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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • I don’t know why this is being downvoted. There is a very real possibility that he’s already dead. He’s being housed in a cell with members of the very gang that he was fleeing from. Those people have nothing left to lose. They’re in there for the rest of their lives and could just kill this guy for funzies and their situation wouldn’t change at all. He’s not, to our knowledge, being held in any kind of segregated unit for his own protection, and there’s nobody who can check on his well being. Heck, either Trump or Bukele could just order him killed because he’s too much of a political liability. For all we know, we could be fighting for the freedom of a man who was killed by his cellmates last week.


  • As predicted.

    Roberts gave no official reason yet, but we all know how this case is going to end up.

    Most likely, the Supreme Court is going to say that while the Trump administration made an “administrative error” in deporting him, there is currently no enforceable remedy available. There’s also the chance that they’ll just slip in a reminder that this man’s deportation was an “executive decision” by Trump as part of his official duties and is therefore immune from any legal liability even when he makes an error.

    Most likely, the official decision is going to render Xinis’ order unenforceable and therefore quashed and that’ll be the end of this case. His family may continue trying to pursue this case through civil litigation, but will most likely run into the same wall of “Too bad, so sad, Trump’s immune, sucks to be you.”





  • They’re paying $6 million. At a geopolitical level, that would barely qualify as a rounding error on one of their budgets.

    That, and we don’t know the details of the agreement that Trump made with El Salvador. This is Trump we are talking about. He very well could have made a deal to give Bukele $6 million and dump a bunch of random gang members to rot away in CECOT while getting nothing in return and having no recourse if mistakes are made. This is a Trump deal we’re talking about after all.

    Assuming Trump even wanted to cooperate (spoiler alert: He doesn’t), the only leverage is that $6 million payment. And that’s assuming that the payment hasn’t already been made. If Trump handed over a plane full of random people and a $6 million check, it very well could be a case of Trump dropping them off and saying bye.


  • Doesn’t matter if he was a citizen or not.

    You are right that it doesn’t matter in terms of constitutional protections, but it does matter in terms of how this case plays out.

    It’s one thing to ask a foreign country to send a US citizen back to the US. It’s a completely different thing to ask a country to send back one of their own citizens.

    Regardless of what you think of the charges that Garcia is being held on (and I fully agree that they’re completely bogus), the US is essentially asking that a foreign country send one of their own citizens back to the US so they can escape the foreign country’s own judicial system. That is just never, ever, ever going to happen. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong. I’m just saying no country is ever going to agree to it.


  • they make some kind of half hearted “bad man Bukele won’t cooperate” argument

    That’s not half-hearted. It’s a very, very real possibility especially if Bukele wants to cozy up to Trump and give him an out.

    “Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia is a citizen of El Salvador and is currently in our custody awaiting trial on criminal charges for crimes he committed before he fled the country to escape justice. He will remain in the custody of El Salvador until he is tried for those charges and any sentence imposed on him has been completed. He will not be sent back to the United States.”

    From there, Trump can easily make a “good faith” argument that he tried to have the citizen returned but was unable to secure his release. His MAGA base will eat it up, and it’s very likely that the Supreme Court would dismiss the case based on lack of jurisdiction and lack of enforcement mechanism. Even if they don’t, any ruling would be a symbolic gesture at best and carry as much practical weight as me making the same demands from my front porch.

    Remember, El Salvador has absolutely no reason to send this guy back. Bukele is under no circumstances going to defy Trump’s wishes when he’s actively trying to cozy up to Trump. If anything, he’s only going to run cover for Trump.

    We don’t have to like it, but that’s the reality of the situation. There is no method of enforcement. If El Salvador is unwilling to send him back, he’s staying there. And the Supreme Court could very well recognize that reality. They could easily vote 9-0 that Trump was in the wrong but dismiss Xinis’ order anyway due to it being unenforceable.






  • Everybody is thinking way, way too much into this.

    If Trump would have to answer a question where he doesn’t know the answer, or would have to admit that people disagree with him, or he feels even mildly challenged, this is considered a personal attack on him. You are trying to get him to admit to not being 100% perfect 100% of the time. And he responds to that by lashing out like a small child, attacking you, making up childish names for you, and insulting you. This is how he has always responded.

    This has nothing to do with his thoughts on economic policies or the effects of his tariffs. He doesn’t think far enough ahead to either know or care. This reporter had the audacity to challenge him, and Trump lashed out. That’s all. That’s how he always responds.



