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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 7, 2025

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That's a lot of emotive language in your post.

I don't have an opinion about this guy in particular (although clearly you do) but this is a horrific precedent to try and set, this argument could easily be applied to a citizen. There's nothing about the executive's argument that actually requires him to be an immigrant and the courts could equally "not have jurisdiction" over a citizen on foreign soil.

If there was the executive will to actually get this man back it's plainly obvious a phone call could be made to El Salvador to put this man on a flight back tomorrow. He's only there on the behest of the United States in the first place.

If there was the executive will to actually get this man back it's plainly obvious a phone call could be made to El Salvador to put this man on a flight back tomorrow.

I think you're probably right at some level on the circumstances in this case, but the man is a Salvadoran citizen and international law generally provides a number of protections when one country requests something resembling extradition. If Australia asked the US to return an American who overstayed their visa there and was now imprisoned in the US (for whatever reason), I'm not sure we'd just hand them over either. "Why didn't the Judiciary just compel the Executive to make foreign nations release their own political prisoners?" reads very much as "one weird trick" that you wouldn't expect to work.

international law generally provides a number of protections when one country requests something resembling extradition.

International law comes only into it in so far as it prohibits sending in the marines to fetch him. Prisoner transfers needing the consent of both countries is just a downstream consequence of respecting national sovereignty.

From my understanding, El Salvador has locked him up for being a gang member on the US say-so without a trial. I think that it is safe to assume that they will not be overly concerned with violating his citizen rights by "extraditing" him to the US at his request.

In fact, if the US needed him for a much more unfriendly reason, say to compel him to bear witness against US citizen gang members in a criminal case, I am sure that El Salvador could be persuaded to extradite him without too much trouble.

You are correct that most countries are not willing to either extradite their citizens to the US or send over their political prisoners, but this case is unlike most such cases. Basically, Trump is paying El Salvador to take back (and imprison) suspected gang members to score a political victory. It is safe to assume that on the part of El Salvador, this is purely a business relationship -- they likely don't feel either protective or vengeful towards the man in question, and would be equally happy to get paid for locking some other former US resident up.