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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 14, 2025

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If Trump backs down, I wonder if ICE's fuckup will have ironically created the conditions for Garcia to make a valid an asylum claim in the US

If the US, by claiming he is a gang member, has caused El Salvador to persecute him, I would say they have indeed provided the basis for a valid asylum claim. I am not sure if this is true if he actually is a gang member, but given that the two pieces of evidence are a confidential informant and Chicago Bulls themed clothing (which the US claims is characteristic of both TdA AND MS-13... aren't gangs supposed to use DIFFERENT "colors"), I don't think that's been shown to any reasonable standard of evidence.

Yes, this is just Trump having made a deal with El Salvador about paying them to imprison gang members for him, and some underling having to find some "gang members" to deport in a hurry. "Oh, that guy was accused of being a gang member by someone without any credibility? Whatever, it will have to do."

I wonder how long it will take for the real gang members (if there are any being deported) to wisen up to the fact that murdering an ICE agent (or just a random civilian bystander) will immensely improve their outcomes (if they survive the encounter). Then they get a nice long trial in the US. Spending 20 years on Uncle Sam's death row before being fried likely has a much better QALY balance than spending the rest of your life in some El Salvador megaprison.

(This might also explain the selection. "This guy is suspected to run the local MS-13 chapter. He is investigated for three gang shootings, rape and drug trafficking. Should we round him up?" -- "Nah, that one might go out fighting, and I am not getting paid enough to take bullets. Uhm, I mean we might need him as a witness for gang-related crime later. Look, that one is accused of having a five-year-old kid with his American wife, and also wearing some clothing reminiscent of gang colors. He is probably not even packing and will never believe that we will haul his ass to some El Salvador prison complex before we have him cuffed.")

I wonder how long it will take for the real gang members (if there are any being deported) to wisen up to the fact that murdering an ICE agent (or just a random civilian bystander) will immensely improve their outcomes (if they survive the encounter). Then they get a nice long trial in the US.

Why? Is there something that would prevent the U.S. from deporting immediately and letting El Salvador prosecute the case?

I don’t think it’s out of the question that a judge could rule that deportation to the current El Salvador regime is a per se violation of the convention against torture.

6th Amendment:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

Obviously the 6th Amendment does not apply if the government is not prosecuting them, and a deportation proceeding is not a criminal trial. Foreign nationals being tried by foreign courts have no 6th Amendment case with the U. S. Government.

I wonder how long it will take for the real gang members (if there are any being deported) to wisen up to the fact that murdering an ICE agent (or just a random civilian bystander) will immensely improve their outcomes (if they survive the encounter). Then they get a nice long trial in the US.

Why? Is there something that would prevent the U.S. from deporting immediately and letting El Salvador prosecute the case?

The US government could deport an illegal immigrant without indicting them for crimes they are suspected to have committed while in the USA, but your question was if there is "something that would prevent the U.S. from deporting immediately and letting El Salvador prosecute the case" and the 6th Amendment is that thing.

Crimes committed abroad are often prosecuted domestically, murder is illegal in El Salvador so he can be deported and then tried there.

How often do you think? My understanding was that extraterritorial jurisdiction was exceptional, especially if the conduct could be prosecuted in the territorial jurisdiction it occurred.

It's the same thing, unless you believe that it is not possible for El Salvador to prosecute their national for a crime committed in the United States. I'm not an expert on Salvadoran law, but I would be very surprised if there was such a statutory limitation. The U. S. certainly has none.

I recommend you try to phrase future questions to the effect of "Why does this thing that never happens never happen" more carefully, because they're easily misunderstood, due to things that never happen having poor representation in vernacular speech. My initial reaction to this comment was that you were trolling me by phrasing question such that you could move the goalposts with plausible deniability, but I will make a final attempt to answer the question "Could the a country deport illegal immigrants, without trying them for crimes committed in that country, and, following their arrival in their home countries, could the deported person's home country try them for crimes committed in the other country?"

Yes.

However:

For obvious reasons, governments want to assert their authority to prosecute crime within their borders. (Whether ICE could deport a person in the custody of a state penal system is left as an exercise for the reader.)

For obvious reasons, governments generally don't want to assume the responsibility of policing conduct outside their borders. The exception is extraterritorial jurisdiction, and you'll note that most examples of it are exceptional, in that they're specific to extraterritorial problems.

For not-necessarily-obvious-but-easy-to-understand reasons, extraterritorial jurisdiction likely requires statutes being specifically written to allow it, depending on the country's legal structure. Courts and LEO need to have defined jurisdictions; at minimum, authority needs to be specifically assigned for extraterritorial crimes.

In many scenarios, at least one government would be acting against their interests.

He was declared a gang member in 2019, long before the El Salvador deal, so I don't think this is Trump needing to find people to fill up Salvadoran prisons.

Nothing seems to have been done about the claim in the time since, though. I think the idea is that the claim was made and logged but everyone had long deemed it to be a nothingburger; and it was dug up again when files were scoured to find the requisite number of people to deport.