← Bulwark Takes
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- [00:00]
Andrew Egger
Hi, this is Andrew Egger with the Bulwark. We've been covering a lot, this story of the wrongfully deported man to El Salvador, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who the Trump administration is really digging in their heels, resisting even the Supreme Court's directives that they need to do what they can to get him back. A lot of what we have focused on with this story is the, you know, just the kind of top level due process concerns, the legal wrangling and the kind of wildly expansive power to deport without an adversarial judicial process that the Trump administration is, is insisting that it has. The administration has insisted that he is, in fact an MS.13 gang member and that they have a lot of good reasons to believe that. And they hang their hat in that, in that assessment very largely on one brush that that this man had with a cop who picked him up on suspicion of being in company of gang members years and years ago. But new details about that encounter, about how that all went down in the first place continue to come out. And Greg Sargent with the New Republic had a great piece out yesterday breaking some new news that really just shines a spotlight on just how flimsy and pretextual all of this is. Greg, thanks for coming on to talk to me a little bit about this today.
- [01:18]
Greg Sargent
Great to see you, Andrew.
- [01:19]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, we're in a bit of a role reversal here. I've been on your show and this is the first time you've probably been on other Bulwark products. This is the first time I've been in the host chair with you. So thanks for coming on. Maybe give a little bit more background on what the administration is claiming with regard to this, to this guy's record, what we already knew, you know, kind of before yesterday, and then what you have have dug up yourself.
- [01:41]
Greg Sargent
So we have to go back to 2019 for this, which is when Kilimar Abrego Garcia was picked up. The first time he was ultimately detained by ice, but in the process of getting to ice, he was detained by the Prince George's County Police Department. Prince George's county is a suburb of Washington, D.C. just northeast and southeast of D.C. this was in the northern part. This is in Hyattsville, was where he was picked up at a Home Depot in Hyattsville. So what happened was the detective then questioned him. Detectives questioned him and asked him if he had ties to MS.13. He said no, they transferred him to ICE. He was not charged with a crime of any kind related to gang activity. He was Only transferred to ICE by virtue of the fact that he was in the country illegally. He had come in 2011 at the age of 16 from El Salvador. This is where we get to what the Trump administration is arguing. At the time, a Prince George's county detective filled out what's known as a gang field interview sheet that lays out what the detective thinks is the evidence of this man's supposed ties to Ms. 13. You've heard the evidence that talked about endlessly. One of the pieces of evidence is that he was wearing a Chicago Bulls jacket and hoodie that was doctored up in a supposedly gang like way. The other is that a quote, unquote confidential source said that he was a member of MS.13. The Westerns click. But that happens to operate in New York, which is not a place he's ever lived. But the core thing here, and I'll try to make this quick, is that all this comes from this gang field information sheet filled out by this one detective. And we were able to establish that the detective subsequently was suspended for serious professional misconduct. Sharing confidential police info with a sex worker. He was ultimately indicted for that as well, put on probation. And so the short version is that that casts a whole lot of doubt on the core piece of evidence that the administration is claiming links him to MS.13.
- [03:57]
Andrew Egger
We're essentially going off of the word of a guy who, who was not, you know, not only is he not a judge, not only is he not a jury, he's not even particularly reliable or trustworthy, it seems, as a cop. So can you talk to me a little bit about how, how you, you ran all this down, how this stuff has come out and, and why we're only hearing about some of this stuff for the first time.
- [04:16]
Greg Sargent
So from the plaintiff side, what the court papers lay out is a little bit cryptic in some regards. And that's what gave me kind of the opening to pursue it. What they say is that at the time, in 2019, when they were contesting the effort to deport Abrego Garcia, that first time they tried to talk to the chief detective on the case, they wanted to contest the evidence that he had offered, quote, unquote, evidence of his membership in Ms. 13, and they were informed, say the court papers, that this detective was suspended. That's all the court papers say. They don't say who the detective was or why he was suspended because they didn't know at the time. The, the plaintiffs were unable to establish that. They were simply told by pgpd, the Prince George's police Department, that he had been suspended. And so looking into that a little more, we were able to get this gang field interview sheet, and it had the name of the cop on it, and it had, and it had the quote, unquote evidence that he had offered. And a little digging showed that he had been suspended for these serious transgressions. Now, I want to. So that's how we got there. I want to clarify one point, though. Even if we had an enormous mountain of evidence that made it absolutely 100% certain that Abrego Garcia was a member of Ms. 13, he would still be entitled to due process. He would still be entitled to have his hearing in court over the current deportation. And this deportation that they've done to this maximum security prison in El Salvador would still be illegal.
