The Rude Pundit: The Release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia Is the Issue We All Need to Rally Behind

The Rude Pundit
Proudly lowering the level of political discourse
4/13/2025
The Release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia Is the Issue We All Need to Rally Behind

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At a gathering of the leadership and delegates of the North America Building Trades Unions, which SMART is a part of, the president of that organization of 3 million members, Sean McGarvey, loudly and angrily said that the union "means all of us. All of us. Including our brother, SMART Apprentice Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who we demand be returned to us and his family now!" He slapped his hand on the lectern for emphasis, yelling, "Bring him home!" as the gathered audience of mostly older and middle-aged white men stood up and applauded and cheered.

You got that? One of the biggest union groups in the country has made opposition to Abrego Garcia's kidnapping (and that's what it needs to be called because that's sure as shit what it was) a rallying point, and it's invited its millions of members to join in. Because that's what you do fucking well do: you stand up to the assholes who are abusing your fellow human beings.

There's a lot to say about the clusterfuck of evil, incompetence, insanity, and brutality involved in the crimes the American government has committed against Abrego Garcia, up to and including the ignoring of the clear orders of the Supreme Court and the district court by the Trump administration. There's a lot to say about how grimly ludicrous it is that no one will just say, "Oh, shit. Our bad" and bring him back, which would lend some minor bit of credibility to the entire cruel exercise of totalitarian power. There's a lot to say about the entire savage exercise of essentially sentencing migrants to prison with no due process and sending them to a place where they will have no rights and then saying, "Ah, well. They now are only El Salvador's problem" (and that goes for all the ones who are allegedly Venezuelan gang members -prove it, motherfuckers). There's so much more to say in general; I'll just add that there's also one hell of a story to be written about how some of our prisons in the United States are as bad as CECOT.

But if you were in an opposition party or a group of resisters to the fascist fuckery eating this nation alive, I'd be centering Abrego Garcia's imprisonment as a single thing worth uniting to rally over. It's one of those stories that is easy to comprehend, easy to be on the right side of, and easy to come up with what you want to happen: ICE kidnapped a father of American kids and husband of an American wife who was here in the country legally, lied about who he was, and sent him to prison without charge or trial to the country where violent assholes want him dead. Then they admitted they made a mistake and refuse to correct it. And all we want is for him to come home. There. It's fucking easy. You can get a few hundred thousand union workers pissed off about it, too. To their credit, Democratic lawmakers are speaking out, but we need more, much, much more.

Every cause looks for the incident that lights the fuse on the metaphorical explosives that will make the movement erupt into an unstoppable force. This is the kind of shit that is so egregious, so blatantly awful, so clearly unlawful, and so obviously arrogant that it'll piss off people even beyond the usual cadre of marchers and clever sign creators. Again, the president of a major coalition of unions is ready to go to the wall about it. SMART keeps posting about Abrego Garcia. The fuse is there. Light that fucker.

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https://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2025/04/the-release-of-kilmar-abrego-garcia-is.html