Trump’s Deportation of Maryland Man Divides Conservatives

The Washington Post

12:33 JST, April 18, 2025

The case of a Maryland man who was illegally deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador is confronting conservatives with a clash of two long-held principles: fighting illegal immigration and defending personal liberties.

Most Republicans – and virtually all GOP lawmakers – have responded by stressing Kilmar Abrego García’s status as an undocumented immigrant and disputed claims that he is a gang member. But a small if growing number of conservatives are criticizing the Trump administration for what they call a trampling of basic rights, especially in challenging a recent Supreme Court ruling backing Abrego García’s return.

“Above all what strikes me is the utter contempt, the gratuitous contempt, they have shown for the rule of law,” said Ed Whelan, a conservative legal scholar with the Ethics and Public Policy Center. “Once you make the concession that he was deported in error, you can’t just say, ‘Oh, well, it doesn’t matter.’”

The result is an is an unusually stark divide between President Donald Trump and some traditional conservatives. Radio host Erick Erickson warned on his show recently that the Trump administration is making a mistake in declining to try to bring Abrego García back to the United States.

“There is real concern, even among Trump supporters, that this is a line that should not be crossed because it will be used eventually by the Democrats in a way we can’t foresee,” Erickson told his listeners. “There is a concern about respecting due process of law.”

He added, “I think it’s a dangerous game for the Trump administration to deport someone, claim it’s an administrative error, and ostensibly make no effort to bring him back.”

As the case has erupted into a turbulent legal and political battle, Democrats have held up Abrego García, 29, a husband and father who has not been convicted of a crime, as an emblem of what they call Trump’s cruel immigration policy. These conservative critics, by contrast, are focused less on Abrego García’s personal qualities – many believe he could be a gang member – than on the fact that the Trump administration appears to be flouting a court’s order to return him.

“The rule of law and the Constitution come before anything else,” said David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute and a former staffer for then-Rep. Raúl R. Labrador (R-Idaho). “It is a much bigger problem if the executive branch and the president are not constrained by the laws that Congress passes and by the courts.”

An immigration judge in 2019 denied Abrego García bond based on evidence that he was a gang member, although his lawyers say the evidence was flimsy and note that he never faced trial. Another judge also ruled that he could not be sent to El Salvador because he faced potential harm there.

The administration has admitted making a mistake in deporting him anyway, and on April 10, the Supreme Court directed it to “facilitate” the return of Abrego García. The administration has apparently done little in response, and U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis said Tuesday she would launch a proceeding that could result in a finding of contempt.

On Thursday, Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit wrote a blistering opinion declining the administration’s request to stop that proceeding. “It is difficult in some cases to get to the heart of the matter,” wrote Wilkinson, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan. “But in this case, it is not hard at all.”

He added: “The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. … This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.”

On Wednesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt repeated the administration’s contention that Abrego García is a “terrorist” and that critics are badly misguided in wishing for his return.

“Kilmar Abrego García is an illegal alien, MS-13 gang member and foreign terrorist who was deported back to his home country.” Leavitt said. “… The basic fact that he was illegally inside our country and had a lawful deportation order made him subject to deportation back to his home country of El Salvador.”

Bier said Republicans can be too quick to abandon other values when illegal immigration is at issue. “When it comes to immigration, it’s where conservative principles go to die,” he said. “Core policies that intersect with immigration are not treated like they would be in any other context.”

As a presidential candidate, Trump seized repeatedly on immigration as an issue, at times with over-the-top rhetoric such as claiming falsely that Haitian migrants were eating pets. He has continued that emphasis as president, tying an array of other issues – from Social Security to tariffs – to the politically favorable ground of illegal immigration.

The dissenting voices reflect a split of sorts between conservative thinkers and elected Republicans. The overwhelming reaction of Republican members of Congress has been to support Trump’s actions in the case – and to suggest that doing otherwise means embracing gang members and criminals.

The White House appears to be calculating that if it can show Abrego García to be a villain, it can win the political argument, if not the legal one. Administration officials released documents Wednesday showing that Abrego García’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, had obtained a protective order against him in 2021.

“Kilmar Abrego García had a history of violence and was not the upstanding ‘Maryland Man’ the media has portrayed him as,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement, adding, “This MS-13 gang member is not a sympathetic figure.”

Vasquez Sura said in response that her husband has been a good husband and father and that she obtained the order out of an abundance of caution.

Other Republicans have either backed Trump’s claim that the judicial orders impermissibly tell him how to conduct foreign policy, or simply asserted that the evidence shows Abrego García belongs to a murderous gang.

“Kilmar Abrego García was deported and is back HOME in El Salvador where he belongs thanks to President Trump’s swift action to secure our border and make America safe again,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) said in a statement. “García is a member of MS-13, a transnational criminal gang known for some of the most brutal, violent crimes imaginable.”

John Yoo, a prominent conservative who worked in the Justice Department under President George W. Bush, said the government’s actions make little sense legally.

“I don’t think they are handling it well from a legal perspective. They may have their political reasons for taking this hard line,” said Yoo, who teaches at the University of California at Berkeley. “They have already conceded in court that they made a mistake. It’s not clear to me why they are fighting so hard in court to say they have no ability to bring García back.”

Vice President JD Vance has engaged in an unusual back-and-forth over the case with critics on X in recent days. The legal system will inevitably make mistakes, he argued, adding that the administration’s critics offer no realistic alternative for handling the masses of undocumented immigrants.

“Here’s a useful test: ask the people weeping over the lack of due process what precisely they propose for dealing with Biden’s millions and millions of illegals,” Vance posted. “And with reasonable resource and administrative judge constraints, does their solution allow us to deport at least a few million people per year?”

Edward Feser, a conservative philosopher and writer, responded to one of Vance’s posts.

“Yes, Biden’s policy was disastrous and Trump is right vigorously to reverse it,” he wrote. “But the rule of law and due process are even more fundamental to justice and the common good than immigration policy.”

Other conservative analysts, from Ross Douthat to Rich Lowry, have also weighed in against Trump’s approach. “Correcting an acknowledged error regarding one person we shipped there does not seem like a slippery slope back to mass illegal immigration,” Douthat wrote.

The White House appears to be calculating that what is not playing well in the courts may be more successful in the political arena. Trump’s conservative critics say that strategy is not just misguided, but dangerous.

“Clearly there is political demagoguery from the White House that is trying to make a political virtue out of this legal vice,” Whelan said. “I’m not so naive as to be surprised by that, but the rule of law demands better than that.”