Abrego Garcia’s mistaken deportation to his home country of El Salvador earlier this year has helped galvanize opposition to President Donald Trump’s immigration policies. His attorneys claim the administration is now manipulating the immigration system in order to punish him for successfully challenging that deportation.
A motion from the government filed in U.S. District Court in Maryland late on Friday says officials have received assurances from Liberia that Abrego Garcia would not face persecution or torture there. Further, it says an immigration officer heard Abrego Garcia’s claims that he feared deportation to the West African nation, but ruled against him.
His attorneys argue in a separate Friday filing that Abrego Garcia has already designated Costa Rica as a country where he is willing to be deported. They claim the government now must send him there. The fact that officials continue to pursue deportation to other countries is evidence that the process is retaliatory and violates due process protections, they argue.
While he does often ignore court orders and laws, he can’t do it all the time. It means all his lawyers get held up in courts, and people carrying out the orders can sometimes get in legal trouble for following known illegal orders, so they don’t always feel comfortable doing things that have been ruled against.
He also does still need to keep up appearances to a degree. If day one, when he put his first foot in the white house, he instantly said “every single city, full of national guard, deport all the black and brown people regardless of status, also delete every single social safety net”, you’d get riots in the street the same day.
He can push things, but only in certain areas, a certain amount at a time, otherwise he’ll begin to face too much pushback, and the people carrying out his orders won’t feel safe doing so.