I am amazed at how easily columnist John Donegan, a lawyer, can shrug off the Trump administration’s refusal to provide basic due process to a 29-year-old sheet metal apprentice from Maryland, who is a lawful U.S. resident and married to an American citizen (“Showdown at the not-so-OK Corral,” April 10).
I am sure that if, due to an “administrative error,” Mr. Donegan was arrested and sent to a gulag in El Salvador, he would desperately want a judge to correctly interpret the Constitution; call what happened a “wholly lawless act,” as U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis did last week; and demand he be sent back.
The Trump administration’s hollow argument that because Abrego Garcia is now in El Salvador, it is up to the government of El Salvador to determine whether he is sent back is complete fiction.
The United States ambassador in El Salvador could simply ask for his release. If diplomacy fails, the CIA could contact his counterpart in El Salvador. That call would not be ignored.
If it wanted to, the Trump administration could threaten to withhold full payment of $6 million El Salvador is getting to imprison men the DOJ claims, without proof, are a threat to our country.
But they don’t want to do that. They prefer the power of the dark threat that lies within this story: It could happen to you.
Anne Quinn
Atascadero
This article appears in Apr 17-27, 2025.
I have to admit to having difficulty relating to the situation of Abrego Garcia, who finds himself deported back to his home country. I did not enter the US illegally, but am fortunate to be a native born citizen, and am not here only because of a “temporary” stay in deportation granted back in 2019 because of the danger I faced from the other gangs in my home country. I don’t have a criminal record, nor have I been the subject of a domestic violence restraining order either in the US or elsewhere. The only “gang” I have associated with was a rugby club in my youth, which did admittedly contain a few rough and lively characters but none who engaged in any cooperative criminal enterprises. So it would be pretty improbable for me to find myself in Mr. Garcia’s situation, and being deported to my home country would land me right back here in the US.
Wrote this on Monday:
Today, the President of the United States defied the Supreme Court. But life in the United States of Privilege went on. The Dow Jones even rose a few points. The Giants beat the Phils. The horses pointed to the Kentucky Derby lounged in their stalls awaiting their appointment with destiny. My dog chased a cat.
But, sure enough, the Constitution died.
“No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.”
Robert Frost, Out, Out— 1916
Mr. Donegan’s remarks only confirm to me that many Americans couldn’t care less whether an immigrant disappears. But, what happens when a member of the privileged class disappears? Will it not be too late by then?
John D:
The issue with illegal immigration is jobs, there aren’t any. The first thing that people that defend mass illegal immigration is, “yeah, but these people do jobs Americans won’t do.” They are referring to jobs like mowing your lawn, picking fruit, or other labor intensive work. I would have to disagree with them. Americans used to pick fruit and vegetables a lot. Prior to and during the Great Depression, Americans worked the Central Valley and followed the seasonal circuit, picking whatever was in season. Steinbeck’s classic “The Grapes of Wrath” is a great example of that era. When desperate enough or when it pays enough, Americans are happy to pick vegetables. The issue is labor that increases daily by thousands of people who skip across our (formerly) open border. Wages will never rise when the owners of fertile California land always have a supply of labor, they don’t need to raise wages because there is always someone else waiting in the wings to the low paid work. These illegal immigrants aren’t even formal guest workers, they don’t exist. Our economy is collapsing and the minute when labor gets tight enough that the distinguished, local, farming family the Hayashi’s post an ad saying that they will pay a living wage working their fields, I’d be happy to spend a Saturday picking their delicious strawberries. This might happen if, and I know it’s a contentious issue, the current administration deports enough. At a minimum, doing so will raise the wages of the legal immigrants working those fields. Why is this even an argument?
The reason Americans stopped working the fields in the Central valley or picking the stone fruit out there is because WWII happened and they went to work in factories or went off to war to fight, die, and WIN WWII. Coming back, many used their well earned GI Bill benefits and went to college or into the respectably paid jobs on the assembly lines in American factories and never looked back.
