What The Hell America!

As it happens, as G. Elliott Morris details, polling also shows broad disapproval of other particular moves—like deporting people to foreign prisons and removing people in defiance of courts. In short, neither option—bringing him back or ignoring courts to leave him in El Salvador—is good politics for Trump.

The only way Trump wins the argument is if he can subsume all these specifics—deporting longtime nonviolent residents, flouting courts, conspiring with fellow dictators to stash people in foreign gulags—under the rubric of fighting “illegal aliens.” But why assume he’s succeeding at that? The more media attention Vance and Trump bring to this case, the less likely that becomes. This is also a reason for Democrats to do more to spotlight particularized horrors. If Democrats don’t engage, they’ll only make it easier for Trump and Miller to recast those specifics as “hey, we’re just keeping out illegals.”

In the end, what makes Vance’s stance so reprehensible is that he knows the administration has the option of returning Abrego Garcia and moving to deport him through lawful channels, as Vance’s own tweet demonstrates. But he’s defending the decision to leave him in a foreign prison instead, perhaps for life.