Trump and a Supreme Court that has given him too much power have ended due process as we know it. Secret police can now decide on their own to disappear people and not have to answer to a judge. Will you be next?
The United States is a nation in distress.
Trump hosted authoritarian President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador today, and both men joked in front of the media and the world about how they would not be returning Kilmar Abrego Garcia from an El Salvador concentration camp. This is in defiance of an albeit weak ruling (but a ruling nonetheless) from the Supreme Court last week for Trump to "facilitate" exactly that, and continues the White House's pattern of treating the federal judiciary with outright contempt. Trump's behavior again confirms his belief that Kilmar, like hundreds of others like him, was unworthy of due process and is now dead to constitutional rights granted to everyone in the United States. And Trump wants to go after the "homegrowns" next.
The Supreme Court is largely responsible for Trump ignoring their ruling and his contempt for judges who rule again him. This is because the conservative supermajority essentially placed Trump above and out of the reach of the law in their presidential immunity ruling last summer. It can even be argued these same conservative justices made their ruling so vague regarding returning Kilmar (without specifying a date by which this was to occur) because they knew Trump would not abide by it (they even gave him cover and said it was partly a "foreign affairs" issue). Their actions have now placed the due process of all Americans at risk as Trump openly muses about sending United States citizens to the same concentration camp in El Salvador.
Kilmar, an El Salvador native who had protected status in the United States since 2019, has been locked away at the notoriously dangerous CECOT prison since March 15th. Trump officials stripped him of his due process rights and ignored a court order saying safety concerns prevented him from being sent back to El Salvador. Another court order instructing the planes en route to El Salvador to turn around was also violated by Trump to make sure Kilmar and hundreds of other immigrants (mostly Venezuelan who were also denied due process) were delivered and processed at the concentration camp.
All of this disrespect for the judiciary and the rule of law has been allowed to occur by the Supreme Court. The high court has even been silent on the due process rights guaranteed by the Constitution but stripped away from the hundreds of immigrants illegally shipped to CECOT with Kilmar. Even worse, Trump continues to send people to this El Salvador concentration camp by misusing a 1798 wartime law the Supreme Court has also been silent on the legality of, which makes it complicit in every violation of due process that results.
The monster the conservative Supreme Court has created is loose, and it is coming for the due process rights of all Americans it perceives as its enemies. As for the Supreme Court itself, Trump sees it as nothing more than a body that can give him advice he does not have to take. The Supreme Court was never coming to save us, but now it does not even have the power to do that if it wanted to.