THURSDAY, APRIL 17, 2025
Here's what Judge Kessler said: Did Pam Bondi shock the world by making an accurate statement?
We've been kicking that question around for the past several days. The statement was made at Monday's Oval Office event. We refer to the highlighted statement:
REPORTER (4/14/25): President Trump, do you plan to ask President Bukele to help return the man who your administration says was mistakenly deported?
TRUMP: Which one is it?
REPORTER: The man who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador?
TRUMP: Well, let me ask. Pam, would you answer that question?
BONDI: Sure, President. First, and foremost, he was illegally in our country. He had been illegally in our country. And in 2019, two courts—an immigration court and an appellate immigration court—ruled that he was a member of MS-13 and he was illegally in our country.
In Tuesday afternoon's report, we said a person could quibble about the word "ruled." But we said we'd have to score the highlighted statement as being basically accurate.
In yesterday afternoon's report, we said we've seen a lot of Blue American orgs who seemed to be possibly finessing or fudging the actual facts to which Bondi referred. We cited a New York Times news report as an example.
As of today, more claims have surfaced about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the erroneously deported person in question. For today, let's look at the court cases to which Bondi was presumably referring.
Tomorrow, we'll try to look at the new reports which seem to have surfaced. Also, we'll try to show you examples of what we'd be inclined to call Blue American fudging / finessing.
For today, Say what? According to Bondi, "two courts—an immigration court and an appellate immigration court—ruled that [Abrego Garcia] was a member of MS-13" back in 2019?
Here's a link to the first immigration hearing, from April 2019. Rightly or wrongly—correctly or otherwise—here's what that first immigration judge said:
BOND MEMORANDUM
[...]
The DHS opposed the Respondent's request for bond. The DHS asserted that the Respondent is a verified gang member. The Respondent was arrested in the company of other ranking gang members and was confirmed to be a ranking member of the MS-13 gang by a proven and reliable source.
[...]
After considering the information provided by both parties, the Court concluded that no bond was appropriate in this matter. The Court first reasoned that the Respondent failed to meet his burden of demonstrating that his release from custody would not pose a danger to others, as the evidence shows that he is a verified member of MS-13...The Respondent contends that the Form 1-213 in his case erroneously states that he was detained in connection to a murder investigation. He also claims that the 1-213 is internally contradicts itself as to whether the Respondent fears returning to El Salvador. The reason for the Respondent's arrest given on his Form 1-213 does appear at odds with the Gang Field Interview Sheet, which states that the Respondent was approached because he and others were loitering outside of a Home Depot. Regardless, the determination that the Respondent is a gang member appears to be trustworthy and is supported by other evidence in the record, namely, information contained in the Gang Field Interview Sheet. Although the Court is reluctant to give evidentiary weight to the Respondent's clothing as an indication of gang affiliation, the fact that a "past, proven, and reliable source of information" verified the Respondent's gang membership, rank, and gang name is sufficient to support that the Respondent is a gang member, and the Respondent has failed to present evidence to rebut that assertion.
[...]
Elizabeth A. Kessler
Immigration Judge
"The evidence shows that he is a verified member of MS-13." Rightly or wrongly, correctly or otherwise, that's what Judge Kessler "ruled."
The fact that Judge Kessler made that assessment doesn't prove that her assessment was accurate. But it's a basic part of the official record in this particular case.
In December of that year, a different immigration judge presided over an appeal of Judge Kessler's ruling. Presumably, that's the second judge (or "court") to whom Bondi referred. Here's part of what that second judge said:
IN BOND PROCEEDINGS
APPEAL
[...]
The respondent argues that the Immigration Judge clearly erred in determining that he is a verified member of MS-13 because there is no reliable evidence in the record to support such a finding. In this regard, the respondent asserts that a Prince George's County Police Department Gang Field Interview Sheet ("GFIS") is based on hearsay relayed by a confidential source (Exh. 4). The respondent also claims that he presented sufficient evidence to rebut the allegation that he is affiliated with MS-13, including character references and criminal records showing that he has only been charged with traffic offenses. Therefore, the respondent contends that the Immigration Judge erroneously ruled that he did not show that he is not a danger to the community.
