On Wednesday, Ansari announced she and several congressional colleagues plan to fly to El Salvador to urge the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man originally from El Salvador whom the Trump administration has admitted it mistakenly deported a month ago without due process.
A day earlier, Reps. Maxwell Forest and Robert Garcia sent a letter to Republican Rep. James Comer requesting authorization for a Congressional Member Delegation to visit the maximum-security prison in El Salvador. If approved, Ansari will join the two representatives and others on an official congressional trip. If the request isn’t approved, the representatives plan to make the trip on their own.
“We recognize the urgency of it and we hope to go as soon as we can,” Ansari told Phoenix New Times in a phone interview.
Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen has already flown to El Salvador to attempt to free Abrego Garcia but said Wednesday that he was rebuffed by the Salvadoran government.
Abrego Garcia’s case has set off what Ansari says is a “massive constitutional crisis and a watershed moment in Trump’s path toward total authoritarianism.” Though the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that the Trump administration must “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return, Trump and his surrogates have openly flouted that order and said they have no plans to bring him back.
“If we do not pressure the Trump administration into abiding by what the Supreme Court has called for, then we are in a really devastating place in our county,” the freshman representative said. “Our hope is to call attention to the Trump administration, raise awareness about Mr. Garcia’s case and hopefully bring him home as soon as possible.”
Instead of obeying the Court’s order, Trump and other Republicans — including Attorney General Pam Bondi and Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs — have claimed with little evidence that Abrego Garcia is a terrorist and member of the Central American gang MS-13. They have elided the facts that Abrego Garcia has no criminal record, has lived in the U.S. for years without incident and that a federal immigration judge previously ruled he cannot be deported because he would face a credible threat of harm if he returned to El Salvador.
Trump and others have also brushed off the fact that Abrego Garcia was arrested and shipped to a notorious foreign prison — where his wife and child, both of whom are American citizens, have been unable to contact him — without the chance to plead his case in front of a judge, which is a bedrock principle of American jurisprudence.
Donald Trump and El Salvador President Nayib Bukele have both said they have no intention of returning Kilmar Abrego Bukele from a notorious El Salvadoran prison.
Win McNamee/Getty Images
‘No faith in this administration’
As Ansari pointed out, little stops Trump from following the same playbook with American citizens: Arrest them, ship them to a black hole in El Salvador where neither family nor lawyers can reach them, claim they are terrorists or gang members or non-citizens and never hear from them again. Indeed, Trump has already floated the idea of shipping American citizens to the prison.“If we do not stand up as loudly and as fearlessly as possible in this moment, we could completely be headed toward a world in which fascism is the norm in the United States,” she said. “This is about protecting due process and the rights of every single person in this country.”
The Trump administration’s defiance of court orders has been brazen, to the point that U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ruled in a different case Wednesday that there is “probable cause” to find the administration in contempt of court. But it remains an open question about whether anybody can (or will) force Trump to respect the rule of law and free Abrego Garcia.
Asked if she expects Ansari to ignore that contempt ruling, Ansari said, “Absolutely, I have no faith in this administration.”
Whether or not a trip to El Salvador greases the skids for Abrego Garcia’s release, Ansari hopes it at least raises awareness of the threat Trump poses to constitutional order. Already, she said she has heard “countless stories” from residents of her Phoenix-area district about the firsthand impacts of Trump’s immigration policies.
Refugees who moved to Arizona after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan may be forced to return. More than 50 international students at Arizona State University have had their visas revoked with scant explanation as to why. In February, an Iraq War veteran was detained by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Laveen.
Abrego Garcia’s story has touched a particular nerve, she said. Ansari said she has “gotten hundreds, if not thousands, of constituents, reaching out, either by phone or by email or social media, to express their deep concern about what is happening to Mr. Garcia.” She said they should be concerned, regardless of their citizenship status.
“Trump will try to make this case different from you or anyone else with rights, but Mr. Garcia has rights,” she said. “If his due process rights are ignored, there is literally no reason why any one of us could not have the same outcome.”
