This is an opinion cartoon.

Ooh, that smell. The democracy death march continues under the hostile authoritarian Trump administration.

“Just days ago,” writes Thom Hartmann in an opinion piece for Alternet, “America crossed a threshold that should chill every citizen who still believes in the rule of law.”

More from Hartmann:

“Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a young man living peacefully in Maryland with no criminal record, was ripped from his home and deported to El Salvador — not by rogue agents, not by mistake, but in deliberate defiance of multiple federal court orders.

“A judge had explicitly ordered that Garcia not be deported. The U.S. Supreme Court had intervened. And still, the Trump-controlled Department of Justice — under Attorney General Pam Bondi — refused to comply.

“Garcia vanished from U.S. soil like a political dissident in a dictatorship. Senator Chris Van Hollen flew to El Salvador to find him, only to be denied access. The Salvadoran government wouldn’t even confirm his location. Garcia now sits detained, alone in a foreign country, denied lawyers, family, or recourse.

Related: Tom Moran: ‘It’s not just the deportations. Cruelty is Trump’s signature

Related: Alireza Doroudi denied bond: Alabama doctoral student faces possible deportation to Iran

“He’s not a criminal — he’s a political hostage. His only crime was existing under an administration that believes it is above the law.

“This isn’t abstract. This is what the death of democracy feels like. A court order ignored. A life uprooted. A senator stonewalled.

“And it’s a precedent set: if the executive branch can disappear a legal US resident despite Supreme Court orders, democracy is already bleeding out right in front of our eyes.”

Read more from Hartmann’s column here.

Meanwhile, Trump is already looking into deporting U.S. citizens – “homegrown criminals” – to the El Salvador gulag.

The president won’t have to look far to find U.S. criminals to deport. He can find one dirty stinkin’ felon who deserves prison time just by looking in the mirror.

Check out more cartoons and stuff by JD Crowe

JD Crowe is the cartoonist for AL.com. He won the RFK Human Rights Award for Editorial Cartoons in 2020. In 2018, he was awarded the Rex Babin Memorial Award by the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. Follow JD on Facebook, Twitter @Crowejam and Instagram @JDCrowepix. Give him a holler at [email protected].

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