A Family Torn Apart

The Moral Obscenity of Kilmar Abrego García's Deportation

Photo by Alexey Demidov on Unsplash

Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And what the Trump administration has done to Kilmar Abrego García and his family represents not just a policy failure but a moral atrocity that reveals the hollowing out of our most fundamental commitments to human dignity and due process.

The facts are unbearably clear: A man with legal protection against deportation was seized while driving to pick up his children, with his nonverbal autistic 5-year-old son in the back seat. He was shuffled across the country in a dizzying series of transfers before being dumped in a notorious Salvadoran megaprison for gang members—a place where torture is routine and disappearances common.

His crime? There wasn't one. The administration's own Department of Justice has admitted in court that this was a mistake—that Abrego García should never have been deported. Yet instead of working to rectify this error, the administration has doubled down, with the President himself attacking Abrego García and the Department of Homeland Security posting unredacted court documents containing the family's home address to social media, forcing his wife and three children—two with autism, one prone to seizures—into hiding.

What makes this case so chilling is not just the cruelty inflicted on one family but what it reveals about the nature of power untethered from moral constraint. When a government can seize a person with legal protection against deportation, ship them to a foreign prison without a hearing, and then, when caught, choose to endanger that person's family rather than admit error—we are witnessing not governance but vindictiveness elevated to state policy.

The administration's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798—a statute written for wartime that they've repurposed for mass deportation—makes clear that this isn't about individual cases but about redefining entire categories of human beings as enemies of the state. That this ancient law is being used to override modern legal protections, including those explicitly granted to Abrego García by an immigration judge, reveals the fundamental incoherence of claiming to enforce “law and order” while systematically dismantling the legal order itself.

If a government can deport someone it admits should not have been deported—and suffer no consequence—then the rule of law is not a constraint. It's a performance. It's a rhetorical device invoked to justify actions taken on entirely different grounds—grounds of raw power, political expediency, and the presumption that certain lives matter less than others.

The administration's actions expose the lie at the heart of their immigration rhetoric. This was never about “law and order.” Abrego García had legal protection. This was never about "public safety." He was a sheet metal worker supporting his family, including children with special needs. This was about power—raw, unconstrained power exercised without accountability or remorse.

When Jennifer Vasquez Sura says, “Honestly, I just want my husband back, my best friend back, my kids' father back. I want our life back,” she speaks not from ideology but from the universal human experience of family love. Her children text their father daily, knowing he cannot respond. Her nonverbal son cuddles with the construction vest his father left behind. These are not political acts. They are human ones—the refusal to accept the erasure of a beloved person.

Meanwhile, officials mock a senator's visit to check on Abrego García's welfare. They compile and share “dossiers” with false accusations. They expose a vulnerable family's address to potential harassment or worse. This is not how a democratic government behaves. It is how an authoritarian regime punishes dissent—by making examples of those who dare question its actions, by turning bureaucratic “mistakes” into deliberate lessons about power.

The weaponization of personal information against this family should horrify anyone with even a passing commitment to human dignity. When DHS posted Vasquez Sura's address for its 2.4 million followers—knowing full well the case had “gone viral” and the family was receiving threats—it wasn't negligence. It was intimidation, a warning to others who might challenge the administration's actions: We know where you live. We can expose you too.

What's most concerning is the relative silence from institutions that should be ringing alarm bells. When courts issue rulings that are ignored or mocked, and those courts do not forcefully defend their authority—when Congress witnesses the executive branch flouting legal protections it has established, and responds with muted concern rather than decisive action—they become complicit in the erosion of constitutional governance itself. Their silence doesn't maintain neutrality; it cedes authority. It tells the public that some abuses of power are too politically charged to challenge, that the rule of law bends to political expediency, that our most fundamental commitments are negotiable.

Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And a government that separates a man from his autistic children over a bureaucratic error, then endangers that family when caught, has abandoned any pretense of moral legitimacy.

The center must be held—not because it is easy, but because it is ours to hold. And holding it requires recognizing that what's happening to the Abrego García family isn't a policy dispute but a profound moral failure that implicates us all.

What remains now is a simple question: Are we still a nation where mistakes can be acknowledged and rectified? Where the suffering of children matters more than the stubborn pride of officials? Where human dignity takes precedence over political expedience?

The ground approaches. And our response to this single family's suffering will tell us much about whether we still possess the moral clarity to meet it.