some people felt the need to loudly declare what should have been obvious -- that they were men, that they were human.

Now, as a result of the tyrannical impulses of the Trump administration, the fever is back.

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To find out more about Ruben Navarrette and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.