We adopt and affirm the Immigration Judge's danger ruling...Notwithstanding the respondent's challenges to the reliability of the GFIS, the Immigration Judge appropriately considered allegations of gang affiliation against the respondent in determining that he has not demonstrated that he is not a danger to property or persons.
[...]
Accordingly, the following order is entered.
ORDER: The appeal is dismissed.
Presumably, Bondi is saying that this should counts as a second ruling. Apparently in accord with the nature of an appeal, that's a more circuitous assessment concerning the question of gang membership (and "danger to the community").
You may be inclined to insist that everything about this is wrong, completely wrong. Stating the obvious, any assessment by any judge can, in fact, be wrong.
That said, these court hearings are a basic part of this case. In our view, Bondi's statement was amazingly accurate, especially if we're grading on what we'd call "the Bondi curve."
Kessler flatly "ruled" that Abrego Garcia was, in fact, a member of MS-13. That ruling may not have been accurate.
Court rulings routinely turn out to be inaccurate! But so it sometimes goes with the procedures described as "due process."
It's also always possible that Kessler's assessment was accurate. On our own, we have no way of knowing. The same is true of almost everyone else.
Rightly or wrongly, Kessler ruled that Abrego Garcia actually was a gang member. The (unnamed) judge who heard the appeal basically went with her judgment.
We have no way of knowing whether her assessment was accurate. But it is a basic part of the record, and this is one of the only times we've ever seen Bondi make a statement which came so close to being accurate.
(We're going all the way back to her days as a frequent guest on Fox News Channel programs. That was back in the days before she became Florida's attorney general.)
Have journalists in Blue America perhaps been fudging these facts a tad? Rightly or wrongly, we've gained that impression along the way.
It's "human, all too human" nature to put one's thumb on the scale at times like these. Tomorrow, we'll assess some new developments in this profoundly unfortunate matter.
Dems are portraying Garcia as a paragon, just as they did for Trayvon Martin and George Floyd. All three may have been very wrongly treated, but they were not estimable individuals.
ReplyDeleteGarcia did not know Trayvon Martin or George Floyd, so your attempt to tar him via guilt by association is ridiculous. We Democrats do not know Garcia personally, but to date there has been no evidence presented that he has committed any crimes, especially not the ones being manufactured to damage his reputation and justify his deportation in violation of an order of withdrawal of removal. The Supreme Court decided that 9 to 0.
DeleteThis is the kind of thing I was talking about. Bob described evidence right here in his post. How can you say there is no evidence?
Delete"Garcia did not know Trayvon Martin or George Floyd, so your attempt to tar him via guilt by association is ridiculous."
DeleteThis is illogical. DiC is not claiming Garcia knew either Martin or Floyd; he is instead claiming a similarity in the way Democrats have 'treated' Garcia, Martin and Floyd.
Is the United States of America at war with the country of Venezuela, Dickhead in Cal? You fucking fascist freak!
DeleteDIC is trying to portray Garcia as guilty, just as he argued that Martin and Floyd were guilty back in the day when they were controversial figures. He is the one linking them -- there is otherwise no connection except that DIC considers all of them to be unsavory. Of course it is illogical and there is no connection except the one DIC proposes. There is no similarity just because Democrats supported fair treatment in three dissimilar cases. Floyd and Martin were not being deported. They were killed.
DeleteJesus fuck DiC, all Dems are asking for is due process. Fuck off Nazi bitch.
Delete"Dems are portraying Garcia as a paragon"
DeleteNonsense. Nonsense without evidence.
No one is "portraying Garcia as a paragon." They're portraying him as someone dropped into a forgeign black hole without the OK of a court.
That dead cop was no angel.
DeleteI can wholeheartedly vouch for the fact that North Carolinians aren’t angels. Not even the dead Helene victims and they and the Democrats would be the first to tell you that.
