It spreads like plague, contaminating and infecting more and more organizations. After all, it’s so much easier to just do things without having to think about their consequences, or the very next steps that you may need to take. Even the supposedly proactive MO of “don’t ask for permission, ask for forgiveness,” that has been spreading throughout tech companies and the private sector (and then to the government agencies through Elon Musk and DOGE) is a manifestation of this kind of approach to solving problems. I believe that, even with a limited scope, it is not constructive, and while speeding up some processes, the overall resulting damages significantly outweigh its benefits. But the new administration has taken this mentality to new levels. I am really not sure if it is intentional or just sheer incompetence, but whatever it is, it is hurting the the country on many different levels.

Before getting into the specific case that I want to discuss, I will just remind a few examples: the tariffs on – tariffs off policies (10%, 25%, 0%, 50%, 100%, 145%, 30%, …) for various countries including China, Mexico, and Canada; the mass firing then rehiring of the employees at various government organizations; the accidental cancellation of the funding for Ebola prevention; and the mass deportations by setting a quota (3000) for daily arrests, then walking back after possibly hearing from the agriculture and leisure industry leaders that it is hurting them spectacularly, finally realizing that what many analysts, economists, and even the Congressional Budget Office has been saying all along (for probably over a decade) was true after all; that while there is a serious need for a comprehensive immigration reform, the solution is not in mass deportation of honest, hardworking laborers that have been contributing to the US economy by providing workforce and paying taxes.

The above are some examples of the many actions of the administration that demonstrates the mentality of “don’t think, just do,” and possibly learn, through trial and error, what many experts have known and talked about for many decades. But the particular example that I want to discuss, demonstrates this lack of prudence on multiple levels. The case is the “deportation” of nearly 300 individuals to El Salvador, to be incarcerated in the notorious maximum-security CECOT prison. The justifications: they are all criminal illegal immigrants. Among those, the case of one individual, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, has made headlines as the administration has admitted that his deportation was a result of a mistake.

I am not trying to defend any criminals here. I don’t know Mr. Garcia, and I believe the government has every right to seek indictment and prosecute him if he has committed any crime. But the fact that US government has three branches, with their own responsibilities and authorities, separated from each other, yet having the power of oversight on each other, is also something that needs to be respected, as is the rest of the Constitution and any existing statutes and regulations. The executive branch, through the Department of Justice, has the authority to seek indictment and prosecute criminals. But the authority for the rest of the process including trial, conviction, and sentencing belongs to the judicial branch. DoJ or law enforcement officers including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers cannot play the roles of law enforcement, prosecution, judge, and jury all at the same time. Just because an ICE agent believes someone is a criminal does not make them criminal. That decision has to be made in a court of law.

Even for simple illegal immigration cases, where the laws and due process requirements are more relaxed, it’s not up to an ICE agent to decide that someone’s presence in the country is illegal. It’s an administrative or immigration judge (within the DoJ itself) that has to make that decision. And every individual who is being accused of being an illegal immigrant has the right for advance notice and an opportunity for being heard in front of an immigration judge, no matter how burdensome that process may be for the administration; you cannot selectively decide to not follow some laws just because they are inconvenient, and that includes the government as well.

But I want to give the government full benefit of the doubt, and assume that they intended to follow the laws, only their assumption was that the due process for illegal immigrants can be satisfied by just telling them that they are being deported (as some have suggested). Okay, if that is the case, the government would be able to deport those individuals to their home country, or a third country if their home country did not accept them. That’s all fine. But why did they send them to a prison? and what was the plan for afterwards? Are they supposed to be kept there until they naturally die, practically being sentenced to life in prison?

And please note that the claims that they are now under the jurisdiction of the Salvadoran government, while raising many new questions, is a nonsensical excuse to evade further responsibility. The fact of the matter is that the US government is paying El Salvador to keep those individuals in that prison. Essentially, the US government is renting some prison space from the Salvadoran government, and hiring some prison guards and other personnel, to keep those individuals in that rented prison, at the direction of the US government. This makes them pretty much prisoners of the US government not El Salvador. So, basically, the executive branch has arrested some individuals, has made the allegation that they are illegally present in the US and have imprisoned them. Remember that, for the sake of this argument, I assumed that the due process requirements were satisfied. But is the punishment for illegal immigration indefinite imprisonment in a rented space within a Salvadoran prison?

Now, the government may argue that they were sent to the prison because they were criminals. But that raises the bar significantly. While the due process for determining someone is an illegal immigrant might be very limited and permissive, the same cannot be told about establishing criminality. The executive branch cannot certainly make the decision that someone is a criminal and send them to prison. They can seek an indictment and start a prosecution, but the decisions are made by a judge and jury under the judicial branch. So, the argument that they were sent to the prison because they were criminals, without having followed the required due process, is worse than admitting the original mistake. But even if, for the sake of this discussion, assume that the government had the right to make that decision and imprison those individuals, the question remains if they all had committed the exact same crime? How was the punishment decided? What is the justification for indefinite imprisonment equally for all of those individuals, as it is very unlikely that their alleged crimes were identical?

And the highlight of this saga is that the government has finally returned Mr Garcia to the US, but not because a district court had ordered that (which was then confirmed by an appellate court, further followed by a very rare 9-0 ruling from the Supreme Court), but because they wanted to indict him for his crime. And mind you, the crime is not any gang related crime as was initially claimed, but rather related to a traffic stop from several years ago, which had not resulted in any arrest or even traffic ticket, but is claimed to be an evidence of human trafficking. Again, I emphasize that I am not trying to defend any criminal, and believe in the administration’s right to indict and prosecute anyone who commits a crime or breaks a law. My criticism is about the obvious lack of prudence and blatant disregard to the laws of the land. And then attempts on fixing the problem that was created, or explaining the wrongs that were done, by trying to find something, anything, that would incriminate the involved person. See, if the DoJ does indeed believe that the correct process for prosecuting a criminal is what they are doing in the case of Mr Garcia, and they returned him only to follow the correct process, then what does that tell us about the other individuals who have been sent to that prison? Are they criminals after all or not? If they are criminals, why aren’t they being afforded the same process that the DoJ is now following for Mr Garcia? Does the administration plan on returning them, maybe one-by-one, so that they can go through the process? Doesn’t that sound ridiculous, to send people to a Salvadoran prison only to have to later return them to follow the due process? If they are not criminals, then what are they doing in that prison?

You see, even giving the full benefit of the doubt is not sufficient to justify the actions of the government that were obviously taken without thinking them through. This lack of prudence, whether it is intentional or the result of sheer incompetence, is certainly causing irreparable damages, both to individuals and to the institutions that represent the government of the United States.