Schrödinger’s Detainees

The real news on this topic, however, was Trump’s acknowledgment that he could bring Abrego Garcia home if he wanted. That Abrego Garcia is still in El Salvador and in the headlines today, a month after my colleague Nick Miroff first reported his removal, is both astonishing and outrageous. The Trump administration scrambled to do that, but much of what it came up with doesn’t withstand scrutiny. Talking Points Memo reports that the men are now Schrödinger’s detainees—not clearly in the custody of the U.S., which arrested them and is paying El Salvador to house them, nor in the custody of El Salvador, which has no obvious authority to hold them. The White House can’t uphold “law and order” by discarding it in the cases of these detainees.