2 weeks Ago
As the Trump administration defies an order to facilitate the return of a Maryland man who was illegally deported last month, many of Utah’s top elected officials have attempted to walk a tricky line, neither endorsing the administration’s actions nor condemning their refusal to comply. At his monthly press conference Thursday, Republican Gov. Spencer Cox partially broke with Trump and said he thought the administration should adhere to the court order and bring the man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, back to the United States.
Rep. Mike Kennedy of Utah’s 4th Congressional District, meanwhile, joined a group of House Republicans this week on a visit to El Salvador, but has avoided any public comment on the issue. Kennedy, for the second time this week , did not respond to a request for comment from The Salt Lake Tribune, this time not answering if he’d joined several of his GOP House colleagues in a visit of the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, the notorious mass prison where Abrego Garcia is being held.
El #EmbajadorDuncan dio ayer la bienvenida a El Salvador a la delegación encabezada por el Congresista Jason Smith, quien visita el país para fortalecer los lazos bilaterales y dialogar sobre iniciativas que promueven el desarrollo económico y la cooperación mutua. pic.twitter.
com/Zj0o8OSiOJ “The problem is there’s just no nuance in the discussion. It’s like, either you hate the Constitution or you want terrorists living in America,” Cox said during a news conference Thursday. “It seems like those are the two choices, and I think there’s another choice out there.
” The Supreme Court unanimously ruled last week that the Trump administration improperly deported Abrego Garcia and ordered the administration to facilitate his return to the United States. The other option, Cox said, would be for the Trump administration to comply with the court order to bring Abrego Garcia back to the U.S.
and to follow standard due process before again deporting him. “That person was here illegally and probably isn’t a great person [and] probably should be deported, and so I think you can do those things,” the governor alleged, seemingly referring to Abrego Garcia’s alleged but unconfirmed gang connections . “I think you can bring them back, go through the process and then have them deported.
And that’s probably the way it should work.” Legally, the question of whether or not Abrego Garcia should be deported is a settled one: Multiple courts, including the U.S.
Supreme Court, have ruled that the deportation was illegal, as a court ruled in 2019 that he should not be returned to his home country out of concern for his safety. While administration officials first acknowledged that Abrego Garcia was improperly deported, they have now reversed course . Abrego Garcia, 29, is a father of three.
Cox went on to say that he feels “it really does matter that we hold to these constitutional norms,” but added he feels that “pushing the boundaries of those norms” is acceptable. “The founders saw these types of things happening,” he said. “It’s not the worst thing to challenge those norms.
” Cox’s comments came after Kennedy, a Republican representing Utah’s third congressional district, traveled to El Salvador earlier this week. He was included in a photo shared by the U.S.
embassy in El Salvador Wednesday, along with GOP Reps. Riley Moore and Carol Miller of West Virginia, Jason Smith of Missouri, Ron Estes of Kansas, Kevin Hearn of Oklahoma and Claudia Tenney of New York. The Utah congressman also did not respond to repeated requests for comment on the Trump administration’s refusal to comply with the court order or Trump’s threats earlier this week to imprison U.
S. citizens in El Salvador, when he suggested in the Oval Office Monday that the country should build additional prisons to house U.S.
“homegrowns.” While most of the delegation that visited El Salvador this week has not commented publicly about the trip, Moore and Smith shared photos Wednesday from a tour of CECOT facilities. On the social media platform X , Moore included a selfie in front of a cell filled with prisoners and another photo where he posed in the prison, giving two thumbs-up.
“This maximum security facility houses the country’s most brutal criminals, including murderers, rapists, pedophiles, and terrorists. Several inmates were extremely violent criminals recently deported from the U.S.
,” Moore alleged. “I leave now even more determined to support President Trump’s efforts to secure our homeland.” Smith, who is chair of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, expressed similar sentiments and wrote that it was “unconscionable that Democrats in Congress are urging the release of more foreign criminals back into our country.
” The visit to the prison came as Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, where Abrego Garcia had been living, attempted to visit CECOT this week and speak with Abrego Garcia, but was denied entry , he said. In recent weeks, human rights groups have raised serious concerns about the conditions at CECOT.
“People held in CECOT, as well as in other prisons in El Salvador, are denied communication with their relatives and lawyers, and only appear before courts in online hearings, often in groups of several hundred detainees at the same time,” a Human Rights Watch declaration from last month read . “The Salvadoran government has described people held in CECOT as ‘terrorists,’ and has said that they ‘will never leave.’ Human Rights Watch is not aware of any detainees who have been released from that prison.
” None of the other members of Utah’s congressional delegation — which includes Sens. Mike Lee and John Curtis, as well as Kennedy and Reps. Blake Moore, Celeste Maloy and Burgess Owens — responded to requests from The Salt Lake Tribune earlier this week for comment on the illegal deportation, the administration’s defiance of the courts or Trump’s threats to imprison U.
S. citizens in Salvadoran prisons. Owens addressed the deportation on X Wednesday, but only to chide Van Hollen for traveling to El Salvador.
“This same Senator did not ONCE visit America’s open border to ‘demand’ the end of allowing the El Salvadoran MS-13 gang into our country,” Owens wrote . Lee, meanwhile, who has been rumored as a possible U.S.
Supreme Court pick for Trump, has posted about the illegal deportation on social media, where he has suggested the deportation was not, despite the court’s unanimous ruling, illegal and that Abrego Garcia “ deserve[d] to be deported .”.
