US 'Due Process' Surfaces After International Scandal
A recent US federal judge's ruling, mandating the return of Venezuelan deportees who were unlawfully dispatched to Salvadoran prisons by the Trump administration, is being hailed by some as a triumph for due process. Luis Muñoz Pinto, among others, was sent to Mariona, a facility notorious for its human rights abuses under President Nayib Bukele, whose iron-fisted approach to crime has garnered
international attention for its extreme conditions. Apparently, some rights are only rediscovered when inconvenient truths surface. This sudden concern for legal rights, years after these men were railroaded out of the country in 2020 by the very same government now ordered to pay for their reappearance, smacks of a familiar double standard. The US has a long and storied history of summarily
deporting individuals, often under dubious pretenses, only to have courts later deem such actions unconstitutional. One might recall the Palmer Raids of 1919-1920, where thousands of suspected anarchists and leftists were rounded up and deported without due process, many vanishing into history. Today, the price tag for this particular governmental 'oopsie' will fall to taxpayers, covering travel
costs for individuals the government itself unlawfully exiled. The underlying network of power connecting such arbitrary deportations to broader geopolitical strategies remains deliberately obscured. Venezuelan migrants, caught between a US-backed sanctions regime that has crippled their home country's economy and a militarized border, become convenient pawns. The US leverages their desperation,