DeleteKessler dismissed the appeal of the first ruling. Kessler did not rule that he was in fact a gang member. Kessler ruled he could not be released on bond. Later in 2019, a withdrawal of removal order was made prohibiting his deportation to El Salvador. That was the result of a hearing of facts about his flight to the USA and his danger in his original country. He was granted asylum.
ReplyDeleteThe informant who provided the info about Abrego Gracia being a gang member was later discredited. His gang field record was based on apparal (a Bull's hoody) and he was stated to be a highly level member of MS-13 in Long Island, NY, a place he has never lived. That info is highly questionable both because of the person giving it and the flimsiness of the accusation itself, so he was not deemed to be a gang member by his subsequent hearing. There remains no evidence that he is a gang member, nor that he has ever been arrested for, accused of, or has committed a crime. Nevertheless, Trump and his associates have been making factually untrue statements in order to smear him and justify their wrongful deportation violating the withdrawal of removal order, which was in effect at the time he was deported.
Somerby's narrow focus on whether Bondi said one particular thing correctly (about the content of an initial bond decision in 2019 that was later overturned), ignores the entire context of this case, which does not support Somerby's conclusion that Bondi has been saying accurate things. Both Bondi and Somerby are lying by omission of the facts that support Garcia's innocence of gang membership and all other crimes, including domestic violence and human trafficking, two extreme claims made against him in the last few days.
This illustrates the need to look deeper into the facts of this case, especially when unreliable people such as Somerby and especially Bondi are saying things.
"...the entire context of this case, which does not support Somerby's conclusion that Bondi has been saying accurate things."
DeleteSomerby says something much more specific about Bondi than she has been 'saying accurate things'. His claim is that a single statement of Bondi's about how 2 courts had ruled was accurate.
It is unclear how the 'entire context of the case' is relevant to the single claim being discussed.
"Somerby [is] lying by omission"
DeleteSomerby is not trying to assess whether Abrego Garcia is a gang member; he's pointing out that Blue Media may finesse basic facts in an attempt to create a pleasing narrative. His example: Bondi's statement that two courts ruled that Abrego Garcia was a gang member is reasonably accurate, but Blue Media tends to gloss over this inconvenient fact because it does not fit neatly into a narrative about an upstanding father deported to a cruel gulag.
Somerby's moral, as I understand it: Beware of pleasing narratives from your favorite news sources.
By the way, as far as I can tell, Abrego Garcia was in fact an upstanding father illegally deported to a cruel gulag. I've seem no hint of any evidence against him that would ever hold up to the slightest scrutiny in an Article III court.
DeleteBlue Media is trying to get at the truth, the facts. It is not trying to create a pleasing narrative. Bondi's statement is a partial recitation of fact because it does not examine the truth of the accusation against Garcia, nor does it mention that a subsequent court found him NOT to be a gang member (the court ordering the protection against removal). Bondi's mistaken statement might be omitted by the blue press in order to prevent confusion among readers by introducing something untrue into the narrative. That is not the same as telling people what they want to hear.
DeleteIf Somerby is not trying to assess whether Garcia is a gang member, then he is focusing on the wrong things. The heart of Trump's defense of his illegal actions against Garcia is that Garcia deserved to be deported because he is a gang member. Pleasing narratives have nothing to do with this situation. It is Somerby's ongoing complaint but he presents no evidence that this was the blue press's motive, to whitewash Garcia instead of to defend a wrongly accused and wrongly deported man from right wing smears.
Calling oneself "Dr Logic" doesn't mean what you say is necessarily any more or less logical than anyone else here.
DeleteSomerby is not defending Bondi. He tells us that this one accurate statement made by her is a huge outlier from her normal prevaricating ways.
DeleteYou tell us Somerby is focusing on the "wrong things," as if you're his assignment editor. He's focusing on the things he thinks is important; if you think otherwise, you can write a blog focusing on the things that you think are the "right things."
