Opinion | Trumps Gulag Archipelago

Of all the lawless acts by the Trump administration in its first two and a half months, none are more frightening than its dumping of human beings who have not had their day in court into an infamous maximum-security prison in El Salvador — and then contending that no federal court has the authority to right these brazen wrongs.In an astounding brief filed in the Supreme Court on Monday, the solicitor general of the United States argued that even when the government concedes that it has mistakenly deported someone to El Salvador and had him imprisoned there, the federal courts are powerless to do anything about it.The Supreme Court must immediately and emphatically reject this unwarranted claim of unlimited power to deprive people of their liberty without due process.That would seem to be the obvious response.

It was Thomas Jefferson who called the right of habeas corpus to protect against unlawful detention one of the “essential principles of our government.”Jefferson’s concerns are underscored by the case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a lawful resident of the United States, whom the federal government admits it wrongly deported to El Salvador.He has been incarcerated in El Salvador along with some 200 Venezuelan migrants deported there last month by the Trump administration, which says they were involved in criminal and gang activity.On Friday, Judge Paula Xinis of the United States District Court in Maryland ordered Mr.

Abrego Garcia’s return.In a subsequent opinion issued on Sunday, she wrote that “there were no legal grounds whatsoever for his arrest, detention or removal.” His detention, she added, “appears wholly lawless.”One might think the Trump administration would at least try to correct its grievous mistake by attempting to secure Mr.

Abrego Garcia’s release through diplomatic channels.El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, has been called “a great friend of the United States” by Marco Rubio, President Trump’s secretary...