Deportation by Error, Governance by Impunity — When Presidents Mock the Rule of Law

Is there really any more doubt that the US is sliding towards authoritarianism?  It should have been obliterated by a surreal Oval Office appearance Monday morning, 

President Donald Trump stood beside El Salvador’s authoritarian leader Nayib Bukele and shared a moment that should send chills down the spine of every American who still believes in the rule of law. 

On the topic of whether to return Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Maryland father of three, who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador despite a standing U.S. court order blocking his removal, the response was yet another indicator of where things are heading.

Bukele’s response was immediate and contemptuous: “Of course I’m not going to do it,” he said to reporters. 

The Salvadoran president went further, likening the idea of returning Abrego Garcia to “smuggling a terrorist into the United States.” 

President Trump smiled approvingly as Bukele spoke, flanked by cabinet officials who echoed their leader’s intransigence on cue.

This wasn’t just diplomatic grandstanding, it was a constitutional crisis on full display.

Last week, the Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return. The deportation—acknowledged by the government itself as an “administrative error”—violated a 2019 immigration court ruling that barred his removal on the grounds that he might face violence or torture in El Salvador. The court’s intervention was an attempt to correct a grave injustice.

But the Justice Department responded by arguing that the judiciary had no authority to compel the White House to act. In a filing, it claimed that only the president held the power to conduct foreign policy—and therefore the courts could not dictate how to fix their mistake. That position, now bolstered by Trump’s public refusal to comply, amounts to open defiance of the Supreme Court.

So now we have a man who was illegally deported, imprisoned in one of the world’s most notorious penal systems, and told he has no path back—not because of any crime, not because of national security, but because the president doesn’t feel like it.

This is not a technical error. It is the natural consequence of a system that has allowed executive discretion in immigration to morph into unchecked power. That transformation began long before Trump, but, under his leadership, it has evolved into something far more dangerous: executive impunity.

The courts can rule, the facts can be clear, and the harm can be grievous—but none of it matters if the administration can simply decide it will not comply.  No one has been willing to hold the President accountable—and probably no one will.

This wasn’t the only affront to justice. In the same Oval Office meeting, the administration celebrated the latest round of deportations to El Salvador, bragging that 10 more individuals—allegedly affiliated with gangs—had been sent to the same prison system where Abrego Garcia now sits. 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio went so far as to call the alliance between Trump and Bukele “an example for security and prosperity in our hemisphere.”

That “example” includes a prison system where tens of thousands have disappeared without trial, due process, or even confirmation of life. After a wave of gang violence, Bukele imposed a state of emergency and gave military forces near-total authority to arrest anyone suspected of criminal involvement. 

“Human rights, democratic norms and the rule of law have all but disappeared in El Salvador,” said Amanda Strayer of Human Rights First. “Instead, the Trump administration is cozying up to and copying Bukele’s authoritarian playbook—rounding up people with no evidence, denying them any due process, and disappearing them in abusive Salvadoran prisons indefinitely.”

This is the system into which the United States wrongfully sent a man. This is the system we refuse to extract him from.

Perhaps the most chilling aspect of this entire episode is what it reveals about the hollowing out of judicial authority. The Supreme Court has spoken. The president has ignored it. And there appear to be no consequences.

This isn’t the first time. From ignoring injunctions on asylum bans to circumventing federal rulings through bureaucratic sleight of hand, the Trump administration has made a pattern of treating court decisions as optional. What’s different now is the brazenness. There’s no fig leaf, no claim of misunderstanding or delay. There is simply rejection: We know what the court said. We won’t do it.

This is governance by defiance. A legal system that depends on voluntary executive compliance cannot survive under a president who regards defiance as a virtue. A court whose rulings are treated as suggestions is not a court at all.

If a man’s wrongful deportation—backed by legal precedent, judicial order, and international human rights standards—cannot be corrected by the Supreme Court, then what can?

Bukele and Trump are not just political allies. They are ideological mirrors, using the machinery of state violence to consolidate power, punish perceived enemies, and stage-manage media narratives.

Both have perfected the art of the spectacle. Bukele flaunts his mass incarceration policies with choreographed drone shots of shirtless detainees and social media soundtracks. Trump echoes this strategy with press conferences framed around fear—of immigrants, gangs, chaos—and promises of swift, brutal order.

Their shared tactics include undermining democratic norms, bypassing institutional checks, and demonizing the press. It is no surprise that Bukele referred to being grouped with low-risk countries in a U.S. travel advisory as akin to receiving a “gold star.” This is politics reduced to branding, governance reduced to performance.

But underneath the performance are real lives—real people caught in the gears of authoritarian ambition. Abrego Garcia is not a statistic. He is a 29-year-old father of three whose only crime was trusting that a court ruling in his favor meant something.

It’s tempting to see this case as an isolated tragedy. It isn’t. It’s a test balloon for the erosion of rights, the normalization of lawlessness, and the fading line between democratic governance and strongman rule.

If a man can be deported in violation of a court order and held indefinitely in a foreign prison—and neither the president nor the courts will bring him home—then what prevents that same logic from being applied to others? To political dissidents? To journalists? To anyone deemed inconvenient by the state?

This is how democratic backsliding happens—not all at once, but through a slow accumulation of shrugged-off violations. The administration calls it an “error.” The court calls it unlawful. The president calls it irrelevant.

And so, a man remains in a prison cell. His children wait in Maryland. The Constitution collects dust.

The United States cannot claim to be a nation of laws if the executive branch can violate them at will. The rule of law either constrains power or it is merely decorative. In the case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, it is now brutally clear which it has become.

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