The Infamous Ritual

 A federal judge this week rejected the government's attempt to re-detain Kilmar Abrego Garcia. She found, among other things, that Abrego was willing to depart for Costa Rica immediately, and that this country—renowned for its clement environment, low crime rates, and stable, rights-respecting, democratic political institutions—had agreed to grant him refuge. 

Nonetheless, the government had repeatedly told this federal judge that the only country willing to accept Abrego was Liberia, and that they were going to insist on sending him to this African nation, even though he has no cultural ties there, and it would place him thousands of miles further away from his family and loved ones. 

In other words—the federal judge concluded—the government had lied to her. And they apparently had done so for no reason other than to punish and retaliate against a man because he had dared to insist upon his legal rights and had thereby created an embarrassing situation for the administration—which had wanted to simply dub him a "terrorist," disappear him to a foreign gulag, and never let the American public hear otherwise. 

Their "persistent refusal to acknowledge Costa Rica as a viable removal option, their threats to send Abrego Garcia to African countries that never agreed to take him, and their misrepresentation to the Court that Liberia is now the only country available to Abrego Garcia, all reflect that whatever purpose was behind his detention, it was not for the 'basic purpose' of timely third-country removal," she reportedly wrote. 

The government's purpose, in short, appears to be nothing other than this administration's usual gratuitous cruelty, sadism, and obscene vindictiveness. I am reminded of Harry Alan Potamkin's poem about the prosecution of Sacco and Vanzetti—in which he likened the legal lynching of these two men to a kind of ritual cannibalism: "The summit of our worship has been reached [...] the toothsome sacrifice of these unwelcome kind / not ours, hence not worthy to the feast."

The poem continues, in words that could well apply to the administration's entire immigration policy: "And they would stand, / unwilling to forsake in us their trust,/ beneath the sacrificial flame raising wrought arms / and voices, they are the unaccepted brotherhood / who gave us our little beauty and our only charms—/ we have repaid them often with their proper place./ Ours is the dominance of claws and not the grace/ of fingers; ours is not the sweetness of a hand."