This example illustrates so much of the frisson in the comments here. Somerby is critiquing "the American discourse," but so many want him to push liberal talking points instead.
DeleteDo you mean friction?
Deletefrisson definition: "a sudden strong feeling of excitement or fear; a thrill"
friction definition: "conflict or animosity caused by a clash of wills, temperaments, or opinions"
Somerby is suggesting that blue press is telling a pleasing narrative that involves NOT calling Garcia a gang member. If Garcia is actually not a gang member, as later courts decided, then why should he be labeled one by the blue press, just because Bondi wants to smear the guy? He is also not a wife beater and not a human trafficker, things the red press has tried to label him without evidence in the form of arrests or convictions. The guy is not a criminal, so why should the blue press call him one? It is the red press that is creating the pleasing narrative at the command of Trump and Bondi, who are telling lies about a man who they wrongfully shipped to El Salvador, violating his protection order.
DeleteSomerby has a fixed idea in his head that the blue press tells pleasing narratives. This is not a good example of that.
"friction" works, and you're right, it's probably better, but what I meant was "frisson," the strong feeling of excitement and fear
DeleteTrying to prove a hypothesis using selective evidence instead of the entire body of facts, is not how science works. If Somerby wants to say that the blue press cooks the books, while the red press does not, he needs to look at all of Bondi's statements and all of the supposed blue press statements. Taking one example (that I don't think shows what he is claiming) and wishing to generalize that to the blue press at large, across time and place, doesn't work.
DeleteI find that the blue press is way more reliable than the right wing, so I do not understand why Somerby is trying to manufacture a specious example of blue press perfidy that isn't even supported by the facts of Garcia's situation. Bondi lied by omission. How does that make her an example of red press reliability and how does it make the blue press wrong about whether Garcia was a gang member? It doesn't.
This is why Somerby is not logical.
Delete"If Somerby wants to say that the blue press cooks the books...he needs to look at all of Bondi's statements and all of the supposed blue press statements."
DeleteLogically, he couldn't do what you require in a single post. Instead, he devotes individual posts to pointing out individual book-cooking incidents, hoping the sum of these individual cases will be persuasive.
"Calling oneself "Dr Logic" doesn't mean what you say is necessarily any more or less logical than anyone else here."
DeleteAgreed.
So far, Somerby has only cited one example of what he called “Blue” Media/commentators “finessing the basic facts”, and it was a single statement from a front page New York Times article. I can’t assess the accuracy of that article because I don’t have a subscription.
DeleteThis is the article https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/14/us/politics/trump-bukele-prison-deported-migrants.html
DeleteNY Times is not blue media.
DeleteDogface George,
DeleteNow, define "blue media".
I'll make the popcorn.
I'm pretty sure Bob means the "woke" media.
DeleteThe ones who pretended they cared that Republican voters pretended to care about Hillary Clinton's email protocols, so they could get corporate tax breaks from Trump. Woke, like that.
OK - the mainstream media that we blues tend to consult for our sources of information and analysis
Delete8:22 - Back in the day, one of Somerby’s seminal points was that the mainstream media engaged in jihads against Dems, which cut against the propaganda from the right that this media leaned left. Then, over time, he came to believe in silos consisting of Fox et al. on one side and NYT/WaPo et al. on the other. He refers to the silo we blues tend to consult as blue media.
DeleteWhat other side are the NYT/WaPo on from Fox?
DeleteWho did WaPo endorse in the November election?
"Have journalists in Blue America perhaps been fudging these facts a tad?"
ReplyDeleteNo. Those particular facts are only a small part of the entire case and they are not facts that anything hinges upon, given the subsequent 2019 court order of withdrawal of removal and the recent Supreme Court 9-0 decision that he was deported in error. There is no reason for Somerby to ignore the facts in the larger case in order to support Bondi in this one narrow statement.
