In a "breathtaking departure from the rule of law" - and facing multiple legal routs - Trump and his fascist flunkies continue to lie, stall and gaslight on their right to disappear a Maryland sheet metal worker and other brown-skinned migrants to an El Salvador gulag with zero evidence of wrongdoing, even as ICE Gestapo still run rampant - Smashed Windshields 'R Us - and oh yeah U.S. citizens may be next. Take note, says historian Timothy Snyder: "This is the beginning of an American policy of state terror."

The escalating legal standoff over the wrongful deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia has in turn become a "political flashpoint" on an already fiercely divided Capitol Hill. To most of us, the case symbolizes a racist crackdown that threatens the basic rights of us all, while the regime's increasingly flagrant violations of court orders threaten the very rule of law. Dug into an alternate reality, the regime argues it's nobly fighting for "the safety of American citizens" against raping, murdering "illegal aliens," "foreign criminals," and "terrorists" like Garcia, who came here from El Salvador without papers at 16, has never been charged with a crime, was granted protection under a 2019 court order due to a "credible fear" of violence from gangs back home, is now a union member and father of three married to a U.S. citizen, and is alleged to be a member of the MS-13 gang because he wore a Chicago Bulls hat and hoodie "indicative" of gang membership, and a detective - since suspended for being a lying scum bag - said he was.

Despite what one judge politely calls their "flimsy" evidence, the cabal of miscreants is so desperate to prove their racist, rapey case they launched a propaganda campaign of smears and lies against Garcia. This week, it culminated in a sordid set piece that saw the self-proclaimed "world's coolest dictator," El Salvador's Nayib Bukele, and America's mob boss and "deteriorating carnival clown" happily "bond over human-rights abuses" in an Oval Office now transformed into a gaudy, blinged-out "Golden Office for the Golden Age" awash in tacky faux-gold gimcracks - on fireplace, mantle, reportedly doorway - evidently bought online from China's Guangzhou Homemax Decorative Company as part of their "High-density Home Decoration Polyurethane Appliques Ornament" line. FYI, one enterprising journalist found, they're still available, cheap. From Guangzhou: "Hello Sir. Yes we have this model. Do you need gold color, please?” Maybe with hacksaws?

In the squalid pageantry of the meeting, "a microcosm of everything bad about Trump ll," Bukele eagerly brown-nosed the mad king: "What you're doing with the border is incredible!" Then, in exchange for a hefty chunk of blood money, he offered to use his "iron fist" tactics against America's alleged criminals just like for his own, three-year war against gangs, in which tens of thousands of his people have been disappeared into brutal prisons "without even the illusion of due process." Bukele achieved this goal by declaring a "State of Exception" that was supposed to last 30 days but which has been extended 37 times. Historically, it's a key strategem of Soviet and Nazi fascists, who accurately reason that if they can convince their populace these are exceptional times, they will be more inclined to accept the growing lawlessness. For Trump, a vengeful, aspiring autocrat who's never had any use for due process and only seeks to escape, not follow the law, it's a perfect, ghastly model; it's also state terror.

Before the presser but with cameras rolling, Trump pulled his new fascist bestie aside to happily confide, "Home-growns are next...You're gonna need to build about five more places." Contented grins all around. His suggestion that his next target will be American citizens he doesn't like was, like so much that's come before, both shocking and unsurprising. He's previously said his pretend A.G. Pam Bondi was "studying the laws" to see if they can get away with deporting "really bad people" who also happen to be citizens. "If it's a homegrown criminal, I have no problem with it," he's said. "If we can do that, that's good." In his confab with Bukele, he again blithely confirmed "I'd like to go a step further." Asked if that means he's okay with rounding up Americans who might disagree with him, in this case about half the country, to a gulag in El Salvador, he babbled, "If they are criminals and they hit people with baseball bats over the head (or) rape 87-year-old women, yeah, that includes them."

The exchange was just one of many during a hair-raising shitshow in which the regime's assembled ghouls and flunkies dutifully snickered, groveled, showboated and lied; inexplicably, video of the grisly spectacle appeared on a split screen with ads for obscure products like Angelpaste Miracle Cream: "Experience the miracle at angelpaste.com." Bondi's stonefaced, talking-points pablum on state-sponsored disappearances: "It's a legal question the president is looking into...He has given us a directive to make America safe again." The issue of Garcia's life or death is "foreign policy" and out of their hands, intoned Marco Rubio, who just announced the closure of the State Dept.'s agency for fighting disinformation, though he called it “Protecting and Championing Free Speech." Sternly nodding along was Barbie Dress-up Noem, who's spending $200 million on glam photo-ops, including her $9 million war-crime appearance at CECOT, funded by the now-shuttered DHS Office for Civil Rights, to tell migrants to "Leave now."

