Why Is the Right Celebrating Bringing Kilmar Abrego Garcia Back So U.S. Taxpayers Can Pay to Try, Convict, and Incarcerate Him?

We need to change the Constitution to clarify that the only process such scumbags are due is the process of putting them on airplanes headed out of here.

Over the last few days, the Right has been gloating that Kilmar Abrego Garcia is being returned from El Salvador to stand trial for multiple crimes, with the belief he will be convicted, sent to prison, and, upon release, finally be deported back to El Salvador. Pundits and politicians have blanketed the airwaves and X with statements denigrating the Left. Yes, the Left looks ridiculous for championing the “Maryland Dad’s” cause now that the world unequivocally knows he is, in fact, a gang member, human and drug trafficker, woman beater, and child porn purveyor. The Left can try to save face by claiming the scumbag’s cause wasn’t about him, but was about “due process.” The Left glosses over the fact that Abrego Garcia received whatever process he was due as an illegal immigrant several times over the last decade. Keep in mind, the debate wasn’t whether Abrego Garcia should receive due process for his criminal activities while in America; rather, the debate was whether he received whatever level of due process the all-powerful district court judge believed he should have received before deporting him.

Is his return to face criminal charges really a win?

Not for the American taxpayer it isn’t. Specifically, the American taxpayer is suffocating from a $37 trillion national debt and interest payments on that debt. The federal government couldn’t balance the budget no matter how hard it tried given how much of the annual budget is covered by deficit spending. Part of the problem comes from the weaponization of dependency pushed by the Left; meaning, any effort by the Right to rein in entitlement spending on Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid is met with a tsunami of scare tactic political ads aimed at gaining back power all the while knowing those three programs are bankrupting America. The solution is a mutual assured destruction truce by the Left and the Right that results in pushing the eligibility age for Medicare to 70 years old, the retirement age for Social Security to 70 years old, and the elimination of expanded Medicaid under Obamacare so the program is stable for the poor and kids who actually need it.

What does this have to do with Abrego Garcia? Based on the latest data from the U.S. Sentencing Commission, America’s federal prisons hold tens of thousands of illegal immigrant criminals convicted of committing U.S. crimes who are deported once they serve their sentences. Roughly 21,000 new illegal immigrant criminals are added each year. The average sentence for each one of these perpetrators is twenty-six months. The average annual costs to hold them is $44,000. As the table below shows, the math works out to nearly $5 billion spent by U.S. taxpayers over the last five years on illegal immigrant criminals.

Keep in mind, these numbers don’t represent the likely jump in the coming years of illegal immigrants who will be caught committing crimes, charged, tried, convicted, and put in prison based on the massive Biden influx of illegal immigrants into America from 2021 to 2024. It also does not count the roughly 45,000 illegal immigrants sitting in state and local jails and prisons. The average annual state costs of incarcerating those men and women is approximately $65,000 per inmate. That works out to another $2.9 billion in costs per year for the American taxpayer. Lastly, the cost estimate doesn’t include the cost to try and convict those 66,000 criminal illegal immigrants every year. I couldn’t find any reliable estimate for this cost, but believe it is safe to assume it runs into the billions when all factors are considered (i.e., prosecutors and staff, judges and staff, other court personnel, discovery costs, etc.). All in, the total cost likely hits $10 billion per year.

So, please tell me why it is a win for the American taxpayer to cover approximately $10 billion annually to try, convict, and house criminal illegal immigrants at a time we face such an enormous debt instead of deporting those individuals back to their home countries? At a minimum, we should require every country to take those criminals after their trials to serve their sentences there rather than here at their taxpayers' expense. The bottom line is the Left defended a terrible human being demanding he be returned to America and, despite Attorney General Pam Bondi’s statement that Abrego Garcia is “not coming back to our country,” he in fact is back and will remain here for years, which will result in American taxpayers covering millions in expenses to try, convict, and house him. If that is the process due to someone with no right to be here who commits crimes while here, we need to change the Constitution to clarify that the only process such scumbags are due is the process of putting them on airplanes headed out of here.

In other news, when you have a minute, read this speech by The Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, "America’s Golden Age: A Return to the Permanent Things.” I think virtually everything Roberts says is correct. I also think he, like so many on the Right, overcomplicates the fight we are in and unnecessarily paints all of those on the Left as bad people pushing an “age of inversion.” Most Americans are related to, live by, or work with people on the Left. They would read Roberts’ speech and likely not agree that their brother, neighbor, or coworker fits his description of them. Yes, many of the elite on the Left are not very good people, but the rank-and-file are. I’d submit that the fight we are in simply places the majority of people in two camps based on how they view the role of government.

