Eligible for International Kidnapping: The New Foreign Policy Flex

In what historians will likely catalog under “Things We Tried Pretending Were Legal,” President Donald Trump, in coordination with El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, held a livestreamed Oval Office meeting where they giggled through a discussion about defying the Supreme Court and permanently detaining a U.S. resident. Just locker room war crimes, fellas.

Trump and Bukele, flanked by Cabinet members whose job descriptions now include smirking during constitutional crises, casually confirmed they would not comply with a Supreme Court ruling mandating the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man legally in the U.S. with a job, a family, and now, no country.

Don’t Worry, It Gets Dumber

Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Attorney General Pam Bondi all laughed on cue while Trump whispered about building more facilities for “homegrown criminals.” You know, Americans. The kind you can deport retroactively if they become inconvenient. Bukele, ever the eager partner, agreed he had "space." It's unclear whether he meant a jail cell or just emotional availability for authoritarian cosplay.

The White House later insisted the president has full control of foreign affairs, a constitutional interpretation that somehow skips both Congress and humanity. Meanwhile, Bukele claimed he couldn’t release Abrego Garcia because he's a terrorist—a claim the courts, facts, and basic logic disagree with. Minor detail.

Straight-Faced Heresy in Real Time

Judge Paula Xinis had previously ruled Abrego Garcia's detention was “wholly lawless.” The Supreme Court agreed. In response, Trump and team simply said the Supreme Court was wrong. Not in court. Not with legal briefs. But on livestream. With vibes.

Trump's advisor Stephen Miller told the press (and, hilariously, the Supreme Court via filing) that the Court ruled "9–0 in our favor," a statement as true as Miller’s hairline is natural. Legal analysts were quick to label it propaganda, which is somehow still not a disqualifier for filing briefs.

Here’s why this matters, even if your empathy hard drive is corrupted:

Because if they can disappear a legal U.S. resident into a legal fiction of foreign custody, they can do it to you. You. The reader. The citizen. The guy who thinks this will never touch him because he votes, or owns a grill, or still gets his prescriptions filled on time. Authoritarianism isn’t punctual. It just keeps knocking.

Scholar Timothy Snyder laid it bare: the White House’s doctrine now mimics Nazi statelessness policies—removing legal protections, then pretending you never had them. The only difference is, the Nazis didn’t film their war crimes for likes.

Diplomacy by Detention

On social media, Trump described foreign leaders as “brilliant” for ridding themselves of the “nonproductive,” the “murderers,” and the merely inconvenient. It’s not genocide if you outsource the paperwork, right?

Chris Van Hollen, one of the few still attempting to tether reality to consequence, demanded Abrego Garcia’s release and warned he’ll fly to El Salvador if needed. Meanwhile, the administration built a policy where due process is something you lose in transit.

Conclusion: We Are Not Okay

This isn’t foreign policy. It’s international rendition wrapped in a birthday party press release. It’s a ghost of a republic performing itself on cable news reruns. Abrego Garcia sits illegally detained. The courts are lied to. And a regime plays fascist charades while Americans scroll past.

Due process isn’t optional. And neither is your silence.

Sources:
- Empty Wheel (https://www.emptywheel.net)
- The Atlantic (https://www.theatlantic.com)
- Law Dork (https://www.lawdork.com)
- NPR (https://www.npr.org)
- Talking Feds (https://www.talkingfeds.com)