A test of American constitutional democracy is unfolding in an unlikely place: a shadowy Central American prison system.
U.S. President Donald Trump has done numerous things in his second term that have been deemed authoritarian or illegal, and he’s threatening to do more.
But there’s one line he hasn’t crossed, at least not yet. He has not wilfully, clearly, defied a court order, crossing the Rubicon into a constitutional no man’s land where rules don’t apply.
That’s what makes the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia more than a murky tale about one man’s banishment to different El Salvadoran prisons, including, initially, an infamous gulag-like anti-gang facility.
Much is unclear about the man himself.
A court decision this week acknowledged allegations that Abrego Garcia is a low-level gang member, beset by a history of domestic abuse allegations. Or was he actually escaping the gangs of his native El Salvador, to build a life as a construction worker in …