On MAGA, Cruelty, and Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s Disabled Son

My aunt has a disabled son.

My cousin, several years younger than me, is autistic, as I am. Many, many people in my family surely are. But in the 90s, a verbal girl with a normal or higher IQ wasn’t likely to get diagnosed with autism. My cousin is a boy who was nonverbal until he got speech therapy, and is hovering just around the line of where you’d diagnose an intellectual disability. He got his diagnosis. Not every autistic person is the kind who needs a caregiver, of course, but my cousin is the kind of Autist who lives at home with his parents. He’s a wonderful person.  He loves Disney movies and collecting Disney memorobilia, and using his Disability check to take his typically abled siblings to lunch.

My aunt loves her disabled son. She is fiercely protective of him, as well she might be. She made sure he got all the way through school with his completion certificate. She built him a “Disney Closet” to celebrate his special interest: a walk-in closet in his room with all his videocassettes, figurines, and posters on display, a place where he can go and feel totally at peace. She’s his advocate, and that’s a wonderful thing. Every disabled person ought to have a mother as protective and attentive as that.

My aunt is also a devout Catholic. She has a picture of the Sacred Heart on her social media and she prays the Rosary. The whole Irish side of my family is devout Catholic, and proud of it. They’re not traumatized and conflicted Catholics like me. They’re ashamed of my trauma, and tease me for it.

My aunt is also a MAGA. She’d be proud I called her that.

She’s not the kind of person who voted for Donald Trump in spite of qualms about him, because she thought he might somehow bring an end to abortion or something like that. She’s the kind who genuinely likes him. She celebrates him. My aunt has often chided and tried to humiliate me for voting Democratic the past several years. She also likes to humiliate me for other things, but that’s another story. She’s all in on Trump. The last time I blocked her for trying to follow me on social media, late last year, I had a look at her Twitter feed first. It was 100% re-tweeted pro-MAGA conspiracy theories, and it made me feel unclean just looking at it.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia also has a disabled son.

In fact, he has three disabled children: his stepson and stepdaughter are also disabled, but Garcia’s biological son is autistic, deaf, and nonverbal. That boy is also an American citizen– which shouldn’t determine whether a disabled child is treated with respect and dignity, but remember that fact if it helps you.

When Kilmar Abrego Garcia was arrested in March, his son was riding in the car with him. The little boy had to witness his beloved father dragged out of the car and taken away by Immigration. They gave his mother ten minutes to get there, or ICE would call CPS. Imagine the terror of being a Kindergartener and watching the grown-up you love most kidnapped by masked men in a truck. Now, if you can, try to imagine that scenario, if you had a neurodevelopmental disability that made the way you experienced your surroundings different from everyone around you. Imagine the man you depend on to explain what’s going on, being chained up and stuffed into the truck. Imagine being unable to utter the words “I want my daddy!” Imagine being unable to tell the men your name or call out for your mother.

Imagine being the person who did that to a disabled child.

Abrego Garcia, who had not been convicted of any crime at all, was taken away and tortured in El Salvador. If the government was sure he’d committed a crime, they could have put him on trial and gotten a conviction right away here in America, but they didn’t. They sent him to a foreign gulag where they were sure he’d be tortured, without charges, even though everyone in America is supposed to be innocent until proven guilty. And they admitted several times that he was on that plane by mistake– they meant to only remove Venezuelans on this flight, but Abrego Garcia was Salvadoran.

After three months of separation from his disabled children, Abrego Garcia was brought back to America, to stand trial on charges that didn’t exist until the Trump Administration  was put under immense pressure for his kidnapping. Garcia’s lawyers tried to keep him in jail pending trial, so that nobody would deport him again. They were afraid he’d be sent away to keep his mouth shut about what he endured in the Salvadoran prison.

And, indeed, they were right.

Trump’s government has, reportedly, offered Abrego Garcia a choice. They’re not going to make him stand trial for his alleged crimes. They won’t bother with that. They’re reportedly not going to give him the chance to prove his innocence in a court of law. He can either plead guilty to the charges and, after serving time in prison, be rendered to Costa Rica, where he speaks the language and might see his family again. Or, if he refuses to plead guilty, he’ll be rendered to Uganda– a country he’s never been, where he knows no one, on a separate continent in a separate hemisphere from his family where he’ll surely be hurt–within 72 hours.

The MAGAs think this is hilarious. They really do. They’re having a good time.

Again, imagine being Abrego Garcia’s autistic child. Imagine being a disabled boy who can’t communicate in the usual way, who finally gets reunited with his beloved daddy. Now, imagine Daddy is going away again. Imagine the rush of terror the child must feel at that thought. Imagine that the only way you could ever see Daddy, even in the distant future, is if he pleads guilty to a crime he may not have committed and goes to prison for years, and then eventually the whole family has to pack up the only home they’ve known and go live at the equator. Or, of course, he could not plead guilty, and you’ll never see him at all, unless Mom finds a way to move you all the way to Africa. Africa is a beautiful continent, of course. Lots of people like living there. But Uganda is a country with significant poverty. It’s very hard to get medical and disability care there. Imagine being an autistic and deaf boy whose mother has to choose between his never getting support for his disability again, or never seeing his father again.

I haven’t spoken to my aunt since before the inauguration and I never expect to speak to her again, so I don’t know what she’s thinking right now. But she was all in for Trump and a MAGA, and there’s certainly no reason to think she’s changed. In my experience, the people who were still MAGA in 2024 don’t seem capable of buyer’s remorse. They’re stuck.

In a way, I’d really like to understand what makes a person have the kind of a compartmentalized mind. But in another way, I wouldn’t.

I know that a lot of MAGA people have joined the movement to give vent to their hatred and anger. I know it. But I also know that many of us have had family we used to love, people we thought were loving and reasonable good Catholics and good Christians, who got overtaken by this fervor.

In one way, I really want to understand how you can be a devout woman who prays the Rosary and meditates on the sorrowful mysteries of the Virgin Mary in agony over her tortured Son, with pictures of a bleeding Sacred Heart all over your social media, and have a deep abiding love for your disabled son that you prove through your works, and join a movement which is this sadistic to somebody else’s disabled son. In a way, I’m desperate to know.

Part of me would give just about anything to understand what happens to human beings who love their children, fight and advocate for their children, and worship a suffering God, but would be pleased to cause agony to somebody else’s suffering son. Because I see it happening all around me, and it makes no sense at all.

How do you worship Christ Crucified, and relish doing this to people?

How do you become a person who can deeply care for your own family, and not let that lead you to have compassion on other people’s families? How can you understand that disabled children deserve support, and then gleefully support a movement that does this to somebody else’s disabled son? Because thousands and thousands of people in my country do exactly that. That’s how America got to this point. What happened to my aunt isn’t uncommon. It’s so common that Trump was elected twice.

But on the other hand, I hope I never find out how it happened.

I don’t want to understand how you could entertain those two opposing viewpoints at the same time.

I feel like, if I understood that cruelty– if that enigma made perfect sense to me– I would be less human. And I want to remain human, even in these terrifying times.

I pray to God that Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s family is somehow spared this agony. I wish with all my heart that I could do something to make it stop. I’m disgusted and mortally ashamed of the pain and trauma that my country’s government has caused.

I pray that God will turn our hearts towards disabled children, and away from cruelty.

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.