All Americans believe the role of government is to keep us safe from domestic and international bad actors; preserve our tripartite sovereignty (federal, state/local, and individual); provide basic goods and services like working roads, clean water, and regulated businesses; enact laws to ensure society functions fairly for all; and adjudicate disputes via blind justice. It is HOW these things get done where we differ. On the Right, we believe most of those things should be done by states and localities, with the federal government’s role focused on its core national defense and foreign policy roles, as well as national policies required to make America a united group of states. The Right believes in as small a tax burden as possible, the importance of delayed gratification, and the value of individual responsibility. On the Left, they believe most of those things should be done by the federal government by elites largely unchecked by anyone, including states, localities, and the People (read Woodrow Wilson). The Left believes in high taxes for anyone who makes a decent income, with higher and higher taxes as one’s income rises; the validity of instant gratification; and widespread government dependence.

Thus, the fight at its most basic level boils down to two questions: (1) do you want bigger government with higher taxes and more dependency or not and (2) where do you want the power over your life to reside—in Washington, D.C., or among your state and local government entities? I wrote a book focused on this last question back in 2013—see “The Founding Debate: Where Should the Power Over Our Lives Reside?". Your brother, neighbor, or coworker may say “yes" to bigger government and more dependence and he wants that power in Washington, D.C., but he isn’t seeking to destroy America via the transradical agenda, having fewer kids, not attending church, or letting two men get married. Our challenge is to keep convincing a majority of voters that our vision is better for them than the Left’s vision. I think our chances of doing that are much higher if we aren’t making the fight about choices people make for themselves and their families that mostly don’t effect us; rather, the choice is about being free from or burdened by big and costly government centralized in Washington. We will win that fight every time if we fight the battle the right way.

P.S. I have zero interest in wading into the Donald Trump versus Elon Musk skirmish. I did want to note that my advice from last November re DOGE proved prescient. Last November, I wrote in my column, “My Unsolicited Advice to Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy on DOGE and Its Future”:

First and most importantly: Let your work speak for you by underpromising and overdelivering. Right now, you guys are talking A LOT and I mean A LOT. You are creating enormous expectations and possibly overpromising what you actually will be able to accomplish in two short years against a foe and its minions who have been at this game for a very long time. They’ve seen reformers come in with great promise only to exit with little achieved. You would be better off tamping down expectations and letting your actions do your talking.

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Moreover, there is the serious problem of autopilot; meaning, much of the federal government's expenses and employment are untouchable. For example, for Fiscal Year 2023, 73% of federal spending is mandatory for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, income security programs, and interest on the national debt, with another 13.2% of federal spending on defense. That leaves just 13.8% of all federal spending on non-defense, non-mandatory programs. Yes, there is waste, fraud, and abuse, but finding and stopping it isn’t easy or it would have been done by now. Similarly, of the 2.3 million federal employees, 1.2 million work in defense or veterans affairs, which tend not to be politically popular to cut. The point is that finding large areas for spending or employee cuts aren’t walks in the park. Again, underpromise and overdeliver.

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Finally, build a team of the best lawyers in America who have successfully battled the Leviathan. You must assume every single action you take will be litigated to the fullest extent by government unions, George Soros pawns, left-wing governors and attorneys general, and private sector entities who live off the government teat you are trying to plug. I detest lawyers as much as the next guy, but you will need them to defend your work. There are countless talented men and women across America who would love to help you, but they won’t and can’t do it for free, so make sure to put aside some legal defense funds. You’ll need it.

As it turns out, the sum total of DOGE’s cuts are $175 billion, which is far below the trillions that Musk promised, and it is subsumed with legal battles.

P.P.S. I’ve subscribed to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) for nearly two decades. As with every other newspaper, the news side of the WSJ is biased towards the Left. Conservatives have always taken refuge in the WSJ’s editorial page where it could count on reading editorials and op-eds that defended and supported the Right. It was the ONLY pro-Right element in a newspaper in America. On any given day now, however, 70% or more of the editorials and op-eds that run are anti-Trump. The anti-Trump screeds run day-after-day almost to the point where I soon expect to see a headline: “Trump says sky is blue when science says it is grey.” Virtually nothing Trump does gets applauded or defended by the WSJ editorial page. It is so disappointing. It must be nice to be a politician of the Left knowing that every newspaper’s news side will have your back and attack your opponents and now every newspaper’s editorial side also will have your back and attack your opponents (except possibly the New York Post editorial page). Someone should advise the WSJ editorial page to stop making the perfect theoretical conservative the enemy of the good enough real conservative.