Abrego Garcia case gets more absurd as his own lawyers ask he be kept in jail

One of my law school professors once said succinctly, “The law is supposed to make sense.” Well, the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case certainly defies this common logic standard. Under capitalist politics, state power trumps its own so-called law. As one former federal prosecutor interviewed for this article said, “This crazy case is getting even crazier.”

On Wednesday, June 25, U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes held a hearing to set conditions of release for Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man illegally deported to El Salvador by the Trump administration in March. The government was ordered to bring him back to the U.S. by the Supreme Court in April,  and it eventually did so in early June.

The June 25 hearing followed in the wake of an earlier order by Holmes on June 22 denying the government’s motion to detain Abrego Garcia on allegations of human smuggling. 

Holmes found the charges to be based on “insufficient evidence,” noting particularly that parts of the Trump administration’s claims rested on double and triple hearsay. The federal prosecutors immediately filed a notice to appeal the decision.

On June 27, the proceedings took an even more absurd turn. Abrego Garcia was ordered released but then kept in detention instead—by the request of his own attorneys. 

He has been illegally detained and deported once already, but he now faces another illegal deportation, as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has threatened to immediately seize Abrego Garcia again the moment he is released and deport him to a third country. That’s what prompted his lawyers to ask that he not yet be freed.

“The irony of this request is not lost on anyone,” his attorneys said on Friday.

On Wednesday, they had actually “won” in court, having convinced Holmes that their client did not represent a flight risk and should be set free to await trial on the government’s human trafficking charges.

Holmes decided Abrego Garcia would be released on his own recognizance and that there was no cash bail required.

The conditions of release included that Abrego Garcia be in no violation of federal or state laws, actively seek employment, surrender his passport, reside with his brother, not possess a firearm, submit to random drug testing, and be on home detention.

That’s why those same attorneys’ request that Abrego Garcia be kept in jail seemed so absurd, but the actual absurdity is illustrated by the government’s dueling claims.

One part of the executive branch, ICE, says it will deport him the moment it gets its hands on him, while another part of the executive branch, the Department of Justice (DOJ), says it will bring him to trial. 

“Because DOJ has made directly contradictory statements on this issue in the last 18 hours, and because we cannot put any faith in any representation made on this issue by the DOJ, we respectfully request to delay the issuance of the release order,” Abrego Garcia’s attorneys wrote in their motion.

They were essentially put in the position of asking the court to keep their client behind bars.

In light of the prosecutors’ appeal, U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw has set a hearing on July 16 to decide whether to overturn Holmes’ release rulings of June 22.

What makes this legal exercise not make sense is that Abrego Garcia has already been illegally deported. Is he to be illegally deported again? Already, a federal prosecutor in Maryland, where Abrego Garcia resided before the illegal deportation, has said the federal government plans to deport him when he is released from jail in Tennessee. 

This would be a double illegal deportation scenario. On what legal authority would another illegal deportation be based?

Abrego Garcia’s criminal attorneys have filed emergency motions to return him to Maryland while he fights prosecution in Tennessee. 

In the meantime, Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, has bombastically claimed Abrego Garcia “will never go free on American soil,” the ongoing mantra of the Trump administration’s attorneys.

This case has so many moving parts that are in a state of constant flux. There are so many absurdities that need to be addressed, but are left hanging by the legal system and the news media. Suffice it to say that the Trump attorneys are so inept that they would be hard pressed to run a bingo parlor (other legal analysts have characterized them as amateurish); needless to say, they are grossly ill-equipped to practice law.

The crux of the matter is that the DOJ and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, are at odds in the case. While the DOJ wants to prosecute Abrego Garcia for alleged human smuggling, the DHS wants to deport him for allegedly being in the country illegally upon his release pending trial. T

To top it all off, for clarification, it’s already been determined that Abrego Garcia was actually in the U.S. legally at the time of his deportation. In March 2019, he was arrested while looking for work at a Home Depot in Maryland. In October that year, an immigration judge ruled that Abrego Garcia could not be deported back to El Salvador because he faced a real fear of persecution from gangs. 

The judge allowed him to stay in the U.S. under the status of “withholding of removal,” and he subsequently obtained a work permit. Therefore, he was legally in the United States at the time of his illegal deportation to El Salvador. Hence, a second deportation as planned by ICE would likewise be illegal.

This is all about power and the megalomania of Trump and his gang of lawless cohorts. They want to show the country and the world that their rule in the United States is supreme, irrespective of the so-called rule of law. This is just another means of solidifying the dictatorship of the criminal Trump.

As with all op-eds published by People’s World, the views reflected here are those of the author.

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