WASHINGTON, DC – Following the Trump Administration’s open defiance of a federal court order to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia — an immigrant with legal protections in the U.S. that the administration unlawfully and erroneously deported to a mega prison in El Salvador without due process — Congresswoman Madeleine Dean (PA-04), member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, released the following statement:
“What the Trump Administration has done to Kilmar Abrego Garcia is chilling, and it should strike fear into the heart of every American.
By illegally removing Mr. Garcia from the United States — where he has lived with legal protections for years, with his U.S. citizen wife and children. Mr. Garcia has committed no crimes — yet President Trump is breaking the law.
Yesterday, the president sat side-by-side with President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador in the Oval Office and insisted he was too weak to bring Mr. Garcia home to his family. The Secretary of State, the Attorney General, and top administration officials laughed, falsely insisting that a 9-0 ruling from the Supreme Court to “‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador” was a “win” for the Administration.
The United States was founded on the basic principle that we are all equal under the law.
If the Trump Administration can unconstitutionally deport Mr. Garcia — depriving him of due process and flouting the orders of federal judges and a unanimous Supreme Court ruling — what is to stop them from grabbing any citizen off the street and disappearing them? This is how authoritarian regimes operate, and it sets a dangerous precedent.
I call upon President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to immediately return Kilmar to the United States, as required by the Constitution and the Supreme Court.
We are a nation of laws — not of one weak man and his cowardly courtiers.”
Rep. Madeleine Dean is a mother, grandmother, attorney, professor, former four-term member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, and U.S. Representative for the Fourth District of Pennsylvania.
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