- [05:57]
Andrew Egger
And just to follow up on what you were just saying, I don't know if you saw the post that J.D. vance made this morning. The administration has been basically flipping, flailing all, all through their response to this whole scandal in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling that essentially said, no, they do have to go and get this guy back. They are continuing to stonewall that in court. They're continuing to do this very bad faith reading of the court's ruling, essentially saying, well, we think that when they say that we have to try to go get that guy back, we don't actually really have to. That's still basically our prerogative. The lower court judge isn't really hearing it. The White House is making all kinds of insane statements about it. Trump in the Oval Office. And then this morning, J.D. vance basically made, made a post on Twitter where essentially what he says is, look like all you guys who are making these. You crying about due process is what he said. All you people are crying about due process. Well, what's your plan? What's, what's, what's your plan that could, that could satisfy your, your oh so precious due process concerns and still let us deport millions of people a year? You know, obviously we got to deport millions of people a year. So I don't know, our hands are kind of tied. We just got to do it. And I mean, like, that's, it was such a striking thing to have him, have him come out and not just say, we are giving these guys due process, not just tell that lie, which is kind of what they've. They've been doing. They've been saying the process has been adequate. But, but, but to kind of scoff at the entire idea that, that anyone would stick up for, for any process considerations for these people.
- [07:25]
Greg Sargent
Yeah. And by the way, I'd like to actually answer J.D. vance's question, at least with regard to Gary Kilmar Abrego Garcia right here. At any time, the administration has the option of bringing him back to the United States and retrying him for deportation. They don't have to let him go free forever. Right. What they can do is they can actually reopen and challenge the judge's initial grant of withholding of removal. They can say we are recontesting, that we think we have the right to deport him to El Salvador, which is the thing that his withholding of removal status prevented. Alternatively, they can say we are going to deport Abrego Garcia to a third country, not the. Not El Salvador. And they have the right to do that under the withholding of removal order, because the withholding of removal order says you can't deport him to El Salvador. So JD Vance is absolutely full of shit when he says this stuff. Let's just be very clear. And he knows it. He's trained in the law, I think. And so why they won't just reopen the case is a huge mystery about this whole thing that still hasn't been answered.
- [08:38]
Andrew Egger
The more you look into any one facet of this, the more you really just get the sense that far from just sort of trying to triangulate for fewer illegal immigrants in the country, the White House is going about this in a way that. That the thing that they are interested in maximizing at all points in time is their own personal discretionary power vis a vis any other part of the government. And obviously that goes a lot farther than just immigration as well.
- [09:05]
Greg Sargent
Yes. I think you're actually putting your finger on a really core depravity about all this. Right. Which is that they actually want to dispense with due process altogether for migrants. I mean, that's basically what J.D. vance is more or less saying. He said it elsewhere as well. As you say, there's always the option of hiring more immigration judges. Look, here's the thing, Andrew. They actually do have a problem on their hands, meaning the Trump administration for their deportation agenda. Due process is an obstacle to removing people on the scale that they want to remove them. Right. But they won't hire more immigration judges and scale up the system in order to speed up the processing and maximizing the processing of people precisely because it would grant due process. What they're actually trying to do is dispense with that.
- [09:57]
Andrew Egger
J.D. vance made that very clear this morning when he makes kind of the rhetorical pivot from what they have been saying about Kilmer, Abrego Garcia. Well, you know, I can't believe all these people would stick up for due process for this MS.13 gang terrorist, as they say, you know, like, like, come on guys, like, like get your heads out of the sand. This guy's a real bad guy. And I can't believe you would say he needs due process. But then, I mean, very nakedly in this post this morning, JD Pivots from that and he, and he is essentially making this, this broader case against due process for the millions of illegal immigrants who are otherwise here, many of whom have no connection. I mean, the vast majority of whom have no connection to gang activity. No criminal charges of any kind. No. Would not be able to, you wouldn't be able to rustle up criminal charges against them even if you put like an FBI tail on them. They're, they're just not committing crimes. They're law abiding people. And it's the rhetorical pivot, not just that they're willing to defy the Supreme Court over this guy, they say erroneously, it seems, as a gang member, but also that they openly are desiring and preparing to also try to eliminate due process for the much broader group of people in the country illegally. Is I think, the other part of this, as you say?
- [11:12]
Greg Sargent
Yes, I think that's a way of interpreting what they're doing with Abrego Garcia. In fact, they're actually trying to establish a precedent by which they, they don't have to give these people due process and by which the actual facts of their case don't matter at all.
- [11:25]
Andrew Egger
Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen announced last night that he was heading to El Salvador to try to spotlight this case. Going to the secot prison there to I guess he's going to try to go inside. I don't know whether that's likely to be permitted or anything like that.
- [11:40]
Greg Sargent
I think they're looking for proof of life. Right? Is that what they're doing?
- [11:43]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, yeah, among other things. And he's trying to talk to some officials down there. What do you, I'm just curious what you make of that as kind of a counter messaging strategy from Democrats here to kind of like personally participate in this, in this process to a greater degree than before.
