Actually, fighting over due process for migrants is both moral and popular
Democrats like Cillizza and Newsom, who see fighting Trump's wrongful deportations and abductions as a "distraction", have it all wrong.
Last week, the Trump Administration suffered a string of defeats in its campaign against migrants, both in the public discourse and in the courts. Chris Van Hollen, the Democratic Senator from Maryland, made headlines for making a journey down to El Salvador, and the courts are ramping up their battle with team Trump.
Senator Van Hollen was able to organize a meeting with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the undocumented Maryland man who was one of many wrongfully deported to CECOT, a high security prison in El Salvador, in spite of explicit court orders not to return him there. Many had begun to fear the worst when both El Salvador and the American government were seemingly unable and unwilling to produce him, so his relative safety and wellbeing being made evident during the meeting with Van Hollen helped assuage those concerns.
However, almost immediately, both El Salvador’s president Bukele and Trump ramped up their concerted propaganda campaign against the man. Ever since the Trump Administration admitted that deporting Abrego Garcia was performed in error, they have been toiling away to backpedal this admission by smearing and defaming him as a leading member of MS-13, only producing shoddy informant testimony from six years ago that fundamentally contradicts key details of his personal life (such as the idea that he belonged to a Long Island branch of MS-13 in spite of rarely being there and never living there), some tattoos on his fingers (that Trump shared doctored images of in a desperate ploy to connect the symbols to the name “MS-13”), and the fact that he wore a Chicago Bulls hat which, apparently, is supposed to bolster evidence of his connection to the gang. Then, upon coordinating the meeting between Van Hollen and Abrego Garcia, government officials in El Salvador had apparently placed margarita glasses in front of the Senator and Abrego Garcia so as to create the perception that the mood was light and that Abrego Garcia was not in imminent danger, and was, as President Bukele writes, “sipping margaritas. . .in the topical paradise of El Salvador!” Van Hollen says that neither man had actually sipped from their glasses, which can be inferred from the fact that the salt/sugar coating on the rims appears intact on both glasses.
Though Abrego Garcia has become the face of all American residents surreptitiously whisked away to El Salvador’s prison camp due to his high profile court case, pedantry over the details of his personal circumstances should not detract from the much broader implications of his case. The fates of the other 200-odd people sent (so far) to toil and suffer in a prison camp without due process and without criminal records hang in the balance. Perhaps even more importantly, the implicit consequences of abducting and disappearing people without trial and the explicit consequences of Trump’s expressed desire to expand the prison to include American-born “criminals” should concern everyone.
And apparently, “concern everyone” it does. A poll conducted by Data for Progress suggests that the vast majority of Americans unsurprisingly believe that even illegal immigrants are entitled to due process. An even greater number of people are opposed to permanent residents having their visas summarily revoked over speech issues, as has been the case with pro-Palestinian students across the nation. A different poll conducted by Ipsos suggests that a majority of Americans believe that Trump should comply with court orders to halt deportations to El Salvador.
So why, in spite of mountainous moral and political evidence to the contrary, have the majority of Democrats have remained mum about the issue of immigration writ large? Due to Republicans’ marginal victory this past election, Democrats and liberals seem to be fearful of their own shadow when it comes to the subject of immigration. Many in the liberal pundit class, like former CNN host Chris Cillizza, see going to bat for those wrongfully deported as a losing political battle, and some elected Democrats, like California Governor Gavin Newsom, have minimized the plight of those wrongfully abducted as simply another one of Trump’s “distractions of the day,” with both groups suggesting that waging this fight is sucking oxygen away from more viable political battles, like Trump’s abysmally executed trade war. Focus needn’t be treated like a zero-sum equation, and the material ramifications of Trump’s cruel immigration policies intertwine with his economic policy. For instance, Trump’s constriction of global trade via his haphazard application of tariffs paired with an onslaught on a major and vital segment of the working class (migrant labor) could be seen as an attack on America’s productive capacity on two fronts. What’s more, Republicans evidently plan to fill at least some of the impending gap left behind by displaced migrant laborers with children, advancing their wildly unpopular campaign against progressive 20th century reforms.
None of this even considers the aforementioned fact that Trump’s specific policy actions on immigration are just generally unpopular, and are therefore easily rebuked. However, the same Ipsos poll cited earlier contains within it a contradiction; in spite of opposition to specific actions, the margins on Trump’s immigration policy more broadly are a lot tighter. This would suggest that laying bare the draconian reality of Trump’s policy would help shift the narrative favorably for immigrants. But protectionists, nativists, and racists have been winning on immigration in the minds of the public because Democrats continue to cede ground on this issue rather than stand for the truth: that undocumented immigrants commit less crimes per capita than natural born citizens, are responsible for a vanishingly small number of homicides (less than 30 last year, in spite of audacious claims by Trump), stimulate the economy, and pay taxes in spite of often being barred from benefitting from social programs. Additionally, if the ongoing fentanyl crisis is of major concern, then consider that the vast majority of drug trafficking occurs through legal citizens.
Democrats would be wise to follow Van Hollen’s lead and take an activist role in getting to the bottom of Trump’s infractions against immigrants and visa holders who have been unlawfully detained. Unless and until that happens, the courts will continue to serve as the strongest bulwark against Trump’s agenda. But as contempt proceedings are being prepared and the Supreme Court has issued a temporary stay on deportations to CECOT, the Trump Administration’s continued defiance of the courts seems to be setting the stage for an impending constitutional crisis.