Rock Hill

To the editor:

When President Biden returned U.S. citizens Brittney Griner, Paul Whelan, and Evan Gerskovich home after being held captive in Putin’s Russia, Americans sighed relief. 

 Similarly so, when two Americans – Siamak Namazi and Emad Sharghi – were freed after years of imprisonment in Iran.  And when Keith Siegel was released from Hamas, Marc Fogel from Putin, and other Americans from their captors in Afghanistan, Belarus, and Venezuela, President Trump earned well-deserved credit.   

So why is Kilmar Abrego Garcia still wrongfully held in an El Salvador prison after the U.S. government admitted in court filings to mistakenly deporting him there while lawfully residing in the U.S., despite zero record he committed crimes?  

And why should anyone believe the nonsense that President Trump remains powerless to  obey federal court orders, including the U.S. Supreme Court, to return Abrego Garcia home to his wife and three children (each with disabilities)?

There is no world in which a U.S. president and those promoting that nonsense believe what they’re telling us.  What they do believe is they can get away with it by imposing their manufactured version of reality upon the one we actually live, by assuming we’ll ignore what our eyes and ears tell us and we haven’t brains enough in our heads. 

So where are U.S. Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, and Congressman Josh Riley on all this?  If people lawfully residing in this country can be snatched from the street, sent to a foreign prison and left to rot without due process or credible supporting evidence, and if a U.S. president can ignore court orders by refusing to lift a finger, then no U.S. citizen is safe.