The world is not worried enough about the Trump administration’s flouting of American laws
The evidence is mounting. Donald Trump’s pattern of behaviour is now impossible to miss. And the world might be sleepwalking into another crisis.
Comment
A brief selection, here, of revelations from the week.
The White House has no intention of returning a man who was confirmed, by the conservative-dominated US Supreme Court, to have been wrongly deported. Indeed, Trump officials are openly revelling in their defiance of court orders.
Federal agents have admitted they did not bother to obtain a warrant before they detained Mahmoud Khalil, the student protester accused of being pro-Hamas, and another target of attempted deportation.
When asked to provide proof of life for a gay asylum seeker it sent to that hellish jail in El Salvador, which was designed to house terrorists and gangsters, without any due process, on the basis of a tattoo which appears to be completely innocuous, the administration declined. No one has seen or heard from the guy in over a month.
We could keep going. The point is, this second Trump administration is proudly lawless. Proudly. That’s the key. Most US governments manage to violate the law at some point, in sometimes outrageous ways, but few do it so deliberately, or with such a smug, knowing smirk on their face.
So it’s not the immigration policies themselves that feel most unsettling, but rather the Trump officials’ collective attitude. It’s not the cruelty, so much as the undeniable impression you get that the folks in charge are very much enjoying that cruelty.
It crosses the line between bad policy, implemented incompetently, and malicious policy whose intent is to harm people.
That the targets of this behaviour are mostly unsympathetic is part of the design. Mr Khalil has some pretty damn objectionable views. Some of those sent to El Salvador are, presumably, genuine gang members – the administration surely can’t have been so incompetent as to only deport people who were innocent.
We’ve had a fair few days now of the White House trying to incinerate the reputation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the guy who was deported due to an apparent “administrative error” in defiance of a court order forbidding the government from sending him to El Salvador.
Donald Trump shared a photo of tattoos on Mr Garcia’s left hand which he claimed – baselessly, as far as fact checkers can tell – proved the guy was a member of the gang MS-13. And the White House highlighted domestic violence allegations in his past.
All irrelevant. All immaterial to the question of whether or not the US government can detain someone, deport them to a foreign jail without judicial review, and then claim impotence when ordered to return them.
Due process and the rule of law are not just for the obviously innocent, they apply to everyone. Even mass murderers benefit from them. As well they should, because the alternative is a system in which whatever the government claims, whether actually substantiated by evidence or not, is uncontestable.
That is the salient issue, and most of what we’ve heard from the administration since it sent those planes loaded with migrants to El Salvador has been shameless misdirection.
Mr Trump and co. want to point at critics of the deportations and shout, “Look! Our opponents are on the side of violent gangsters, while we are protecting Americans!” which I am sure has more than a little cynical, political merit. Their opponents’ actual position is, “If these people are gangsters, offer up proof and deport them the legal way.”
That is not pro-criminal, or even necessarily pro-immigrant. It is pro-law. And it’s pro-American. If you admire what that country professes to stand for, you should not be thrilled about its government behaving in ways that resemble tinpot authoritarianism.
The remorseleness with which the Trump administration is breezing past that whole debate is as troubling as anything else it has done since the President took office. It won’t hurt the rest of the world like, say, the tariffs, or Mr Trump’s favourable treatment of Russia.
But it gives us a more revealing insight into the character of the people in charge of the world’s most powerful country, and yes, that probably should matter to us.
The lawlessness is not limited to immigration policy.
Mr Trump has sought to seize powers that belong to Congress, an entirely different branch of the US government.
He tried to up-end the global trade system unilaterally, with the stroke of a pen, before a market freakout restrained him.
He has violated trade agreements he himself negotiated and signed.
He has issued orders directing the Department of Justice to target his political critics.
He has responded to unfavourable court judgments with intense personal attacks on judges – even those who are lifelong conservatives, and yes, even those he personally appointed.
All of this stuff adds up.to what should be seen, both in the US and abroad, as a bright red flashing alarm, because it suggests this is a President and administration who consider the law to be no obstacle. Who believe the only person with any authority to restrain Donald Trump’s power is Donald Trump himself.
Not exactly what America’s founders intended when they rebelled against a king.
Originally published as The world is not worried enough about the Trump administration’s flouting of American laws
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