In discussing the illegal rendition of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, there is a sense among liberals that it’s a bad idea to bring up that he’s not white. I get this sense from good-faith statements in his defense that try to universalize his case for the sake of everyone. But in doing so, liberals overlook the whole truth as well as a chance to go on the offensive. 

What kind of statements? 

Here is US Senator Chris Van Hollen. Abrego Garcia is his constituent. After going to El Salvador to meet him, he said: “I am not defending the man. I’m defending the rights of this man to due process. And the Trump administration has admitted in court that he was wrongfully detained and wrongfully deported. My mission and my purpose is to make sure that we uphold the rule of law, because if we take [rights] away from him, we … jeopardize [them] for everybody else.”

Abrego Garcia was brought to the US as a minor. He has no criminal record. He’s never been accused of a crime. He is a family man, gainfully employed. Two of his children are autistic, one of them non-verbal. He was picked up by authorities in 2016 for being undocumented, but an immigration court ruled that he deserved protective status. The judge said if he was sent back to El Salvador, his life would be in danger.

So why would Van Hollen say he was not defending the man? I think there are two possible answers. One is that the man himself isn’t as important as the principle at stake. If he can be picked up by agents of the state, denied due process of law, have his basic civil liberties infringed, then the same thing can be done to anyone anywhere. The fact that the regime is now expanding its deportation targets to include US citizens would seem to suggest that the threat is self-evident. 

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The other answer is less noble. If Van Hollen gets bogged down in the details of Abrego Garcia’s life, however wholesome and admirable they may be, he risks reminding those whom he’s trying to persuade that they are not brown Spanish-speaking migrants of Central American extraction who are, as a consequence of their whiteness, almost certainly in no danger of facing the same fate. Van Hollen wants to universalize Abrego Garcia’s case, to make it appeal to anyone of any color. Bringing up the particulars of it might defeat that purpose. 

I’m sympathetic to this. White power is deeply baked in the cake of the United States. Those who would deny that by pointing to the fact that the regime is targeting US citizens for deportation must explain why nearly all of them are not white people, but instead Black and brown people who have naturalized or who were born in the US to immigrant parents. To this regime, citizenship is not a matter of legal status and rights. It’s a matter of whiteness, first and last. Those who choose to fight back must be clear about what they are fighting. Otherwise, they risk inadvertently affirming the idea that the rule of law is whites-only.

Though I’m sympathetic to skipping over the particulars of Abrego Garcia’s life to avoid scaring off potential white supporters, it’s still a trade-off. It leaves behind the opportunity to foreground the regime’s racism and with that, the opportunity to make the case to white people that they themselves can fight this evil, too, simply by demanding due process rights for everyone, not matter who they are, even people who are not nearly as wholesome and admirable as Kilmar Abrego Garcia. 

The regime makes this task easy. How? By lying. They said Abrego Garcia is a criminal. They said he’s a gangbanger. They said he beat his wife*. They said he’s a terrorist. They said a lot of false, malicious things, and will keep saying false, malicious things, because his “crime” was never about what he did. It’s about who he is. From their view, there is no point to due process. That would be contrary to the goal of holding him accountable for his existence in this white man’s country.

That identity is the real crime is also evident in the regime’s reaction to frequent media questions about due process. Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Tom Homan usually responds by saying what about due process for Laken Riley. She’s the woman who was murdered by an immigrant not authorized to be here. (That man has been tried, convicted and sentenced to life without parole.) 

Homan’s goal is to shut down the question. She didn’t get hers. Abrego Garcia won’t get his. End of story. But between the lines is the real gist. Riley was white. Abrego Garcia is not. Being white is not in and of itself a crime. So she has rights. Being brown (or Black or LBGTQ or disabled or some other marginalized identity) is actually a crime in and of itself. So he gets nothing, not his due process rights or any other protection.

If we don’t keep in mind that identity is the “crime,” and that alleged misconduct is a red herring, we won’t understand what they really mean when they say “illegal immigrant.” We also risk accepting at face-value the rationale for the crackdown – that only by deporting millions of immigrants, even those like Kilmar Abrego Garcia who were brought here as minors, can the regime uphold the rule of law, and that anything short of strict adherence to the letter of law is anarchy.

They don’t mean it. We know, because the law doesn’t matter to them. We know the law doesn’t matter, because they keep breaking it. The US Supreme Court agreed with a lower court’s ruling that the regime must do everything possible to bring Abrego Garcia back. That was about two weeks ago and yet nothing’s been done. The regime seems to be reveling in its lawlessness and in the quaint notion that those in power must subordinate themselves to the authority of fact and law.

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Which brings me back to Chris Van Hollen. He said he’s not defending Abrego Garcia so much as defending his rights. He said his mission is “to make sure that we uphold the rule of law, because if we take [rights] away from him, we … jeopardize [them] for everybody else.” 

That’s good, as far as it goes, but if he and other Democratic leaders choose to limit themselves to preserving norms and institutions, they will miss a rare chance to harden public opinion against a president whose greatest strength has been his position on immigration, and do more for immigrants and civil liberties than they would otherwise.

How? First, by calling out bad faith. Every time Democrats concede to makebelieve arguments over “illegal immigration,” they legitimize what the regime really means – that the crime is who you are, not what you do – and in doing so, undermine their own position in defense of law.

Second, by putting race, or racism, at the center of discussion of law. That ensures that what we’re really talking about is equal treatment. We can’t have one set of rules for the inpeople and another set of rules for the outpeople, and still call ourselves a just, constitutional republic. 

Foregrounding racism also helps reveal the intention behind the regime’s smear of immigrants – namely, restoring a racially segregated two-tiered system of justice. It can’t just say that. That would be weak and unpopular. So it chooses to smear Black and brown people as subhumans undeserving of the rights and privileges that humans have. 

Under such terms, the Democrats could not only move to protect endangered individuals, but take some control of the consensus over who belongs and who doesn’t that is the source of their endangerment. 

*Heather Cox Richardson writes about the deeper context: “Although Abrego Garcia’s wife did file a temporary civil protective order against him in 2021, she has said she did it out of an abundance of caution after a previous relationship that had been violent. She did not pursue the order, and says the two worked out their issues with counseling.”

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