Andrew McCarthy, a legal analyst for the National Review, is criticizing Secretary of State Marco Rubio for his ‘disingenuous’ explanation for the deportation Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
The 29-year-old Maryland man was mistakenly deported to El Salvador last month. He was a topic of conversation on Monday during President Donald Trump's meeting with El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele. Rubio, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and others were all present for the meeting and took questions from the media.
McCarthy took issue with Rubio's declarations that judges should not be making foreign policy decisions best left up to the president of the United States.
“Marco Rubio is too smart not to know that what he was saying was utter nonsense,” Columnist and lawyer Andrew C. McCarthy wrote of Rubio’s remarks. “Rubio knows enough about the laws he’s enforcing to understand that the repatriation of an alien — even an illegal alien — is not what’s supposed to happen when an immigration judge has ruled that the illegal alien may not be deported to his home country because he has a credible fear of persecution.”
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This is what happened to Abrego Garcia back in 2019 when an immigration judge granted him “withholding of removal to El Salvador.” Meaning, “The illegal alien could be deported (i.e., he remained 'removable') but he could not lawfully be deported to El Salvador.”
McCarthy then stated, “Rubio went on a ridiculous rant about how the foreign policy of the United States is run by the president, not by a judge. As the former senator is surely aware, the withholding of removal remedy was enacted by Congress. (See Title 8, U.S. Code, §1231(b)(3)).”
“It is inconceivable that the United States secretary of state is unaware that Abrego Garcia had a legal right against deportation to El Salvador that was enforceable in federal court,” McCarthy opined. “A federal court’s vindication of a person’s legal rights is not a matter of the judge trying to wrest control of foreign policy. It’s the law. I’m pretty sure Marco Rubio knows that.”