But look how hard Somerby works to render a judgment in support of Bondi, Trump, and those who snatched this man off the street and sent him to exactly the place he was not supposed to go. This is a prime example of Somerby's support for right wing talking points, of the type he has been posting regularly since 2015. He seems to want his readers to think that if Bondi was right in one small point, then she is right in everything else (and so are Trump's other propagandists) and it was OK to deport Garcia (despite the Supreme Court decision?).
Somerby chides blue journalists for "fudging" but have they been? The facts are not with anyone's conclusion that Garcia was a member of MS-13. That is meat of Bondi's assertion. If blue journalists (Somerby specifies no one in particular) opposed Bondi in that, they were correct, not Bondi. Facts matter, not just who said one specific thing at one specific point of time, in one limited context. Was Garcia a member of MS-13? No one has proven he was and the courts have subsequently supported his innocence of that accusation, even if that one early bond hearing did not. Later ones have.
Somerby is a ridiculous figure. He claims to be liberal and yet today sacrifices truth in order to align himself with Bondi, who herself is scrum just as Trump's entire troop is scum. No self-respecting Democrat or liberal would write what he has written here today.
Democrats are not supporting Garcia because we just love love love gangbangers. We are worried that the violation of his rights will lead to the violation of everyone's rights as Trump becomes increasingly fascist. We are defending the rights of all of the wrongly deported unfortunates who were shipped to El Salvador without due process. David's suggestion that Dems automatically side with unsavory characters, as if we were taking in stray kittens, is insulting and ignores the need for all citizens to defend our constitution from those who find it inconvenient to stand by the oath they took to defend it. That includes Bondi.
"The facts are not with anyone's conclusion that Garcia was a member of MS-13."
ReplyDeleteSomerby's column today is not about whether Garcia was a member of MS-13, but whether 2 courts had so ruled.
The immigration court clearly made this ruling; the wording of the appellate court was fuzzier, but seemed to accept the immigration court's finding.
Two courts made a bond ruling that was subsequently superseded by a withdrawal of removal order in a hearing that determined he was not a gang member.
DeleteThe immigration court accepted the information about gang membership uncritically and denied the bond because of the possibility he might be a danger. It made no investigation of the factual accuracy of the information, as the later court ruling did. The immigration court also clearly made its protection order. That mooted the prior bond hearing.
It is ridiculous to consider this case without looking at the entire sequence of hearings and the later determination that the accusations of gang membership were not credible. It is possible to say that Somerby and Bondi are the ones trying to tell a pleasing narrative about Garcia's guilt, since they only focus narrowly on that one bond hearing and ignore all of the rest of the hearings and info in his case. That is selective attention. Because Bondi surely knew about the other info, she is being dishonest when she only presents the info that supports her mischaracterization of Garcia. Supporting her dishonesty calls Somerby's motives into question too.
"Supporting her dishonesty calls Somerby's motives into question too."
DeleteSomerby's first loyalty has always been to logic. Hence The Daily 'Howler'.
He imagines a reader who can acknowledge the (narrow) accuracy of Bondi's statement while still disapproving of Trump admin actions in the case (Bob said in yesterday's post that Garcia's treatment 'shocks the conscience'.).
You are not that reader. And there don't seem to be many point left in the world capable of such dispassionate reasoning. It's a pity.
should be 'many people left', not 'many point left'.
DeleteSomerby is not logical.
Delete7:07 -- Amen.
Delete"Somerby's first loyalty has always been to logic."
DeleteDon't let the fact that he's bullshitting you about the existence of a blue media, get in the way of that statement.
'Blue' doesn't mean 'liberal enough to satisfy everyone'.
DeleteIt means 'aligned with the Democratic Party' and if you doubt the existence of a blue media under that definition, you're just not paying attention.
9:28,
DeleteLOL.
Did you work all day on that list?
Here is a conservative opinion on what was done to Garcia:
ReplyDelete"After Judge Paula Xinis granted discovery to Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s attorneys, Trump ran to the Fourth Circuit.
Waiting less than a day, the conservative on the panel for the case, Harvie Wilkinson, wrote a scathing opinion rejecting Trump’s plea for help. [He said:]
'It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter. But in this case, it is not hard at all. The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done.
