Kilmar Abrego Garcia Came to Us For Help. We Kidnapped Him.

A man came to us for help.

He came to all of us: you and me. America is a republic, which is a type of democracy, and that’s how democracy works. A democracy is a government of, by, and for the people. What the government does, it does in the people’s name. So, a man came to you and me for help. His name was Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

Kilmar was a citizen of the country of El Salvador. He fled the country because he was threatened with extortion by the brutal Barrio 18 gang. He came to the United States, to us, for help. In the United States, the police accused him of being in the MS-13 gang, based on the testimony of one unnamed informant. The informant said that Kilmar was in an MS-13 chapter in New York, where Kilmar had never been even once. The judge granted Kilmar protection from deportation because of what would happen to him if he went to El Salvador.  Maryland was his home for fifteen years, during which he committed absolutely no crimes and checked in with ICE annually. He has a work permit. He was a construction worker and a sheet metal apprentice, a member of a union. He has a wife, a five-year-old son, and two stepchildren who are all American citizens, and they love him.

On March 12, Kilmar Abrego Garcia was detained while running errands with his son, who is autistic, non-verbal, and deaf.

The ICE agents gave his wife ten minutes to collect the boy before they called CPS. They took Kilmar away with no due process at all. They put him on a plane with hundreds of Venezuelan men that the Trump Administration has claimed were members of the Tren De Aragua gang. None of those men were given due process either. They were not provided with lawyers or allowed to argue their case before a judge. The Trump Administration has not provided any evidence that they were gangsters; they just keep insisting that it’s true.  75% of the men on that plane had no criminal record whatsoever. Of those with records, barely any had a record of violent crimes.

But Kilmar wasn’t even a Venezuelan. He was from the wrong country and accused of being in an entirely different gang. The Trump Administration has admitted that he was only put on the plane by mistake.

The men were flown to El Salvador, to the CECOT Terrorism Confinement Center. CECOT is the largest prison in Latin America. It was built to contain Salvadoran gangsters like the ones who were persecuting Kilmar in the first place. The gangsters are not separated by rival gang membership but thrown

into cells together. Each of the cells in the CECOT center is crammed with over 150 inmates stacked on four-level bunks, under 24-hour fluorescent lighting, with two toilets, two sinks, and two Bibles per cell. They are fed beans and rice with no utensils whatsoever, just in case anyone makes one into a weapon. They are never allowed education, recreation, visits, or phone calls. They never go outside. If they misbehave, they are thrown into a pitch-dark solitary confinement cell for up to fifteen days. They are never released back to their communities, but remain in CECOT for life.

Human Rights Watch has testified that Salvadoran prison guards regularly beat and torture prisoners, including detained children.  Prisoners in Salvadoran prisons are often crammed into rooms so crowded that they have to sleep standing up. Prisoners have died of severe medical neglect and been buried in mass graves.

The Trump Administration has paid the president of El Salvador to send immigrants who came to us for help to CECOT. That’s where all the men on that plane were taken, including Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

At CECOT, Kilmar’s head was shaved. He was dressed in a prison uniform and thrown into a cell. And that’s all we know about his whereabouts– perhaps all that we’ll ever know. The Trump administration has testified that he’s still alive, but they won’t say how they know.

The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the Trump Administration must bring Kilmar home to the United States, but the Trump Administration claims they can’t. Kilmar is in El Salvador now. They claim that all they can do is hope that Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele decides to let him go and put him on a plane to America.

Meanwhile, today, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that ten more human beings were put on a plane without due process and disappeared into the CECOT hell hole.

You and I did that. That is what democracy means. Your government is doing this, claiming it’s to protect you from Latin American cartels.

You’re just supposed to take their word for it because they have provided no evidence whatsoever.

The United States government has kidnapped upwards of 300 human beings and sent them to a foreign concentration camp, without trial, without providing any evidence whatsoever that they are dangerous. Most of those people aren’t even from El Salvador. Kilmar Abrego Garcia IS from El Salvador, and fled because he was in mortal danger from the very gangs who are crammed into CECOT. Now he’s back, in the cell, with the gangsters.

This is being done in our name.

The Trump Administration is already talking about doing this to citizens next.

If the United States can pick up a human being and deport them to a foreign hellhole to die, without a trial or even a hearing, they can do it to any human being.

I’m not going to repeat that poem about “first they came for the such-and-such” because we’re far, far, beyond that point. They came for a legal resident. They’re coming for citizens. They’re coming for you and me.

If it’s not enough to make you sick that the entire Supreme Court, from Thomas all the way to Brown Jackson, said that what was done to Kilmar Abrego Garcia was illegal and the executive branch is still refusing to comply with the law. If it’s not enough to make you sick that what’s being done to all these people is a human rights abuse that makes the United States filthy in the eyes of the whole world. If it’s not enough to make you sick that what’s being done is a grievous mortal sin that will damn souls to hell. Then you could at least have the sense to be sick with fear. Because what the Trump Administration is doing puts you in danger.

It could be you thrown into that overcrowded cell.

It could be your child in the car, traumatized. Your spouse is scrambling to get him before he’s turned over to CPS. Your family is wondering if they’ll ever see you again.

Make all the noise you can, because this is being done in your name. And it could be done to you.

Update:

U.S. lawmakers denied meeting with Kilmar Abrego Garcia

Rep. Maxine Dexter, D-Ore., says her delegation left El Salvador without meeting Garcia, a Salvadoran native who had been living with his wife and children in Maryland before being deported in March.

Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross, The Sorrows and Joys of Mary, and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.