Pragmatism is a worthy principle in politics. If parties can’t win elections, they can’t shape policy. To win elections, parties need to build coalitions of base voters plus swing voters. Since issues that motivate base voters don’t always move swing voters, sometimes politicians need to emphasize issue positions with broad resonance and downplay those with narrower ideological appeal. So it’s understandable why some House Democrats are, albeit anonymously, expressing concern about the electoral efficacy of emphasizing the plight of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the immigrant, husband, and father who Donald Trump shipped to an El Salvador prison and is refusing to retrieve in defiance of court orders.
“I know it’s an important issue, but should it be the big issue for Democrats? Probably not,” one anonymous House Democrat told Axios, “I think we ought to focus on the basic things that affect people on a day-to-day basis.” “Rather than talking about the tariff policy and the economy,” said another unnamed representative, “we’re going to go take the bait for one hairdresser.”
(Garcia is not a hairdresser; this is likely a reference to Andry Hernandez Romero, a Venezuelan migrant and hair stylist who crossed the border last year and applied for asylum but appears to have been mistaken by the Trump administration for a gang member and now is also incarcerated in El Salvador.)
But Democrats should not be looking at wrongful abductions by the federal government through an electoral prism. This is not about how to win an election. This is about human decency and constitutional preservation. If we can’t stop a rogue President from asserting the power to disappear people to prisons outside America’s jurisdiction without any due process, then the entire experiment of American democracy is over.
Democrats in the congressional minority have no direct power to demand the Trump administration to retrieve Garcia or any of the other immigrants deported and incarcerated in El Salvador without judicial hearings. That job falls to the justices of the Supreme Court. Their recent finding that the administration must “facilitate” Garcia’s return but stopping short of specifying the consequences of failure to comply, suggests the Justices do believe Garcia should be back in his Maryland home but are hesitant to give the president an opportunity to instigate a genuine Constitutional crisis. This is where Democrats can step in—by sustaining media attention on the case and making it harder for the Supreme Court to timidly slow-walk the process.
What if the politics of the issue are really bad for the Democrats? Not only would that harm the party’s ability to win the 2026 and 2028 elections, but it may also take pressure off the Supreme Court and make it less likely to demand action from the Trump administration.
In his Substack newsletter, pundit Chris Cillizza expressed sympathy for the political argument that Democrats best stay out of it:
I am not sure that making a massive issue out of the Garcia case is politically smart of Democrats. Here’s why: The average person isn’t aware of every detail in the case. They broadly agree with the sentiment that people here illegally should be returned to their country of origin. And they very much agree with the idea that if you are a) here illegally and b) affiliated with a violent gang, you should be removed from the country.
Now, as I said, there is no proof that Garcia is a member of MS-13. A confidential informant suggested that Garcia might be a member of a gang but courts have not been moved by that. But, the Trump administration is successfully muddying the waters here….
… politically speaking, my guess is that the Trump team likes the basic dynamic of this fight, which is: “Democrats are pushing for a guy who came into the country illegally and who may or may not be a gang member to be sent back to the U.S. while Trump is cracking down on people like this who never should have been in the country in the first place.”
But Cillizza’s premises are flawed.
The average person need not be aware of every detail of the case to know the main detail of the case that is repeated in nearly every media account: the Trump administration admitted Garcia’s deportation was an “administrative error” because he had a legal status.
Garcia came to America from El Salvador illegally when he was a minor to escape death threats from gangs. Six years ago, he received a “withholding of removal,” which meant that Garcia could not be deported to El Salvador—because an immigration judge held he had “well-founded fear of future persecution” there—and he could get a legal work permit in the United States (though in theory he could be deported elsewhere if another country was willing to take him.)
The public may “broadly agree with the sentiment that people here illegally should be returned to their country of origin,” but we shouldn’t assume they agree that people here legally should be incarcerated in their country of origin.
And we shouldn’t assume that just because the public doesn’t like illegal immigration in general that they won’t be repulsed when immigrants have their basic human rights violated. Just seven years ago we saw the public reject Trump’s policy of family separations at the border so vehemently that Trump was compelled to abandon the policy.
The voting public rejected family separations even though no voting citizen, safely living in America’s interior, ran the risk of having their own kids taken from them while crossing the border. The Garcia case raises a concern potentially far more unsettling to average voters. The Trump administration is arguing that even when it makes a mistake by sending someone legally in America to a foreign prison without any due process, it should not have to get that person back. He can play disingenuous word games with the president of El Salvador in the Oval Office where each can act like they have no power to fix an obvious and acknowledged mistake that is ruining the life of a human being and his family.
Any one of us could face this horror. The federal government—not currently run by the most competent folks—could snatch you because your name is the same as someone else slated for deportation, or you look like someone else on the list, or you were hanging out with the wrong group of people and got swept up in a chaotic raid. And you would have no opportunity to plead your case before a judge.
This is not just my hyperbolic doomsaying. On Thursday, Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, a Ronald Reagan appointee, issued an opinion demanding compliance by the Trump administration in the Garcia case, wherein he concluded, “If today the Executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home?”
He’s right. Which is why Democrats should not look at poll numbers about general immigration sentiments and conclude the Garcia case and its horrific particulars is a political loser. The party has a moral and constitutional case to make against the Trumpian authoritarian approach to government. For that case to have any legitimacy—for it to not be dismissed as cheap political point scoring—Democrats must act on the principles they have long articulated.
Throughout the 2024 campaign, Democrats warned that if elected Trump would behave like a dictator and undermine the foundations of American democracy. They were right, and now he is. It’s not the time to act as if constitutional checks and balances are no longer important because it doesn’t poll as well as some other issue.
Will the 2026 and 2028 elections more likely turn on the economy? Yes. Isn’t it the case that Trump is sandbagging the economy with arbitrary tariffs? Yes. Shouldn’t Democrats focus on that? Yes. But Democrats can do that while also calling out Trump’s abuses of power.
In fact, Democrats can easily tie Trump’s disregard for the economy with his disregard for Garcia’s human rights. They can say, “Instead of lowering our prices like he promised to do, Trump and his Republican allies are obsessed with raising the cost of all imported goods and abducting people legally in America and sending them to foreign prisons.”
Fortunately, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries have unequivocally stated Garcia should be returned home. They should continue to set that tone and encourage their colleagues to keep up the pressure until justice is done.
