The headline is provocative, but how else can you explain Democrats’ recent actions? While MAGA backers would love to see every criminal illegal alien deported by Donald Trump’s administration, Democrats want to bog down the system with the “due process” on the way out that was mostly skipped on the way in.
Let’s take, for example, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the “Maryland Man” who was sent back to El Salvador because he was allegedly a member of MS-13. His return to the States “was cause for celebration among the Trump-hating Democrats,” noted our Douglas Andrews, “including Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen, who’d famously flown down to El Salvador at taxpayer expense to sip margaritas with Abrego Garcia while petitioning for his return to the country he’d unlawfully entered.” As it turned out, Abrego Garcia indeed got his desire to return to America, but it was to face charges of human trafficking stemming from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee.
To no one’s surprise, a magistrate judge appointed by Barack Obama allowed Abrego Garcia to post bail. “In a bail hearing,” as former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy explains, “to succeed on a motion for pretrial detention, the government has to show that the defendant is either a serious flight risk or a danger to the community, or both. In principle, I think illegal aliens should be detained as flight risks since they have ties overseas. But here, Abrego Garcia has been fighting deportation, and there is a DOJ immigration court ruling (which the Trump DOJ did not appeal in 2019) that he fears persecution in El Salvador, the foreign country to which he has ties. It is thus tough to win the flight risk claim in a criminal justice system in which bail is the rule and detention is the exception.”
However, the only change in Abrego Garcia’s status is that he’ll be held by ICE as opposed to the criminal justice system, at least until they can find some Democrat judge to spring him loose from there as well, and back into the shadows he’ll go until ICE can find him … again.
That seems to be the case for another recent Democrat celebrity, green card and former student visa holder Mahmoud Kahlil. The Columbia University “student” became a Democrat darling by leading anti-Israel protests, a stance that led Secretary of State Marco Rubio to cite a section of immigration law that declares, “In general, an alien whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable.” Kahlil was whisked off to Louisiana to await deportation, as our Emmy Griffin explained back in March, but got his release last week, this time from a Biden-appointed judge. Almost immediately, he was back at Columbia leading another protest and playing the victim.
“The wave of repression that the Trump administration initiated with my detention was intended to silence the movement for Palestinian liberation,” Kahlil opined. “It was intended to scare people into silence. It was intended to distract us from the fact that the U.S. government is a killing machine in Palestine and across the world. But they completely failed,” he boasted. “Millions of people spoke up even louder, that it is our responsibility to end this genocide, no matter the personal cost, no matter the personal cost. And that’s exactly what I will continue trying to do as long, so long as I’m able, so long as I am breathing.”
Columbia isn’t alone in Ivy League rot. Harvard has been fighting government attempts to restrict foreign student enrollment, as 27% of the student body has been a significant source of revenue for the school. Whenever the government tries to enforce the law, Harvard runs to an Obama appointee, who grants their every wish. On that front, though, there is talk of a deal between the administration and Harvard — at least as President Trump exclaims in his inimitable fashion: “If a Settlement is made on the basis that is currently being discussed, it will be ‘mindbogglingly’ HISTORIC, and very good for our Country. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
At Hot Air, John Sexton wonders, “I honestly have no idea what the historic settlement could be that would please the administration this much. Will Havard agree to expel a bunch of students who broke the rules over the past year? Will it put an end to DEI on campus? Clearly they’ve offered something that Trump liked. I’m sort of eager to find out what it is. I’m also curious how furious the backlash will be if an agreement is reached.”
That backlash may be like a recent incident that made the pixels of Not the Bee, in which ICE agents were on the verge of detaining a convicted child rapist until an activist group ratted them out and allowed the culprit to escape. “They’re helping child rapists now! You seriously cannot make this stuff up!” they shouted. And thanks to a group calling itself “Colorado Rapid Response,” the rapist, Jose Reyes Leon-Duras, is still at large.
That rapid response may be a sample of the backlash we can expect from Democrats and their lawless allies if Harvard rolls over and Trump begins winning in court.