Naturally, Bukele joined the tawdry Oval Office pageant. Asked if he plans to return Garcia, he scoffed, "How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? Of course I'm not going to do it. We're not fond of smuggling terrorists into our country. The question is preposterous." Cue Trump nodding, smirking, twisting the question into another ugly WTF attack on the assembled press: "Well, they'd love to have a criminal released here. They would love it. These are sick people." (Pot/kettle). In another exchange, he suggested the press doesn't "want to put out good figures because I think they hate our country actually." Besides, Trump added, those torture porn videos of hunched-over prisoners at CECOT are just what's needed: "People eat it up, that’s what people want to see.” Bukele, author of the brutality, nodding sagely: "Mr President, you have 350 million people to liberate. But to liberate 350 million people, you have to imprison some."

The grotesque twisting of language into an Orwellian, up-is-down reality - justifying Garcia's exile under a wartime rule to say he's part of Venezuelan gangs "invading" us though they're not, nor is he Venezuelan or a gangster, crushing free speech and academic discourse in the name of fighting anti-Semitism - is integral to their dystopian mission. On Tyranny''s Timothy Snyder notes that for a state to commit "criminal terror" against its people," it must dehumanize victims by inverting meanings - Stalin called his targets "criminals" and "terrorists, Hitler, "vermin" and "traitors," all clearly unworthy of protection. MAGA's language continues to warp and spiral: Wingnut "counterterrorism" flunky Sebastian Gorka now claims a regime that illegally expels masses of people without due process "loves" America - "We have people who love America, the president, his Cabinet" - and "then there (those) on the side of the cartel members, the illegal aliens, the terrorists, and you have to ask yourself, are they technically aiding and abetting them?"

The evil overlord of depraved language is mountingly hysterical Stephen Goebbels. In the Bukele meeting, he ranted reporters "want foreign terrorists in the country who kidnap women and children." On Fox News later, he melted down, shrieking at host Bill Hemmer he had it "all wrong," and actually "we won the Supreme Court case" (lost, 9-0), to return Garcia "would be "kidnapping" and "an unimaginable invasion of El Salvador," the lawyer who said his removal was "an error" (as did several White House officials) was "a saboteur, a Democrat" who has been suspended and then fired cause that's how Stalin rolls. "Nobody was mistakenly deported anywhere," he screamed, his voice higher and higher. No mistake was made...He’s an illegal alien from El Salvador! This was the right person sent to the right place!" Then, he furiously bellowed at Hemmer, “So Bill, you tell me what country should we deport him to? Tell me!" To this, fact-checker Daniel Dale declared his claim of "some lefty saboteur at the DOJ" was "nonsense."

On regime actions lawyers have almost universally deemed "pretty obviously illegal and unconstitutional,” the courts have echoed him. That goes from the unanimous (brazenly defied) Supreme Court ruling the government must “facilitate Garcia’s return, to a lower court ruling blasting his deportation as illegal, to Wednesday's bombshell ruling by Judge James Boasberg - who Trump obviously wants to impeach - finding probable cause to hold the administration in criminal contempt for ignoring everything he's told them to do. "The Constitution does not tolerate willful disobedience of judicial orders - especially by officials of a coordinate branch who have sworn an oath to uphold it," wrote the long-stonewalled Boasberg, mildly noting the government has "defied the Court's order deliberately and gleefully.” Once again, he gave them some slack, time and options they didn't deserve; once again, they appealed, but briefly because c'mon we all know they have zilch in the way of new facts or arguments to offer.

As a result of these manifold atrocities, argues Thom Hartmann, "The old American order is dead. It ended on April 14, 2025, when a Latin American strongman sat in the Oval Office and discussed sending U.S. citizens to foreign concentration camps with the American president while they jointly defied the Supreme Court." As sorry proof, he cites all the basic tenets of U.S. constitutional law defiled - habeas corpus, due process, right to trial and counsel, no cruel or unusual punishment - that echo Jefferson's critiques of King George, a "history of repeated injuries and usurpations...submitted to a candid world." That mad king "refused his assent" to laws for the public good, obstructed justice, made judges dependent "on his will alone," transported us "beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offenses," thus rendering him "a Tyrant...unfit to be the ruler of a free people.” Today, he says, "Everyone who is not part of the authoritarian regime is a member of the dissident movement now. The sooner they realize it, the better."

