Disappeared: A Court Warns America That Its Values Are Slipping Away

Jeff Robbins on Apr 22, 2025

Late in the new Broadway show "Operation Mincemeat," the sparklingly inventive musical comedy based on British Intelligence's deception of Adolf Hitler about Allied war plans during World War II, the marvelous slapstick pauses momentarily. "If people like us just blindly follow orders," one of the characters warns, "the fascists won't need to bash the door down. They'll have already won." At a recent performance, the line drew a wave of audience applause that lasted nearly a minute before the actors could continue.

One-half of Americans see the daily flood of governmental crackdowns against Donald Trump's perceived opponents, the middle fingers extended to judicial decisions commanding the Trump administration to follow the law rather than break it and the claims that Donald Trump can deport anyone he sees fit as a frog-in-the-gradually-boiling-water type threat to American democracy. But the other half yawns or has bought the spin that Trump's opponents must suffer from "Trump Derangement Syndrome," or -- and let's be blunt -- don't know the rule of law from "The Tao of Pooh."

The Trump presidency is based on three propositions, which it is confident Congress, the Supreme Court and half the country will swallow: Number 1, the law doesn't apply to it. Number 2, if the law does apply, by definition Trump has not violated it, because by definition Trump can't have violated it. Number 3, if by any chance Trump has violated it, he is immune from any consequences for having done so.

Last week, a conservative federal appellate judge appointed by Ronald Reagan wrote a decision for a unanimous appeals court serving notice that they weren't buying it.

After the U.S. Supreme Court, itself dominated by Republican justices, including three appointed by Trump himself, ruled that the Trump administration had to "facilitate" the return of a U.S. resident whom the administration admitted it had illegally snatched and, in direct violation of a judicial order that he could not be removed to El Salvador -- you guessed it -- removed him to El Salvador. There this individual, one Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, never even charged with a crime in the United States let alone convicted of one, sits in something called the Terrorism Confinement Center.

The Trump White House has done nothing to comply with the Supreme Court's directive and takes the position that it has no obligation to do so. On the contrary, the president gloats that he is going to go further and deport U.S. citizens whom he wants gone. "The homegrowns are next," he told El Salvador's president in the Oval Office. "If it's a homegrown criminal, I have no problem," said the president who was convicted of 34 felonies. "If we can do that, it's good."

The Trump administration asked Judge Wilkinson and his colleagues on the federal appeals court to bless their position that they can do as they please with Abrego Garcia. Judge Wilkinson told the administration that they had the wrong country. "The government asserts that Abrego Garcia is a terrorist and a member of (a violent gang). Perhaps, but perhaps not. Regardless, he is still entitled to due process. If the government is confident of its position, it should be assured that position will prevail ... Moreover, the government has conceded that Abrego Garcia was wrongly or 'mistakenly' deported. Why then should it not make what was wrong, right?"

Why not, indeed?

Because that is not who or what these people are, that's why.

Judge Wilkinson asked the question all Americans should be asking. "If today the Executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home? And what assurance shall there be that the Executive will not train its broad discretionary powers upon its political enemies?"

"We yet cling," the 80-year-old jurist wrote, "to the hope that it is not naive to believe our good brethren in the Executive Branch perceive the rule of law as vital to the American ethos."

Those in this administration do not perceive it. They do not believe it. The question is what the rest of America believes.

Jeff Robbins' latest book, "Notes From the Brink: A Collection of Columns about Policy at Home and Abroad," is available now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books and Google Play. Robbins, a former assistant United States attorney and United States delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, was chief counsel for the minority of the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. An attorney specializing in the First Amendment, he is a longtime columnist for the Boston Herald, writing on politics, national security, human rights and the Mideast.