The Process Due Illegals is Deportation

Victor Joecks on Apr 29, 2025

If you break a system, you can't be upset when fixing that system requires a solution that's outside the normal operation of the system.

Congressional Democrats continue to demand the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to America. In March, the Trump administration deported him to El Salvador. Congressional Democrats, including Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., have trekked down to El Salvador to check on him.

Democrats and the propaganda press are making two points about Abrego Garcia. The first is that he's a sympathetic character. CNN and MSNBC called him a "Maryland man" or something similar hundreds of times. The implication is that President Donald Trump is deporting normal people -- and that you should be afraid he'll do the same thing to you.

But Abrego Garcia isn't a random individual. He's an illegal immigrant from El Salvador who came here more than a decade ago. In 2019, Maryland police had evidence that he was an "active member of MS-13."

An immigration judge found he was "a verified member of MS-13." In 2019, the Board of Immigration Appeals upheld that finding. That's concerning because MS-13 is a designated foreign terrorist organization. In 2021, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, his wife, sought a temporary protective order against him. She accused him of punching and bruising her.

Some Democrats have started to realize this is an unwise proposition.

"I am not defending the man. I'm defending the rights of this man to due process," Van Hollen told ABC News recently. "And the Trump administration has admitted in court that he was wrongfully detained and wrongfully deported. My mission and my purpose is to make sure that we uphold the rule of law, because if we take it away from him, we do jeopardize it for everybody else."

This second argument is much stronger, but it's still flawed. For one, Van Hollen and others make it sound like Abrego Garcia never had his day in court. As referenced above, he did. In 2019, a different immigration judge gave him a "withholding of removal" over his claim that he'd face gang violence in El Salvador. The United States was still allowed to deport him to any other country that would take him.

Make sure you understand this: The legal controversy is over which country Abrego Garcia was deported to, but the U.S. government had every right to deport him.

In its initial legal filings, the Trump administration said an "administrative error" led to his removal to El Salvador. The Trump administration later said it was justified in sending him there because his MS-13 connection trumped the withholding order.

In early April, the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration is required to "facilitate" his release from El Salvador. How proactive the high court expects that facilitation to be is unclear.

Step back and see the bigger picture. The rule of law matters greatly. But former President Joe Biden didn't respect the rule of law when he threw the border open and welcomed in millions of illegal immigrants. His administration even flew many of them into the interior of the country. His lawlessness overwhelmed the legal system with a surge of illegal immigrants.

But now the left insists on careful adherence to the rule of law. If successful, that will prevent Trump from deporting all the illegal aliens Biden let in by ignoring the law. This is like a football team giving itself 14 points for a touchdown but insisting its opponent's scores are only worth seven points because that's what the rules state.

The process due illegal immigrants is deportation. If you don't like how the Trump administration is going about it, propose a viable alternative. Otherwise, what you're supporting isn't the rule of law, but a de facto judicial amnesty.

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Victor Joecks is a columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Email him at vjoecks@reviewjournal.com or follow @victorjoecks on X. To find out more about Victor Joecks and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the

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