At the Edge of the Rule of Law - Unbelievable - How the Trump Administration Persecutes Kilmar Abrego Garcia and Risks a Constitutional Crisis

The story of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia is no longer just an individual case. It has become a symbol of how far the Trump administration is willing to go to enforce its immigration policy with harshness and arbitrariness - and how unscrupulously fundamental principles of the rule of law are being disregarded. Today, only three days after his release from pretrial detention in a federal case in Nashville, Abrego Garcia was arrested again - this time in front of his wife, his brother, his lawyers and dozens of supporters. The scene was the ICE building in Baltimore, where he was actually supposed to appear for a routine check-in. It became a trap. As soon as he climbed the steps to the federal building to applause and chants of “Sí se puede,” the handcuffs clicked. Anyone who tried to take pictures of the arrest was taken away immediately. Only minutes earlier he had spoken - with a trembling voice, but full of dignity. “Brothers and sisters, my name is Kilmar Abrego Garcia. And I want you to remember that today, I can say with pride, that I am free and reunited with my family.” Words that had barely faded when he was again taken into custody by the same authorities that had unlawfully deported him to El Salvador in March.

The sequence of events borders on political arbitrariness. First, Abrego Garcia was sent to the notorious terrorism prison CECOT in El Salvador against an explicit court order - an institution whose name stands for torture, humiliation and lawlessness. Then the government claimed for weeks that it was “powerless” to bring him back. Finally they did bring him back to Nashville - but not to correct a violation of the law, rather to charge him with alleged human smuggling. Now, after his release, a new web of threats is being spun. His lawyers report that the Trump administration tried to pressure him into a guilty plea: a “deal” that would have sent him to Costa Rica, where he could live freely as a legal refugee. If he refused, the message was, deportation to Uganda would follow - a country with which he has no connection, whose language he does not speak, and where his safety, according to his defense, would be seriously endangered. “Dragged halfway across the world,” as one of his attorneys put it.

Today, once again in court, it became clear how thin the ground beneath this policy has become. Judge Paula Xinis sharply reprimanded the government for repeatedly ignoring her orders. “Kilmar Abrego Garcia is still not home, and the Trump administration continues to ignore court orders,” was the finding. The threshold has now been crossed: we are on the verge of a constitutional crisis. Trump’s inaction, his deliberate disregard for judicial decisions, could not only shake the foundation of the rule of law - it could also cost Garcia his life. For Abrego Garcia, all this is not just a legal battle. It is a fight for survival, one that he is waging in full view of the public. He spoke of the nights in CECOT that he only endured because he thought of his wife Jennifer and his children, whom he imagined laughing on a trampoline. Images of family happiness that gave him the strength not to break in his cell. Disbelief

His appearance in Baltimore became a warning to all those suffering under the measures of the government: “To all of the families who have also suffered separations or who live under the constant threat of being separated: This injustice is hitting us hard, but we must not lose hope. God is with us, and God will bring justice.” What remains is the image of a man who, at the moment of his renewed arrest, lowers his head - not out of shame, but out of the knowledge that he himself has become a symbol. A symbol of the cruelty of a policy that treats people as pawns. And of the resilience of those who defy it, even when the price is immeasurably high. The struggle continues and everyone will fight it, until the end.

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