Kilmar Abrego Garcia: ‘administrative error,’ and zero accountability

The Trump administration’s deportation program has always been a cocktail of malice and mismanagement. But its treatment of Kilmar Abrego Garcia reeks of the collateral damage we expect only from autocracies like Russia.

It deported him to El Salvador. Never mind that, like hundreds of other deportees, Garcia had legal status and no gang affiliation. Other administrations made similar mistakes. But they rushed to correct them by securing the deportee’s return.

The Trump administration even defied a judge’s order to do the same. When the judge called its defiance “wholly lawless” and threatened contempt, the administration ran crying to the Supreme Court. Instead of fixing the “administrative error,” the Court just “paused” it.

Now Garcia faces daily risks to life and limb in a Salvadoran prison reportedly ten times worse than America’s worst. Again, he’s not there because he broke the law. He’s there because the Trump administration did. And the highest court in the land just gave Trump a green light to keep breaking it.

Makulu Kintu: a nation wronged, and a visa ban for all

Garcia’s deportation is horrifying and tragic. But Makula Kintu’s is all that — and surreal. He was deported to South Sudan despite pleading that he’s Congolese. South Sudan even confirmed that he wasn’t one of theirs. The Trump administration sent him anyway. Then came the Trumpian overkill: Secretary of State Marco Rubio revoked visas for all South Sudanese nationals, blaming their government for not accepting Kintu — a man from Congo.

This isn’t just another Trump-era paperwork mix-up. It’s collective punishment — on a scale we haven’t seen since the Soviet Union expelled German refugees after WWII. And it’s consistent with Trump’s infamous dismissal of African countries as “shitholes.” Rubio is the most informed person in Trump’s cabinet. Yet even he seems clueless about the global fallout of this grotesque carelessness.

Incidentally, Khaman Maluach, a 7-foot-2 Duke basketball star from South Sudan, now finds his visa status in jeopardy. He grew up in Uganda after fleeing civil war. Rubio’s announcement came just hours after Maluach’s team suffered a brutal Final Four loss to Houston.

He’s a student at one of America’s top universities. But, given the crusade Trump is waging against elite colleges, that might be a liability. A Duke spokesperson says the school is “looking into the matter.” But let’s be honest — Maluach’s visa wouldn’t be at risk if Duke played tonight and won the NCAA men’s basketball championship.

The Supreme Court delays justice to rubber-stamp Trump

By pausing the lower court’s deadline, the Supreme Court didn’t just delay justice. It sent a message: deportees shouldn’t expect any at all. This ruling should kill whatever hope remains that due process still lives in immigration law.

The Republican-appointed justices clearly couldn’t care less that an innocent man is now spending more time rotting in a foreign hellhole — all because he was wrongfully deported from the so-called land of the free.

Frankly, expecting moral clarity from this Court is like expecting a compass to work in a black hole. We don’t have Republican-appointed justices anymore. We have Republican political hacks in judicial garb.