- [11:57]
Greg Sargent
I think they have to do it. You know, I don't know what the politics of this are exactly. I think probably immigration as a general matter is most likely a net negative for Democrats right now. But we got to remember that public opinion on immigration is usually kind of thermostatic. Right. It tends to shift against the people in power. This is a thing that everybody conveniently forgets. But when Donald Trump was president and was pursuing a restrictionist immigration agenda, it was unpopular, it was not popular. In fact, Joe Biden ran ads at the end of the campaign in the swing states on immigration about the caging of children. And so I think they have to go out there and make the case against lawlessness as a broad strategy. What they have to be saying is that we're looking at world historical levels of corruption and lawlessness from this administration on every conceivable front. They can connect all those dots. The bottom line is what Democrats have to do as a party is sound the alarm and make loud noise about the lawlessness we're seeing. And so that entails doing big gestures like going to El Salvador. You know, I think that the American people, they, they. They support mass deportation. When you ask them, do you want undocumented immigrants removed from the country, when you poll it that way, yes or no, you will get support for it. But if you offer the choice to respondents of do you want undocumented immigrants removed, or do you want those who haven't been convicted of any crimes of any other sort to be able to have a path to legalization? You usually get majority support of the latter, which tells me that, in theory, the American people sort of tilt against the Democrats on immigration, and they sometimes vote that way because of the way our public debate is really distorted and convoluted. I don't think the American people would support the idea of this father of three being removed without any due process. Right. And that's exactly, by the way, why they keep saying he's an MS.13 gang member and a threat to public safety. That's the core of their excuse for not giving him due process.
- [14:14]
Andrew Egger
If you just roll back the historical tape, it was, it was radioactive in Trump's first term. It was maybe the, Maybe the, The family separation policy might have been. I'm trying to, I'm trying to, like, think on the fly here, but it's the thing that stands out to me as at least the most prominent, if not the only time that the Trump administration just abandoned a signature policy effort purely due to mass public outcry. And. But then, as you trace how that all develops forward, Joe Biden runs against Trump hard on immigration, and then that ends up kind of creating some problems for Joe Biden later, right, where he feels like he has kind of boxed himself into a to a more permissive immigration regime than he necessarily would have otherwise because of the way he talked on the campaign trail. And so he then becomes slow to react to this large surge in migration that we see during his term. And that pushes public opinion far the other way, where there's this sense of, wait, the border's just open. I mean, I know that, you know, that's. Those are charged terms. Obviously, the border was not open. But they see lots and lots of people, you know, coming into the country, and they're like, well, hey, we gotta do something about this. And then that becomes a political strength for Donald Trump. And so now the pressure is to. To keep that. Keep that wheel turning, to really spotlight, you know, the things people weren't thinking about when they thought, well, yeah, let's get all these people out of our country. Well, what's that mean? Right. And that's the argument. That's the. That's the place where persuasion plays a role and is potentially fruitful. So I agree with you on all that stuff.
- [15:39]
Greg Sargent
I think the through line on immigration and public opinion in America is this. The public wants law and order. It wants an immigration system that makes sense. The public gets turned off by images of disorder, chaos, and human suffering, including the suffering of migrants. And so when Donald Trump was president, you had all this disorder at the border, you know, because people were coming here. No matter what he says, people were still coming here when he was president. Right. So they saw imagery of people arriving at the border, they saw imagery of migrants suffering, and they turned against Trump. Similarly, when Biden became president, they saw a lot of the same imagery. And by the way, we should note that Republicans won't allow a Democratic administration to solve the immigration problem and fix the immigration system in a way that actually would minimize human suffering, which would entail some of the stuff you talked about earlier, like hiring more immigration judges, scaling up the asylum system to process more people, creating more pathways to come in legally in an orderly way so you don't have to try it through, you know, illegal means or through asylum claiming, because Republicans won't allow that. It's a. It's a very clever trick on their part, because the result is that when Democrats are in power, the public sees those same images of human suffering and disorder and blames it on the Democrat. And so I think you're absolutely right that the thing Democrats need to be doing now is spotlighting cases like Abreu Garcia's and say. Saying this is what they actually mean when they talk about restoring law and order. And removing people.
- [17:18]
Andrew Egger
That is such a contrast. Right. I mean, the idea that what they are pursuing by defying the Supreme Court and throwing aside due process and sidelining the entire judicial system is law. I mean, that's just when you put it that way, it's really, really striking. Okay. Well, thank you, Greg, for coming on, talking through your reporting, talking through all this stuff with us. We appreciate you taking the time. And thanks everybody out there in TV land watching and listening to us. We hope you'll like and subscribe and share it with your friends. This stuff's really important and we'll continue to cover it. So thanks for watching and we'll see you next time.