The Lawlessness Is the Point
Except Abrego Garcia did have the legal right to be here, and he is not a “convicted MS-13 gang member.” As explained below, the government accused him of being in MS-13, but that charge was ultimately not settled as a criminal matter, and an immigration judge subsequently granted him protected legal status, as he’d face harm if returned home. He was here lawfully.
Let us gently suggest that these facts don’t matter to Vance in the least. This is not meant glibly: For Vance, that is the case as a matter of principle. He is nakedly asserting the power to decree Abrego Garcia a criminal subject to expulsion, even if—or especially if—the facts show the contrary. The administration is doing this on many fronts, from this case to the efforts to remove foreign students to the deportations of Venezuelans to a Salvadoran prison.
The Abrego Garcia matter illustrates the point. As The Atlantic’s Nick Miroff details, Abrego Garcia is the husband of a U.S. citizen and has a U.S. citizen child with autism, according to his lawyer. He was detained by ICE in 2019 in Maryland, where he lived, and at the time, an associate claimed he was in MS-13, but the police didn’t believe it and didn’t identify him that way, Miroff reports.