This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.'"
https://www.emptywheel.net/2025/04/17/harvie-wilkinson-on-due-process/
Somerby contends that what matters is whether Bondi was accurate about what a judge said in a bond hearing (and appeal). That isn't the heart of this situation. Wilkinson, a conservative judge, gets it right.
What would it mean if Bondi accidentally made an accurate statement?
ReplyDeleteIt means that she can only make two more before she's uninvited from the Mar-a-Lago holiday...errr...CHRISTMAS party.
DeleteWho cares whether Bondi said something right for once. Here is Rude Pundit's take on this incident:
ReplyDelete"Hell, use the refusal by Donald Trump to pick up the fucking phone and telling the government of El Salvador, who we're paying to keep our hostages, to send him home as a sign of Trump's weakness. Mr. Art of the Deal can't get a deal on this? Or is Trump just the bitch boy of dictators? Or maybe Garcia was treated so awfully not just in CECOT but while in the custody of the United States that they can't allow him to be able to tell just how much we're abusing innocent people in our fast slide into authoritarianism."
Maybe Trump doesn't have the power to get him back and that is what he is concealing.
I'm not a foreign government, but I'd tell Trump to go fuck himself, if he tried to talk to me, too.
DeleteI'm a lawyer, but I don't practice immigration law. It is a world to itself, and there are complexities. I do have some understanding of it. TDH quotes excerpts from these 2 immigration judge decisions. The first decision was from an evidentiary hearing. These hearings are not the same as trials in the regular federal or state courts. They are less formal, apparently with looser evidentiary standards. The second decision was from an appeal of the decision in the first exerpt to another immigration court.
ReplyDeleteIt appears from the excerpts that the evidence against Garcia consisted of a jacket he was wearing, which evidence the judge wasn't that impressed with, and evidence from a confidential informant who was characterized, probably by the prosecutor to be a "reliable source," who said Garcia was a member of a gang. You don't get anything here from this excerpt what the basis was for determining the source was reliable, or the details of what the source asserted - it might have been strong or very sparse. It seems this evidence was hearsay which seems to be admissible in these hearings. The judge seems to have mostly relied on this informant's assertions.
In these hearings, the immigrant has the burden of proof. That means he has to prove he is innocent, not the other way around. An immigration lawyer could give a better take on this.
The decision on appeal was not a second trial. The judge there simply said that the evidence against Garcia was sufficient to uphold the hearing judge's decision. It wasn't a second trial.
Apparently, a subsequent immigration judge then issued an order that Garcia can't be deported. I'm not clear of the evidence before that judge. It's been said that Garcia claimed his life would be endangered, if he was sent back to El Salvador; that he was a victim of gang threats, not a member of a gang.
As far as I know there is no evidence that Garcia ever committed a crime. I did click on some clickbait on my computer and saw that Bondi appeared on Hannity's show, where she added to what TDH reports - that Garcia's wife made a domestic violence complaint against Garcia and the court issued a restraining order. His wife is now vigorously advocating for his return. There are people here might have followed this more than I have and know the allegations of both sides better than me. What I would say is, like everything else, people seem to form opinions based on their own prejudices without knowing all the facts or understanding the law. One thing does seem for sure is that the Supreme Court unanimously rule that the Trump administration facilitate Garcia's return to the US - which they don't seem to have any intention of doing in good faith. Another factor is sending Garcia, or anyone to this El Salvador prison - that seems to me to be a new element.
...Bondi appeared on Hannity's show...
DeleteIsn't that lovely. We have an AG who makes nightly appearances on FOX NOOZ to catapult the propaganda, as they say. In 4 years time I don't Garland ever acted in as recklessly partisan manner as Bondi. She setting new standards for AG.
AC/MA - I would be interested in your opinion, as a lawyer. IMO Trump should have brought Garcia back, even without a court order. That was the right thing to do.
