An Honest Press Would Say All These Things About Kilmar Abrego Garcia
It didn’t take long for people on Twitter to post screenshots of the court findings that Abrego Garcia was strongly suspected of membership in MS-13
By Chuck Warren
According to The Atlantic, “An ‘Administrative Error’ Sends a Maryland Father, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, to a Salvadoran Prison.”
The report says that the Trump administration arrested a Maryland father from El Salvador and, violating a court order, sent him to a Salvadoran prison. The man came to the United States at 16 and is married to a U.S. citizen, with whom he has a 5-year-old son.
The article says:
The Trump administration does not claim he has a criminal record, but called him a “danger to the community” and an active member of MS-13, the Salvadoran gang that Trump has declared a foreign terrorist organization.
It is truly shameful that the Trump administration has sent an innocent and good family man to a notorious prison. And we should all condemn it.
Except this is not the whole story.
Abrego Garcia has not been convicted of being a member of MS-13, and he has denied the accusations. However, two different judges have said that there is enough evidence to believe that he was a member of MS-13.
The first judge wrote:
Although the Court is reluctant to give evidentiary weight to the Respondent’s (Abrego Garcia’s) clothing as an indication of gang affiliation, the fact that a “past, proven, and reliable source of information” verified the Respondent’s gang membership, rank, and gang name is sufficient to support that the Respondent is a gang member, and the Respondent has failed to present evidence to rebut that assertion.
A second judge upheld the ruling.
These are not the same thing. It means that you can deport him over national security concerns, but you cannot sentence him to prison for gang membership.
The courts also found that Abrego Garcia is a removable illegal immigrant, but he could not be deported back to El Salvador due to a reasonable fear of persecution due to “his membership in a ‘particular social group.’”
This means that if we could remove him to a third country, he could be deported because, again, he’s a removable alien. He just could not be sent to El Salvador.
The Trump administration, however, deported him back to El Salvador and admitted that it made an administrative error in doing so.
An honest press would say all these things and criticize the administration for its mistakes and for violating a court order while also acknowledging that Abrego Garcia was possibly an MS-13 member. They would say that he might be dangerous, but the law is the law, and if the courts say he must stay in the U.S., then he must stay in the U.S.
That’s perfectly reasonable even if you don’t agree with it. But that’s not what’s happening.
The Atlantic set the tone for a completely different story, and all the mainstream media are following its lead.
In that version, Abrego Garcia is an innocent father who was accidentally and unjustly sent to a foreign prison.
The problem is that, once upon a time, if you lied or withheld information, no one would know. We are not in that era anymore. We’re at a time when, within an hour, people can dig up and read court filings and figure out the truth.
Of course, it didn’t take long for people on Twitter to post screenshots of the court findings that Abrego Garcia was strongly suspected of membership in MS-13.
But for some reason, as it’s becoming easier to call the media on their lies, journalists at places like The Atlantic are lying even more.
This whole episode shows that lying is an addiction, not even a partisan necessity. Because even with reporting the whole thing, they could have criticized the Trump administration for the mistake it made and admitted to making.
But that wasn’t enough for them. They had to turn the guy into a saint just to feed their sick impulse to lie.
Note: the opinions expressed herein are those of Chuck Warren only and not his co-host Sam Stone or Breaking Battlegrounds’ staff.
Thank for clarifying that the "error" was sending him to El Salvador, not deporting him.
Chuck, respectfully, all you’ve pointed out is that he had suspicious clothes and that an anonymous source said he was a gang member. Perhaps the same source who said he had suspicious clothes? Who knows? He “failed to rebut the claim”? How exactly would,he do that? In what court was he given the opportunity? 0r was it to the same anonymous source that he failed to rebut the charge as he was being thrown into whatever vehicle they threw him into? Again who knows? This is not how this country works even for its visitors.
This person was spirited out of the country along with others to avoid any kind of scrutiny. You know that as well as I do. This administration, which never admits errors, admits it made an error, one it claims it cannot undo. That there is press sympathy for the guy is not high on the list of problems here.