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Accidental deportation of Maryland man could give Congress the means to rein in a lawless Administra [1]
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Date: 2025-04-25
The deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, which the Trump Administration admits was ‘a mistake,’ despite apparently ignoring a Supreme Court finding that he should be returned to the United States, has opened up a legal can of worms that could eventually force the spineless GOP politicos in Congress to take action to rein the administration’s Gestapo-like actions.
The U.S. Department of State is paying the government of El Salvador $6 million to house immigrants deported from the United States. While there’s been a lot of press coverage of the constitutionality of the administration’s actions, some statutory issues are also in play.
The first is what is known as the Leahy Law. This refers to statutory provisions of section 620M of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, 22 U.S.C. 2378d, which prohibit the U.S. Government from providing funds to units of foreign security forces where credible information implicates that unit in the commission of gross human rights violations. One provision of the law applies to the Department of Defense,, and the other applies to the State Department, unless the Secretary of State determines and reports to Congress that the country is taking effective steps to bring the responsible parties to these violations to justice.
El Salvador’s Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, is a sprawling, brutal place where inmates have no access to lawyers or their families and no rights of due process. There are no indications of any efforts to improve conditions at CECOT, nor is there any indication that the administration has made the report to Congress required by the Leahy Law. This potentially implicates the administration in human rights violations in addition to a breach of U.S. law.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio calls the ‘alliance’ between El Salvador and the U.S. an example of security and prosperity in our hemisphere. Should Congress find its courage and call the administration on it, this could create another legal minefield.
In December 2022, Congress enacted sweeping transparency requirements for international agreements in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2023. For the first time, transparency requirements were imposed on nonbinding agreements previously not subject to publication or congressional reporting requirements. The Constitution, in Article II, provides that presidents can make treaties ‘by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, provided that two-thirds of the Senators present concur. Since the early days of the nation, however, presidents have gotten around Article II by concluding ‘agreements,’ binding and non-binding. From 1939 to 1989, for example, the U.S. concluded over 11,000 executive agreements and only 700 treaties. Since 1989, the number of treaties has dropped even further.
The NDAA aimed to close this loophole by requiring the State Department to provide Congress with monthly reports on all executive agreements concluded that month, along with a detailed description of the legal authority supporting the agreement.
The payment of $5 million to El Salvador is undoubtedly covered by some sort of written agreement, which should bring it under the NDAA's reporting requirements. There is no evidence of such a report having been submitted to Congress, yet another potential violation of U.S. law.
The ball is in Congress’s court. It will either assert its constitutional authority and bring this lawless administration to heel, or the cowards on the Hill will continue to cower in their bunkers and allow the pillage of the rule of law to continue.
No bets on which way they’ll jump.
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