Trump is not the first president who wants a prison out of the reach of the law – he just does not do it mysteriously about it

They are horrifying stories that have come from the US in recent months. Without any form of process, people are picked up by the US government, in fact killed, and tucked away in an overseas torture prison. It is not intended that they will still come out. The Cecot prison in El Salvador has not ever left anyone, according to the country’s justice minister. « Except in a coffin. » And if the deportation is a mistake, too bad. The US government has no authority to do something about the situation in El Salvador, claims the Trump government.

Shocking, yes. But for some too: a déjà vu.

What is happening now « nobody should surprise, » says J. Wells Dixon, lawyer at the American Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR). The search for a place to keep prisoners out of the reach of the legal system is not new. « That has been happening in the United States for twenty years. » Together with his colleagues, he has filed cases over the past two decades for violations of the law in the War on Terror. « And we are now closely involved in immigration cases from the Trump era. »

After the initial surprise about how quickly the situation under Trump has escalated, in American media more and more attention is being paid to the similarities with previous periods. Does this seem to be in the camps for Americans of Japanese descent in WWII, for example, or the mass deposit policy of President Hoover in the early 1930s, in which nearly two million Mexicans and Americans of Mexican descent were deported without fair trial? Is what Trump does new? Or is he in a typical American tradition?

Enemy in our midst

Traditionally, Beatrice De Graaf, terrorism expert and professor of History of International Relations, says the country has an obsession with enemy thinking. And especially with ‘The Enemy Within. ‘ « At set times, when the emergency is supposedly high, the policy focuses hard against Americans who are no longer seen as American. Even though they have a visa, Green Card, or even citizenship: that no longer counts. Then they are declared out of the order and the president becomes a kind of oppers heriff, who everyone can get from his yard. »

She lists: After the civil war, Americans projected their problems in Irish, Italians and Catholics. In the 20th century, McCarthy hunted communists during the Red Scare. J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI since the 1920s, had it on the Black Panthers and students for a Democratic Society. « What some people would call » Woke.  » And under Nixon, in terms of CIA and FBI operations, ‘subversive elements’ from their own population « all Gates of Hell Open ”, says De Graaf.

At set times, the American president becomes a kind of oppers heriff, which everyone can pop from his yard

You saw the most recent burping of the American paranoia during the Bush government. After the attack on the Twin Towers, the Patriot Act was introduced, which again gave the president powers that were just rested after Nixon. De Graaf: « Afterwards there were really witch yachts on Americans with an Islamic or Arab background. »

Wells Dixon has the consequences of the War on Terror experienced up close. He has been representing prisoners of Guantánamo Bay and others for years Black sites -Secret foreign CIA prisons where people suspected of Al-Qaida membership were tortured. And he sees striking similarities between the Bush strategy then and Trump now.

In this way Trump also tries to increase presidential power by constantly talking about ‘national security, foreign affairs and war powers’. Trump talks about immigration in terms of an invasion, « with similar war turban minology. »

Same Purpose

In Bush ‘search for unadulterated presidential power, the military prison played in Cuba, Guantánamo Bay, a key role, says Wells. « When Guantánamo was opened in 2002, it had to be a place that was completely outside the law. The Bush government called it the legal equivalent of Outer Space. « 

And that is exactly what Trump is looking for in Cecot. Although this concerns migrants and ‘gang members’ instead of terrorists, the goal of Bush and Trump is, according to Wells Dixon, the same: bringing people out of the reach of the courts. « To a place where they never have the opportunity to fight the charges against them, where they do not have access to a lawyer. »

In that light it is also entirely logical that Trump initially brought the first groups of deported immigrants to Guantánamo Bay in February. He finally expressed the ambition to imprison 30,000 people. Are ‘Borders’ Tom Homan used for the deportees migrants the same words as former vice-president Dick Cheney used for the prisoners in Guantánamo: these people are The sausage of the sausage.

However, there was one fatal weakness in Trump’s Guantánamo plan. Ironically, Guantánamo turned out to be less lawless than Trump thought, and Bush had also experienced before.

