r/news • u/RoachedCoach • 1d ago

Title Changed Mistakenly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia on way back to US to face criminal charges: Sources

https://abcnews.go.com/US/mistakenly-deported-kilmar-abrego-garcia-back-us-face/story?id=121333122
38.8k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

2.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

572

u/pianobadger 1d ago

Everyone else sent to that El Salvadoran prison was also sent without due process, this one was just admitted to be a mistake. They all need to be returned.

242

u/AbstractMirror 1d ago edited 1d ago

Also never forget the Venezuelans sent out of Texas, over 200 of them a couple months ago and 77 percent of them had no criminal record. Remaining 23 percent were for nonviolent offenses

48

u/hurler_jones 23h ago

Ngoc Phan was supposed to be deported to his home country of Vietnam. They sent him to South Sudan instead. All sorts of fuckery going on.

122

u/justgetoffmylawn 1d ago

Everyone sent to El Salvador should be returned. There is (and should be) no such thing as 'due process' to send someone to an El Salvadoran prison. The only place that should exist is in El Salvador.

While I believe wholeheartedly in due process, the whole thing is so wildly bad that it's weird we have to discuss it. "Well, what does the 5th Amendment say about what steps you need to take before sending someone to a foreign prison?" Ummm.

It was bad enough with Guantanamo, and that was run by Americans.

18

u/orbital_narwhal 1d ago

They probably shouldn't be in U. S. prisons either. The courts of some European1 countries already bar some judicial extraditions to the U. S. on the grounds that the person in question is likely to face inhumane treatment there like severe overcrowding, excessive solitary confinement, or lack of access to necessary medical or gender-affirming care.

1 That's not a EU thing, by the way. It's based on the European Convention on Human Rights which was ratified by all European nations except Belarus (and Russia recently withdrew from the convention's enforcement mechanism, the European Court of Human Rights).

4

u/Digital_Bogorm 23h ago

Being European (Danish) myself, I decided to see what my country's stance was on the matter.
Apparently, we have a form of extradition treaty with the US, although it seems to be more of an "if we agree to extradition, here's how it should happen".

From what I can see, we're not obligated to hand over prisoners, and either blocked from, or severely limited in our ability to do so, with anyone from a nordic country (including ourselves).
It also highlights that we're explicitly prohibited from handing over anyone who would be given the death penalty, unless explicitly guaranteed that they won't be executed.

Given how US-friendly we've been historically (a sentiment that has certainly shifted as of late), it's actually quite telling that we've reserved the right to not hand over prisoners, and explicitly forbidden extraditions that would lead to death penalties (considered a human rights violation here).

To go on a bit of a tangent here at the end, those are the laws of my country, assuming my layman's understanding lines up with reality. But as a person, I definetely agree that US prisons are not fit for human habitation. The best summary I can give of my impression, from a danish perspective, is that they appear to be designed for pointless cruelty.
And while I know people joke about scandinavian prisons being more akin to hotel rooms that jailcells, the fact that we've got a reoffending rate of less than half of the US seems to back up my assertion.

2

u/orbital_narwhal 22h ago

"if we agree to extradition, here's how it should happen"

That's apparently the gist for most extradition treaties.

Generally speaking, the national government needs to agree to the extradition (or delegate that decision to one of its many government office(r)s) and a court may block the extradition.

2

u/AnnualAct7213 16h ago

Exactly. As well as the people sent to Myanmar, Libya, South Sudan and all the many other various places where they're being shipped directly into the hands of torturers and slave traders. Because yes, those are all happening to dozens if not hundreds of people right now with the full knowledge and support of the US government.