When the federal system of checks and balances can't be enforced...

Get the Point!

I'm not one to dabble much in conspiracy theories, but everything in my gut tells me that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the U.S. resident alien who is married to an American citizen and father to three young American citizens—but still illegally rounded up and deported to his native El Salvador by ICE last month—is likely dead.

Mr. Garcia

Sure, there's a whole circus in effect in Washington, D. C. right now with the U.S. Supreme Court ordering the Trump administration to comply with a District Court ruling to “facilitate” Garcia's return—with the Trump administration dragging its heels in outright defiance. But deep down in my gut, I keep pondering whether the Trump team, knowing that the Supreme Court maintains a 6-3 split in its favor, would risk agitating its theoretically “separate” and “co-equal” branch by being defiant on a matter that is just as easy to reverse as, say, Trump's huge tariffs against ideological allies and foes alike one week, only to “suspend” those tariffs when the public outcry roared? Perhaps, especially knowing that the top of the MAGA chain is an unstable sort who routinely throws caution to the wind.

Such is why I found it curious that Trump feted El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele—one who shunned a suit and tie for the visit similar to Ukraine's President Volodomyr Zelensky this last winter but received none of the harsh haberdashery rebuke from the right—flashed a wicked grin, agreed that Garcia's return was not imminent, and even chatted with Trump about building MORE prisons to house “Home Grown” prisoners. I can only conclude that “Home Grown” means full fledged American citizens who may be summarily rounded up on false allegations the same as Garcia was falsely accused of being a member of the notorious MS-13 gang?

Trump and Bukele

While we all must wait and see how this all plays out (while hoping for Mr. Garcia’s safe return), I can safely conclude that the Framers of the Constitution did not foresee that a future sitting president would be so low down and cunning as to ignore the separate and co-equal authority of the legislative and judicial branches.

When I first read yesterday that Trump wants to send American citizens to El Salvadoran prisons, I immediately reckoned that federal courts across our nation will find his "disappearing" Americans to be unconstitutional but as I have cautioned before, since neither the judicial or legislative branches have police forces that can compel Trump to follow their dictates, we now sit in a constitutionally perilous era in which the executive branch that controls the U.S. Marshals, FBI, DEA, ICE, and most crucially, the military, may continue to shrug their shoulders at judicial orders, congressional subpoenas, and even pending legislation while asking "who gon' check us?"

Indeed, the inability for the judicial branch to physically “check” unlawful activity notoriously occurred once before, in 1906, when Ed Johnson, a Black man accused of raping a white woman in Tennessee, was under threat to be taken from the local Chattanooga jail and lynched by an angry white mob. The U.S. Supreme Court issued an order requiring the local sheriff to keep Johnson safe pending further litigation; on March 19th of that year, Johnson was summarily removed from the jail—while the sheriff watched from across the street with glee—and was brutally beaten, sodomized, shot, and then burned to death with his charred remains left for the world to see the macabre face of defiance. A letter was then sent to the U.S. Supreme Court that included the words, “Justice John Marshall Harlan: Come get your (dead) Nigger now!” The 1906 Supreme Court, with no armed forces or guards to enforce its dictates, was left looking feckless and inept—just as the 2025 Court is right now with respect to Mr. Garcia—and the Trump administration's refusal to bring him back alive…assuming that he is alive!

Lest we forget…