By flouting judicial orders and ignoring due process, Trump continues to sneer at the rule of law | Editorial

Abuses abound throughout the Trump administration’s first few months, from wanton attacks on universities, law firms, federal workers, financial markets, allies, the media, and the rule of law.

But no malfeasance has been more grotesque than the imprisonment of immigrants without any due process, especially the wrongful deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

The 29-year-old father of three children, each with special needs, has been in the country for roughly 14 years, minding his business and paying taxes.

Abrego Garcia fled his native El Salvador, where his father was a police officer and his mother ran a food business, after the family faced death threats and extortion by a local gang.

Abrego Garcia entered the U.S. illegally, but in 2019, an immigration judge granted him protection from deportation because of a “well-founded fear” of gang persecution. He was issued a work permit by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and joined a union as a sheet metal apprentice.

Last month, Abrego Garcia was among the 238 Venezuelan and Salvadoran migrants deported to El Salvador without any due process. The Trump administration alleged they were all criminals — despite little evidence of criminal records or ties to gangs in most cases.

Abrego Garcia and the other deportees are being held in a high-security mega-prison in El Salvador known for its inhumane conditions, which include 65 to 70 inmates in a cell with no visitation, recreation, education, or enough bunks for everyone.

The Trump administration is paying El Salvador $6 million to house the deportees who have been effectively disappeared, as if we now live under a military dictatorship.

Indeed, the payment itself is likely a violation of human rights law. That is just one of the legal abuses Donald Trump has perpetrated since his return to office.

The Trump administration disobeyed a federal judge’s order to turn around the planes carrying the migrants to El Salvador.

The administration later admitted Abrego Garcia was wrongly deported due to an “administrative error.” Since then, Trump and his loyalists have played word games in court, ignored judicial orders, lied in public, and incredulously claimed they have no power to retrieve Abrego Garcia from the prison where they paid to send him.

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lower court judge’s order that the administration “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States, but nothing has been done.

Instead, Trump debased the Oval Office by hosting El Salvador’s former nightclub operator turned strongman president, Nayib Bukele, for a sham performance in which they both claimed to be powerless to comply with the courts and return Abrego Garcia. Several of Trump’s loyal, toady cabinet members played court jesters by adding to the misinformation.

It was an absurd display of Kabuki theater that further diminished the United States’ global leadership and moral authority in the months since the twice-impeached, convicted criminal narrowly returned to power.

A federal judge said he found probable cause to hold the Trump administration in criminal contempt for ignoring his orders to turn around the planes carrying deportees to El Salvador.

U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg said he would hold contempt hearings regarding the administration’s failure to allow the migrants to challenge their deportation. But don’t look for the U.S. Justice Department to prosecute the matter, since it has lost its independence under Trump.

Boasberg, a conservative appointed by President George W. Bush, said he could appoint another attorney if the Justice Department fails to act. That will likely set off more rounds of legal tangling as Trump plays his favorite game of delay, delay, delay, while attacking the judge whom he called a “radical left lunatic” who should be “impeached.”

Meanwhile, the federal judge overseeing Abrego Garcia’s case ordered Trump administration officials to give sworn testimony explaining why nothing has been done to facilitate his return.

“The Supreme Court has spoken,” U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis said.

But Trump — emboldened by the Supreme Court ruling last year that found he was largely above the law — is not listening.

During his Oval Office meeting, Trump urged Bukele to build five more mega-prisons because he was exploring sending U.S. citizens to El Salvador.

“The homegrowns are next,” Trump said.

As the Republicans in Congress remained quiet, and Trump’s MAGA supporters cheered, a variation of Martin Niemöller’s lament about his early complicity in Nazism could be heard in the distance.

First they came for …