Not lawless enough

The search of the Bush government for Legal No man’s land failed, thanks to the lawsuits that were filed by Wells Dixon and his colleagues at the CCR.

An important first victory came in 2004, when the CCR lawyers first gained access to the prison. Wells Dixon was shocked, he remembers. « It is the depressing place I have ever seen. A horrible place. The effect on the lives of the people sitting there is devastating, even if they are released after the intervention of a court. »

The greatest legal victory came in 2008. The Supreme Court definitively stipulated that the prisoners in Guantánamo could rely on the Habeas Corpus principle: they were able to pospect their case to the judge. Guantánamo did not fall out of the reach of American jurisdiction.

So Trump had to do something else: the migrants were not lawless enough in Guantánamo. When he realized that, Trump changed course, Wells Dixon thinks. He got people back from Guantánamo, and shortly after he relieved on the Alien Enemies Act« A law from the 18th century that gives the President war forces. » In this way he can « remove people from the United States without too many procedures. »

And then to a place where – unlike Guantánamo – the US government is not the prevailing authority. That is the attraction of El Salvador. And that is why Minister Pam Bondi was able to claim that she could not do anything about the incorrectly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia can be retrieved. According to the government, it is really in a place outside the reach of the American legal system.

Wells Dixon: « Now they are talking about doing the same with American citizens. » A development that he sees as “the natural evolution of the global War on Terror« .

Beatrice De Graaf also sees a direct line to the Bush years. She notes that the lawyers who prepared the Patriot Act for Bush are now even returning to Washington to justify Trumps policy, such as Viet Dinh and Jennifer Newstead.

The fact that those lawyers were not welcome in the government under Biden and Obama does not mean that the desire to keep unwelcome detention to have ever left the White House in law. Wells Dixon: « Also in recent years, under Obama and Biden, the United States have deployed foreign governments or groups to arrest people on their behalf. You see that in Syria, where the Syrian democratic armed forces are likely to hold for the US for the US. Again with the aim of keeping people away from American courts. »

Frighten

Yet Trump does indeed take new steps, says the lawyer. The Bush government initially operated in the deepest secret. Trump anything but. « The Trump government actively uses Guantánamo’s images and symbolism to frighten immigrants. They post about it on social media. »

According to Wells Dixon, the relationship with judges is also fundamentally different. Although the Bush government tried to convince the court that they had no authority in Guantánamo, once the judges exercised their power, Bush did not resist it. Trump is. « He says: it doesn’t matter what the judges say, we’re not going to do it. »

I think ignoring judicial judgments will mean the downfall of the Trump government

The bitter is: for the individual it does not always matter whether lip service is proven to the courts. Because even when there was judicial testing in Guantánamo, the benefit for the prisoners was limited, says Wells Dixon. Even the Obama government-which stated by decree that Guantánamo Bay would be closed within a year-has not brought justice to every prisoner. In fact: there are still fifteen people from the period of the War on Terror.

Also a client of Wells Dixon, a Somalian where the American judge ruled years ago that he is not a threat and should be released, is still there to his frustration. The US does not want to return him to Somalia and have made insufficient diplomatic efforts to establish it in a third country. « I cherish just as much resentment against the Biden government as against the Trump government. Nobody has done anything to help him. »

Public opinion

But Wells Dixon Put Hoop from the escalation of the last weeks. He calls « a huge strategic error. » « I think it will mean the downfall of the Trump government. »

It went with the Bush government. When the world was aware of the abuses in the Black sites, in Abu GRAib, and in Guantánamo, that caused a shift in public opinion. Now the polls show that 54 percent of Americans think that Trump is exceeding his powers, and 76 percent say that a president should not ignore statements from the Supreme Court.

Trump is overwhelming his hand, Wells Dixon thinks. « And perhaps, perhaps, there will finally be some accountability for this many years of attempt by successive American presidents to place people outside the rule of law, where they have the free hand to terrorize, torture or hold them endlessly. »

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