That truth is especially urgent, argues Jonathan Last, given the savage spectre of CECOT, where 90% of inmates have never been convicted of a crime, 75% haven't even been arrested, and none will likely get out. "This is not incarceration; it is liquidation," he writes of an "arbitrary, opaque" political act where, "There is only power." Democrats should be "on the ground every day until Garcia is brought home," and before more innocents land there, in the fierce mode of Poland's Solidarity or Navalny’s People’s Alliance. Maryland's Dem Sen. Chris Van Hollen tried. He flew to El Salvador to meet with Garcia, his constituent; he was initially turned away but finally did, without offering any updates, though Bukele posted a "death camps" jibe. In contrast, West Virginia GOP Rep. Riley Moore was both allowed into CECOT and got to join the MAGA torture porn trend by posting selfies - inane thumbs up! - before caged "brutal criminals" who made him "even more determined to support (Trump's) efforts to secure our homeland." One local headline: "Moore Gives CECOT Two Thumbs Up."

MAGA thugs have stubbornly clung to their talking points: Tom Homan called Dem demands for due process "disgusting," and Barbie Press Secretary sneered that, judging from their "sensationalism, you'd think we deported a candidate for Father of the Year." Still, it's becoming clear, per one pundit, that, "Disappearing innocent immigrants into foreign slave-labor gulags - and then promising to do the same to American citizens - is a losing issue for Republicans." At rowdy town halls, Iowa's Chuck Grassley drew jeers and angry queries like, "You going to bring that guy back from El Salvador?", and Klan Mom MTG faced a barrage of hostile questions she responded to by sneering, lying, and sending thugs to remove or tase several constituents. MAGA also lost bigly in court on their appeal of a judge's order to "facilitate" Garcia's return, with a Reagan-appointed Court of Appeals judge issuing a scathing rebuke of their shocking," "extraordinary" defiance and failure to "perceive the rule of law as vital to American ethos."

Meanwhile, the state terror goes on. Two weeks ago, Elsy Noemi Berrios, a 52-year-old Salvadoran mother of four with a work permit, pending asylum application and no criminal record, was taken into custody in Maryland as she and 18-year-old daughter were driving to work; federal agents in tactical gear stopped their car, refused to provide a search warrant when she asked, and instead smashed her driver's side car window before handcuffing her behind her back as her daughter Cruz screamed, “Mommy, no. Mommy.” She is still being held at a Pennsylvania prison, but her lawyer says DHS has yet to offer any evidence or even arrest warrant. Her daughter says her mom works hard to support her and her siblings, and "has done everything right." A DHS lackey says Berrios "has been identified as an associate of the vicious MS-13 gang, Americans can rest assured she is off our streets and locked up, and the media (should) stop doing the bidding of gangs that murder, maim, rape, and terrorize Americans."

In March in Massachusetts, ICE "enhanced enforcement operations” detained 370 "criminal aliens"; in New Bedford, they included three workers at the Minit Man Car Wash, one at Bob’s Tires, and two men inside their house after agents battered down the door and pointed their guns at children eating breakfast before school. Monday, agents also arrested Juan Francisco Méndez, 29, a Guatemalan with no criminal record in the final stage of his asylum case; his wife Marilu and their 9-year-old son have protected status. Mendez was detained after three carloads of agents in bulletproof vests blocked the car he and Mariu were driving in; as Marilu began recording, he called their lawyer Ondine Galvez Sniffin, who told them to stay put until she arrived. Marilu asked to see a warrant; an agent stared dumbly. Then he shattered their rear window with a pick axe - Marilu gasps - and dragged them out. When Sniffin got there, agents had bustled Mendez to prison. Marilu said they kept calling Juan "Antonio," the name of another man who lives in their building: Your government at work. "My clients were within their rights, and they were met with brutality,” Sniffin said. "I'm ashamed of what this country is becoming." She is not alone.

Update: Twenty-year-old Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez, a U.S.-born citizen, was detained by ICE in Florida Wednesday and charged with illegally entering the state as an "unauthorized alien." Lopez-Gomez was a passenger in a car pulled over by a state trooper who said the driver was going 78 mph in a 65 mph zone. Following public pressure and protests, he has now been released. Still: "The leap from disappearing the undocumented to disappearing visa holders to disappearing green-card holders to disappearing naturalized citizens to disappearing natural-born citizens is no leap at all, but a series of tiny steps."

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