Unable to make a case in court against Kilmar Abrego García, the man illegally deported to the notorious CECOT mega-prison in El Salvador, federal investigators have focused on smearing his character. Their target now: a traffic stop in Tennessee three years ago that ended without major incident and does not appear to have attracted much law enforcement attention in the interim.

But the traffic stop involved Abrego García and the Trump administration is getting desperate. This even though Maryland Federal Judge Paula Xinis — backed by a 9-0 Supreme Court ruling — ordered him returned to the United States, the administration has not only failed to comply but began looking into this Tennessee incident and gone hunting for old allegations of domestic violence made by his wife, who is now at the forefront of pleading for his return.

The government is attempting to try Abrego García in the court of public opinion to obscure from the fact that he did not receive proper due process in this country’s real courts, and certainly nothing that would have enabled his removal to a foreign gulag.

Attorney General Pam Bondi and other Trump lackeys have made much hay out of the fact that he was once denied bond by an immigration judge, who found that the government‘s contention that he was a member of MS-13 “appeared to be trustworthy enough” based in part of the testimony of a since-disgraced cop.

These bond determinations have a far lower evidentiary standard than what would be acceptable in any other context, and an immigration judge later granted Abrego García withholding of removal and allowed him to live and work in the United States. He would have been granted full asylum were he not past the filing deadline.

Are some of the facts that the government has tried to dig up concerning in a vacuum? Sure, perhaps you’d have some questions if you were, say, thinking of hiring him to work at your company. But that’s not the point here. This whole fishing expedition is being done now, long after his removal and the judicial orders to bring him back, to retroactively justify the administration’s violations of due process and ongoing defiance of the courts.

There is nothing the administration could trot out now that would change the fact that it admitted to deporting him illegally and is under federal court order to bring him back. This is purely a public relations gamble that, if they are able to turn up just enough of the right sort of dirt, people will figure that Abrego Garcia’s removal and imprisonment is warranted.

This is not how our system works, nor should it be. If you zoom out, what the Trump administration is really saying is that it can and will take heavy-handed action against people without due process, and if anyone complains, endeavor to smear them to the point that the public will accept their mistreatment. This is a very familiar playbook, albeit not in the United States.

Tyrants from Vladimir Putin to Mohammed Bin Salman to Kim Jong Un have perfected the art of propaganda blitzes to smear opponents and disfavored groups enough to violate their rights. That is a path of no return.

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