DeleteHowever, from a legal POV, SCOTUS carefully chose the word "facilitate." They could have written "make every effort" or even "try". Apparently SCOTUS felt that the Court doesn't have have the power to tell the President how to conduct foreign affairs. So, even though bringing him back is the right thing, I think not insisting that El Salvador is legally OK. Do you agree?
The lower court decision already said “effectuate” which does not allow the wiggle room you think you see. That decision was affirmed by the Supreme Court. Countries exchange prisoners all the time.
DeleteYou may be right @8:27. My impression was that by substituting "facilitate" for "effectuate" SCOTUS was overruling the lower court, rather than affirming it.
DeleteWhat part of bring him back do you not understand?
Delete@9:17 SCOTUS did not say "bring him back." They said "facilitate" his return.
DeleteSpoken like a true sophist.
DeletePlease continue, David. What's the difference?
DeleteI got a shiny Roosevelt dime that says David, if he responds, is going to go with the official White House line that has already been slapped down in court and on appeal.
anon 8:03 - Bondi is definitely a MAGA AG - part of the nightmare we find ourselves in.
DeleteD in C - I didn't read the decision, but have read about it. However, I think the Court meant that the administration should make a good faith effort to get him back. without looking in a dictionary, I believe "facilitate" means to take steps so that something specific will happen. It seems to me that the administration could get him back if it wanted to - and we taxpayers are paying El Salvador to house these prisoners. It seems apparent that the administration isn't acting in good faith.
DeleteAC/MA - I totally agree that the Administration could get him back if they wanted to.
DeleteQuaker - "Bring him back" or "effect his return" means do whatever it takes to bring him back. Presumably that could even include military action if El Salvador refused to release him.
Facilitate "To make easy or easier." That word doesn't say how much easier to make it. Demanding that El Salvador return him would be facilitating. Merely offering a plane if he's released by El Salvador is facilitation.
As I said, I think he should be returned, because it's the right thing to do. But, I think Trump is legally OK, for what little my legal opinion worth. It's now just a publicity issue. Dems want people to be upset at the civil liberties violation. Reps want people to be upset at this (presumed) member of an awful gang.
As a practical matter I suspect Trump will get away with leaving him in El Salvador. I think the issue will quickly fade. Time will tell.
All Trump has to do is threaten to double their tariff and they’ll send Garcia right back.
Delete“It’s now just a publicity issue.” No.
DeleteIt would take an IQ well south of 80 to accept anything coming out of the mouths of Trump or his hand puppet, Bondi, as representative of the truth, given their histories. And that includes the (presumed) history of gang membership.
DeleteThey aren't stupid. They're bigots pretending they are stupid, so you'll focus on their stupidity, and not their bigotry.
DeleteDon't fall for it.
8:35,
DeleteNo fair. I was promised Bob Somerby wasn't a Right-winger.
"Merely offering a plane if he's released by El Salvador is facilitation."
DeleteYes, that is how a sophist would argue the case, by ignoring the part of the SCOTUS order that says the "government should restore him to the status quo", meaning to the state of affairs prior to his illegal removal to El Salvador, which means 'bring him back home.'
Chris van Hollen has met Kilmar Garcia Abrego.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteAn illegal gangbanger was deported to his native country.
Horrors! Horrors! What a tragedy! I'm all shook up.
Always good to hear from a low information voter.
Delete
DeleteIf the standard set of Soros-bot talking points was enough information for Brendan The Glorious, it should be enough for you too, Boris @11:47 PM.
I believe this is called drunk-posting.
DeleteHopefully, the pretend blue media can find the pretend Republican voter who isn't a bigot, and present them to all of us in a medium that doesn't exist.
ReplyDeleteFingers crossed.
Bob Somerby,
ReplyDeleteThank you for having this blog. It's very informative.
Just this week, I found out that bombing schools and hospitals to ethnically cleanse entire populations is a major tenet of the Jewish faith.
Keep up the good work.
That rat ain't going to fuck itself.
ReplyDelete