  • The good thing is that at least this judge’s order comes with a definitive timeline.

    Unfortunately, that’s the only piece of good news. There was no “or else”, and the Trump administration has already claimed they couldn’t follow the order even if they wanted to because he’s out of the reach of US authority.

    Which means that most likely, Monday will come and go and this guy will still be in El Salvador. The judge will do a lot of hemming and hawing and follow standard judicial practices of threatening to hold hearings to discuss the possibility of holding hearings, and eventually the whole thing will quietly disappear from the headlines once a MAGA-aligned appeals court dismisses it due to the claimed lack of jurisdiction.

    And we do have to be realistic. Bukele (President of El Salvador) has every reason in the world to cozy up to Trump. And he really could put an end to this saga by saying that Garcia is facing charges in El Salvador and will not be sent back to the US. There may be made-up charges, there may not. He could just say that Garcia is being charged just to run cover for Trump so Trump can say “I tried, but Bukele confirmed that he is an MS 13 member being tried in El Salvador and will not release him.”. And at that point, I honestly could see a judge dismissing the case simply because it’s moot and any order would be unenforceable.

    Overall, I’m not liking the man’s chances.


    With all of that being said, how has not one reporter asked the question of “If this type of ‘error’ were made involving a US citizen being sent to El Salvador, are you also saying that there is no way to get that US citizen back?”



  • Silence doesnt mean secrecy. We the People should be loud. These law firms should shut up and draft plans.

    Actually, I believe it’s the exact opposite. We the people do not have the power and resources to be loud. We the people can easily be disappeared to El Salvador’s prison system. We the people elected our officials and gave them the power to be loud. And when they fail – and they have failed – we should hope that our representatives in the legal system, who have years of knowledge, billions of dollars and vast resources to use those resources to fight back. We the people being the ones that have to resort to revolting should be the last option after everything else has been exhausted, not the first. These people have unlimited resources, billions of dollars, and vast swaths of legal knowledge. Not us.

    Law firms should have had motions filed before the ink to sign the EOs targeting them was even dry. But instead, they’re going to Trump and offering him hundreds of millions of free legal services before he even targets them. They’re not fighting Trump. They’re tripping over each other in a race to see which ones can capitulate to him first.

    They shouldn’t broadcast their intentions to the regime, let the filings do that.

    Bullshit. 100% Grade A, Trump-approved bullshit.

    Their intentions should be one thing. Defending our justice system against these exact acts. And they should be broadcasting those intentions on every form of media that exists, daily. “We intend to fight you in court through this and force our court system to either admitting their intentions of ceding even more power to Trump and letting this country fall into a dictatorship by allowing Trump to continue doing this, or standing up for the Constitution and the rule of law.”

    They should be broadcasting that daily.




  • If you think that a comparative handful of volunteers with some self-supplied weaponry has any chance of going up against the US Marshalls, I’ve got beachfront property on Mars you may be interested in. These people would be rounded up and disappeared to El Salvador by dinner. What you’re saying sounds like a great inspirational speech leading into the final act of a movie plot, but it’s leading lambs to the slaughter in reality.

    And that’s assuming you can even find enough volunteers. For the past couple of months, all these people that said they would be the ones to stand up and fight Trump and his power grabs end up being the first ones to capitulate in hopes of not being shipped off to some black site in El Salvador.

    Who’s Boasburg going to hold in contempt? Trump? He’s already been declared immune. Bondi? Yeah, good luck with that. Now let’s see him round up a couple of hundred volunteers and send them to DC to arrest her. What exactly do you think the end result of that is going to be? A bunch of volunteers with zero experience and who are just hoping to make it home tonight are going to be told by US Marshalls that outnumber them, have better weapons, more training, and body armor are going to tell them to go fuck themselves with a chainsaw. They absolutely will not have the ability to physically enforce Boasburg’s decision.


  • Yeah, and after 30 or 40 more hearings, he might consider threatening to possibly hold hearings to consider the possibility of maybe sending Trump a frowny face letter if he violates court orders another few dozen times.

    Notice how not a single one of these judges is actually seriously threatening consequences. Because they know they have no enforcement power. They know that Trump’s response is going to be some variant of “What the fuck you gonna do about it if I don’t?”. They know they have zero actual answers for that, and they know exactly what it means when they are unable to answer.

    They’re just stringing things along holding on to the illusion of power and hoping that people simply don’t notice that they hold no real power.