Id like to think that as actual Americans, we paid our dues and there’s nothing wrong for telling others to get in the back of the bus. WWII was an opportunity for various ethnic groups to prove their loyalty to our country by fighting and dying in ethnically homogeneous military units. These people deserve respect for doing so, but who are these people that until recently and under a Republican administration, pour over our border, engage in human trafficking, use connections with drug cartels to bring contraband over our border, who help criminal street gangs, and run protection rackets in the city and at the first opportunity trot out their wordy academics to defend their people and illegal immigration??
There are no more jobs in America, this is why the large scale, organized, criminal activity many of these people engage in pays. If America actually had jobs, engaging in crime would be grounds for ostracization by their own people. But when their sons and daughters, after slinging drugs or threatening and shaking down law abiding, small business owners in the inner city, pay the rent or put food on the table, who’s going to complain??
America needs real employment, the private sector is dead. We need to bring back FDRs WPA ASAP. Declare a state of emergency, seize or tax concentrated wealth, nationalize everything.
Mr. or Ms. Fly: “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?”
Careful how you answer and who you cozy up to. I’m pretty sure Donegan is a plant for the Trumpists. Anyone without a WASPish name could be in trouble. And wasps usually attack and eat flys.
As for me, I am not a member of any political party, I AM A DEMOCRAT!
And what you know about FDR could fit on the head of a pin. Your comments are more in line with anarchists and nihilists who would destroy the Constitution and this nation. I’m guessing the biography of Nikolai Bukharin sits by your bedside.
Michael:
Wow, you really blew up. Anyway, I’m no expert on FDR, but I do hold a four year degree as a History major (CSUSM, ’03) and I have a nice decorative, antique ceramic plate with his visage on it at my workstation. Was he perfect? No. He was president when Japanese-Americans were interred, he authorized the Manhattan Project leading to the use of the atom bomb, and some of his personal correspondences indicated slight antisemitism.
However, his credits outweigh his debits. He directly employed 14 million unemployed Americans with government employment during the Great Depression. He rolled out what remains of our modern welfare state i.e. 40 hours work weeks, unemployment insurance, social security, and numerous three letter agencies which all contribute(d) to the the quality of life we still enjoy. My favorite thing he did was take down the corrupt (Irish) Democratic Party machine in NYC known as Tammany Hall.
FDR may have been the last Democratic president that ever did anything useful for the average American. Although, I do appreciate what LBJ did for poor and rural Americans (I’ve lived in Oklahoma, Indiana, Colorado, and Oregon).
Right now the Democratic party is the laughingstock of the US. It is as owned by corporate interests as Republicans, but at least they’ll tell you to your face.
During the last presidential race not a single dem could say they’d end the money laundering operation known as the Ukraine war. As someone raised during the Soviet Union and arms race, the idea that under a bumbling Democratic Commander-in-Chief we would send the corrupt Zylensky regime F-16s, tanks, MLRS, provide targeting data, and special operators to Ukraine had me and my family looking for the nearest bomb shelter. All they had to do was renounce their support for that war and they would have won the presidency. But they couldn’t because the very same defense contractors that depend on federal contracts to line their pockets are the same ones providing campaign contributions to Democrats. They lost my vote.
I’m in my 50s and my late mother was a (alcoholic) peacenik. My late father dropped out (or was thrown out) of West Point in the late 60s during the height of the Vietnam war. We also drove a split window VW van in the 70s for years. My father went to Woodstock and we lived in a converted school bus in a forest in Oregon.
As I told my delusional Democratic voting friends, I’d rather be alive under a fascist regime (Trump) than dead under a Democratic, velvet glove fascist regime (Biden). We would all most likely be dead by now from nuclear war if the Democrats won. Pure and simple.
As for the US Constitution, I’m no expert, but I am a trained paralegal.
Our economy is collapsing, the dollar is dying, and we are in a Depression. Oh, and China just conducted an above ground hydrogen bomb test: https://youtu.be/oXmRpf23Ry0?si=5VXyOgEgHU…
Happy Easter.