On Wednesday, President Donald Trump’s advisor Tom Homan attacked Kilmar Ábrego García, the Maryland man the government admits was wrongfully deported to a prison in El Salvador.
Homan serves as Trump’s “border czar,” a position the president invented. Speaking to the press, Homan claimed of García, “He got more due process than Laken Riley got.”
Riley was a Georgia student killed by a 26-year-old Venezuelan man named José Antonio Ibarra, not by García.
The comments infuriated legal analysts and others who fact-checked Homan, but they also lobbed insults of their own.
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Wonkette managing editor Evan Hurst commented, “Nazi PE teachers like Tom Homan dutifully bark out the name of a murdered white woman in response to every suggestion that immigrants are human beings. Play a different song, dips—.”
Military historian Jill Sargent Russell, Ph.D., proposed a question: “Mr. Homan, what standard of due process do you want applied to yourself?”
“Homan and others say this line *a lot* but here’s the thing: Laken Riley was never accused of a crime and the guy who attacked her was not an agent of the state, so the comparison doesn’t apply!” posted Ian Carrillo, an author and sociologist studying race, class, and the environment.
Immigration lawyer Matt Cameron wrote on Blue Sky, “He has been using this line for at least a month now and it just doesn’t make any more sense no matter how many times he says it.”
Former Justice Department appointee Eric Columbus remarked, “Homan says Ábrego García was ‘ordered deported twice.’ But he omits that the immigration judge ordered that he could not be deported to El Salvador for fear he would be harmed there. Due process isn’t enough — the executive has to follow court orders issued during that process.”
“If this were a normal administration—one not bent on defying an order of the Supreme Court—Homan would just say ‘We disagree with the court’s ruling but we’re going to comply with it and we’ll do what we can to facilitate Mr. Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States,'” said Lawfare legal analyst Anna Bower.
Reuters crime and justice reporter Brad Heath questioned, “It is true that the government, which is bound by the Constitution’s requirement that it provide due process, is expected to behave better than criminals?”
National security lawyer Bradley Moss said simply, “That’s not how the law works, dinkus.”
“Toss Homan in prison and remind him he got more due process than the BTK killer’s victims,” quipped ESL teacher Jean-Michel Connard.