Defiance of the rule of law from a power-drunk and demented president gone rogue

On Monday, El Salvador’s self-described “cool dictator” President Bukele appeared in a skit in the Oval Office with Donald Trump, where both men pretended they couldn’t undo their own actions in imprisoning Abrego Garcia. Both Trump and Bukele delivered Oscar-worthy performances as they smirked for the cameras, mocking the audacity of a Supreme Court that would dare restrain a president’s unconstitutional overreach.

Acting pursuant to an agreement between the US and El Salvador, Trump officials arrested Garcia, a father and sheet metal worker, on March 12, 2025, held him without a hearing despite a known court order protecting him from deportation, and flew him to an El Salvador prison. After a DOJ lawyer truthfully admitted the administration’s error in court, Pam Bondi placed the lawyer on permanent leave.

Under Trump’s unprecedented, 8th Amendment-defying arrangement, he paid Bukele $6 million to incarcerate more than 200 people in the notoriously harsh El Salvador prison known as CECOT. Prisoners at CECOT walk in chains, are not allowed visitors or correspondence, sleep 75 to 80 men to a cell, are never allowed outdoors, and, in the words of Bukele’s justice minister, are “never expected to leave” the prison.

The farce

In response to last week’s unanimous Supreme Court order directing Trump “to facilitate” Garcia’s return to the US, Trump said he had ‘no control’ over El Salvador and that it was ‘up to President Bukele to decide’ what to do. For his scripted response, Bukele said there was ‘no way’ he’d send Garcia back to the US, calling the idea “preposterous” because releasing him would be like “smuggling a terrorist into the US.”

Every judge in every courthouse in the nation, including Judge Boasberg, who ordered the administration to turn planes headed to El Salvador around, knows that all Trump has to do is ask, and Bukele would release Garcia to the custody of US officials within an hour. On Wednesday, Boasberg found probable cause that Trump’s team acted in criminal contempt of court.

Trump and Bukele, together, put Garcia into CECOT. Now pretending that they can’t get him out insults the intelligence of every American outside the Fox News bubble.

Bukele governs El Salvador under draconian ‘States of Exception’

After he was elected president of El Salvador in 2019, Bukele declared a state of emergency in 2022 to “tackle gang crime and sky-high homicide rates.” Bukele’s state of emergency extinguished free speech and protest rights, disappeared media critics, and wiped human rights and legal process off the books.

El Salvador today, under the Bukele regime’s continuing state of emergency, arrests and imprisons people on mere suspicion, detaining thousands of people on suspicion alone- no due process, no trial, and no review. According to NPR, a news outlet Trump now seeks to silence, Bukele’s state of emergency has led to the imprisonment of 85,000 people, of which only 1,000- less than 2%- have been convicted of a crime.

Trump’s own State Department, under the Bureau of Consular Affairs, still cautions travelers about El Salvador. They advise, “In March 2022, Bukele declared a “State of Exception” in response to an increase in gang murders:

• The State of Exception allows local authorities to arrest anyone they think is involved in gang activity.
• It suspends several constitutional rights. This includes the normal protections of criminal procedure, like the right to a speedy or fair trial.
• Tens of thousands of people are currently in prison under the State of Exception.
• Several U.S. and other foreign citizens have been detained under the State of Exception. They remain in prison and have yet to face trial.”

Given the accurate description of Bukele’s abuses, one wonders whether Marco Rubio is even aware that the warning still appears on the State Department’s website.

Trump shares Bukele’s love of “Emergency Declarations” and gulags

Bukele’s ‘State of Exception’ under his “national emergency” is the legal cover Bukele employs to silence his critics and send people to gulags with no legal process. States of Exception were also Hitler’s initial cover for controlling the media, dispatching SS henchmen, and sending millions of innocent people to unthinkable deaths.

Like Bukele, Hitler, and other autocrats throughout history, Trump is also fond of declaring “national emergencies,” the precursor to rogue police powers. After only three months in office, Trump has already declared six national emergencies including a “US border emergency,” a “National Energy Emergency,” and a national emergency designating “Cartels and Other Organizations as Foreign Terrorist Organizations.”

During his performance with Bukele, Trump previewed his plan to imprison American citizens in El Salvador too, suggesting that Bukele needed to “build five more” enormous CECOTs. This was not new: Trump says he “looks forward to watching” Tesla vandals (he called them ‘sick terrorist thugs’) get sent to permanent prison in El Salvador.

Without question, sending Americans to CETOC, where no un-staged press gets in and no realtime photos get out, would violate the 8th Amendment against cruel and unusual punishment. It is as blatantly unconstitutional as targeting law firms, federal employees, and universities for their political views.

The District Court Judge needs to find Bondi’s team in contempt

At Tuesday’s hearing in the Garcia case, Judge Xinis told DOJ attorneys to expect quick discovery on whether the DOJ’s failure to act to return Garcia amounted to Contempt of Court. From the beginning of Xinis’ case, like Boasberg’s case, Trump’s DOJ has filed late, defiant and disrespectful pleadings, ignored direct court orders, and, as to SCOTUS ruling that Trump’s DOJ must ‘facilitate’ Garcia’s return, pretended not to understand plain English.

I don’t share the widespread legal opinion that the Roberts Court intended to give Trump an off-ramp in the Garcia case by parsing “effectuate” vs. “facilitate” in their 9 to 0 order. The intent and spirit of their ruling was crystal clear; if Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, or Gorsuch wanted to back Trump’s illegal conduct, they would have dissented. None did.

Instead, as I see it, Trump is teasing out an ambiguity in the order that simply doesn’t exist. It is plain defiance of the rule of law from a power drunk and demented president gone rogue.

Judge Xinis has ordered the Trump administration to provide daily updates on steps the government has taken to return Garcia, but as of this writing, Trump’s defiance persists. The next step is for both Judge Xinis and Judge Boasberg to require under-oath testimony of DOJ decision-makers, going as high up the ladder as necessary to get answers. Whoever next defiantly withholds the truth, or persists in claiming they “don’t know” what they ought to, should be held in contempt of court.

As Garcia perishes in an inhumane cell in El Salvador, Trump’s henchmen should be also be imprisoned while he waits. They should spend as many weeks, months or years behind bars as it takes for federal courts to get the truth. And they should be reminded, Bondi particularly, that Trump’s criminal immunity does not extend to kidnapping, and will not protect their law license if they continue to defy the court.

Sabrina Haake is a 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her columns are published in Alternet, Chicago Tribune, MSN, Out South Florida, Raw Story, Salon, Smart News and Windy City Times. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.