For centuries, the writ of habeas corpus—a fundamental protection against unlawful imprisonment—has remained a core fixture of democratic governance. Suspending it would defy the Constitution, but Trump is weighing his options.
Sending people to another country didn't start with Donald Trump, but with George W. Bush in the War on Terror, called "extraordinary rendition." “Extraordinary” when it occurs outside of normal legal strictures, as with Abrego García today.
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Judge Harvey Wilkinson, a Ronald Reagan appointee, called the Abrego Garcia case "shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear."
It looks like potential contempt proceedings in the Alien Enemies Act case and the Abrego Garcia case will be running in parallel, leapfrogging each other for the right to be the Supreme Court’s biggest test so far of the Trump II presidency.
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Trump is seeking to establish a truly chilling proposition: that no one can stop his administration from imprisoning anyone it wants... If the government can disappear any people it wishes, we all should be very, very afraid.
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