If Garcia loses, so do we all
The media coverage has been considerable, so I'll state the facts briefly:
On March 12, Kilmar Ábrego Garcia was driving his five-year-old son home when we was stopped and arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Garcia was in the country legally. He was, nevertheless, shipped to a prison in El Salvador. The Trump administration has admitted that he was illegally detained and should not have been sent to prison. The courts have ordered him returned. Trump has ignored those orders.
The Cato Institute is a conservative think tank with an interest in Constitutional and legal issues. Walter Olson (no relation) is a Cato senior fellow who writes extensively on the law, particularly on tort reform, and who edited the magazine Regulation with Antonin Scalia.
Olson has written a superb piece on the Garcia case. I urge you to read it.
Trump is using this case to test the range of his Presidential powers.
Can he, unilaterally, order the detention and expulsion of people in the US legally? Can he refuse due process?
If he succeeds in his effort to keep Garcia in prison in El Salvador, the answer is yes. Garcia is brown and was born elsewhere, but that should not console you. "Unilaterally" and "without due process" mean that I, you, the people you love are at exactly the same risk. Garcia had obeyed the law, was never allowed to speak to an attorney, was never brought before a judge. He was shipped to an offshore gulag.
Can he jam the wheels of American justice by sending people out of the country?
If merely crossing the border erases the Bill of Rights, then the founders' promises were empty all along.
Can he ignore the clear direction of the courts?
The Roberts court has squirmed to avoid a direct confrontation with the President. That confrontation must come, now. I am deeply dismayed that I can't predict how it will rule. The letter and intent of the Constitution is clear. Even if the Supreme Court rules in favor of Garcia and our rights, it is far from clear that the Trump administration will obey.
If the answers to the questions above are "yes," then Trump is a dictator and a fascist, because those are the powers of dictators and fascists. They are not the powers of a President, checked and balanced by the Congress and the judiciary.
I have written before that we must secure our borders. But we must do that as Americans, using the strength of our legal system, protecting our rights as the Constitution promises and demands.