There is an old bit from comedian Lewis Black about overhearing a piece of inanity so singular and confusing, without the possibility of explanation, that it more or less drives you crazy, or worse. For him, it was this: “If it weren’t for my horse, I wouldn’t have spent that year in college.” For all of us today, it is this: “[From] what I heard, El Salvador crime is really low, so he should be safe now.”
Go ahead, read it again — as Black said, “it bears repeating.” That quote is from Ruben R., a 46-year-old Wisconsinite, participating in a focus group discussion featuring a semi-mythical cadre of 12 Biden-to-Trump swing voters who are, you will be shocked to hear, standing by their Trump support, as reported by Axios on Friday morning. As you might guess, it is in reference to the Trump administration’s propensity to ship immigrants of varying legal status off to the small Central American country, and specifically to the case of Kilmar Abrego García. Though he was not the only one, García was grabbed by ICE agents and sent to El Salvador illegally; since then, though the government has admitted it sent him there in error, it has stubbornly refused repeated judicial orders to bring him home.
Our friend Ruben R. is, let’s say, not all that broken up about this case. Per Axios: “[He] said while the U.S. administration had acted in error and Abrego Garcia should have had due process, ‘It’s too late now,’ and shrugged it off,” before offering up his version of horse college. It is difficult to know where to start here.
First of all, who did he “hear” this fact from, regarding El Salvador’s crime rates? Was this just in casual conversation, standard Monday morning water cooler fare? An expert on Central American crime? Fox News? Who can say. And okay, let’s grant him that he did in fact hear something, from someone, somewhere, about El Salvador and crime — maybe it was that the former “murder capital of the world” has indeed seen homicide rates fall pretty hard over the last few years. It is worth wondering, though, if this interesting conversation included the reasons why, the “state of exception” that was supposed to last a month and has actually lasted years and that gives the government broad leeway to ignore rights and institute a regime of mass incarceration? Or, perhaps, that the official numbers on homicides are probably cooked by the Nayib Bukele regime pretty thoroughly?
Then there’s the elephant in the room, trampling the horse to pieces: does Ruben R. think that García is just wandering the streets of San Salvador now? Did he not “hear” about García’s and hundreds of others’ actual destination, the CECOT prison that Human Rights Watch says has had “cases of torture, ill-treatment, incommunicado detention, severe violations of due process and inhumane conditions, such as lack of access to adequate healthcare and food”?
Also, “he should be safe now” — now? Was he in danger before, living in Maryland (other than from ICE, of course)? And is his safety really the question here, regarding a person who was denied any sort of due process and disappeared into a black hole gulag in a foreign country from which the government says prisoners “will never leave”? And moving back to Ruben’s apparently untroubled assertion that is now too late — why??? Is the man currently enjoying his time in the serene safety of El Salvador incapable of getting on a plane home? What is going on in Ruben R.’s head!
In Black’s telling, the endless questions the original statement raise will careen around the listener’s brain for days, until “at the end of the week they find you dead in your bathroom.” We will undoubtedly be subject to more of Ruben R. and his ilk’s untroubled and confident thoughts in the future, but this particular horse has left the barn. Our collective fate having received his wisdom remains uncertain.
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