Kilmar Abrego Garcia and the myth of the perfect victim

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On Thursday, April 17, the day Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen secured a brief meeting with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Democratic pollster named Natalie Jackson tweeted that “we need a better ‘hero’ for due process.” Her desire for a perfect “poster child” is typical rhetoric around victims and abuse that undermines justice for all.

A month earlier, Abrego Garcia was subjected to a series of illegal actions taken by federal government agents, which resulted in his illegal imprisonment in El Salvador. He is a victim, and the chief perpetrator is the U.S. executive branch. Nearly 300 men from the U.S. have been sent to El Salvador’s maximum security prison CECOT, that we know of, as of this writing. It is currently the gravest constitutional crisis in a nation that has been undone by constitutional crises.

In Abrego Garcia’s case, a judge had already ruled years earlier that he could not be deported to El Salvador. Abrego Garcia was born in El Salvador, where a gang extorted his family and targeted him from the age of 12. As a teenager, Abrego Garcia fled to safety in the U.S., crossing the border illegally and joining his older brother in Maryland. A few years later, he married Jennifer Vasquez Sura, a U.S. citizen. They have a son together. Abrego Garcia has never been charged with or convicted of a crime.

12 days after Abrego Garcia was taken into custody, Sura sued the United States. At every level, judges have unanimously ruled in Abrego Garcia’s favor, including the entire Supreme Court. The government referred to Abrego Garcia’s imprisonment as an “administrative error,” a rare admission of a mistake from Donald Trump’s administration. Nonetheless, Trump has defied SCOTUS’ ruling, and Abrego Garcia remains in El Salvador.

These unique circumstances around Abrego Garcia’s case—the government’s admission, the Supreme Court’s decision, and both Sura and Van Hollen’s outspokenness—have propelled him to international prominence. His case has become a symbol of the Trump administration’s state-sanctioned violence and racism against immigrants and Hispanic people. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, have rallied online and in the streets in support of Abrego Garcia.

The Trump administration has responded to this outpouring of support and opposition to its policies by smearing Abrego Garcia with false and unsupported allegations. This is the very definition of the violation of due process, which compels the government to follow fair legal procedures before depriving anyone of life, liberty, or property.

Seeing the way Abrego Garcia’s case has united the American public against Trump and exposed his administration’s willingness to defy the Supreme Court, why would a Democratic pollster react the way Jackson did? In full, her tweet read:

“Probably an unpopular opinion, but … we need a better ‘hero’ for due process than a guy about whom records say he was suspected of gang ties, possibly beat his wife, and might have been involved in human trafficking. None of this means he doesn’t deserve to be treated right. But it does make him a really bad poster child.”

This tweet was picked up in the national news. I saw it criticized repeatedly on Bluesky. Jackson has since deleted her account. She’s someone who the vast majority of people have never heard of before, but her rhetoric espouses a fallacy I’m all too familiar with.

Jackson was holding Abrego Garcia to the standard of being a “perfect victim,” something no victim is ever able to accomplish. For starters, nobody is perfect. But more importantly, the burden of this expectation is leveled at victims in ways that reflect and reinforce structural biases and injustices.

A lot of the responses I saw to Jackson were about how Hispanic and Black men in the U.S. are treated as violent criminals by default. The federal government has claimed that many of the men illegally imprisoned in El Salvador are gang members because of tattoos that have no association with gangs. A law enforcement source claiming suspicion of gang ties or even human trafficking does not necessarily mean there is evidence. Abrego Garcia has checked in with ICE annually. The Department of Homeland Security granted him a work permit.

The other part of Jackson’s tweet worth interrogating is the allegation of domestic violence against Abrego Garcia. These allegations have become a talking point on the right in particular, led by Trump’s administration, to deflect from the injustices in this case and this federal campaign of terror.

Any argument about domestic violence coming from Trump’s administration is clearly unmotivated by justice for victims. Trump has been found liable for sexual abuse, high-ranking members have been accused of sexual abuse, and the administration has stripped funding for life-saving services for victims of domestic abuse.

Unfortunately, the myth of the perfect victim and the rhetoric employed to ignore oppression based on the flaws or perceived flaws of its victims are nonpartisan. With exceptions, many Democrats have failed to meet the moment around Abrego Garcia’s case, while the opinions expressed by Jackson reflect a widespread bias.

In 2021, Sura filed for a temporary protective order against Abrego Garcia, alleging multiple incidents of physical violence. The Department of Homeland Security tweeted out the filing. The agency did not redact information like Sura’s address or her mother’s address. Recklessly or maliciously publishing that information, especially on a website overrun by white supremacists, harms Sura and her family.

Sura responded in a statement to Newsweek that included: "After surviving domestic violence in a previous relationship, I acted out of caution following a disagreement with Kilmar by seeking a civil protective order, in case things escalated. Things did not escalate, and I decided not to follow through with the civil court process. We were able to work through the situation privately as a family, including by going to counseling."

This is the part of her response that struck me as the most critical:

"But that is not a justification for ICE's action of abducting him and deporting him to a country where he was supposed to be protected from removal.”

Victims can also be perpetrators. The key distinction is that someone cannot be both a victim and perpetrator in the same relationship, because abuse relies on one party having power over the other. The U.S. government has exerted its power over Abrego Garcia, victimizing him in the process.

There’s a desire to either demonize someone entirely or imagine them as a perfect “poster child” for injustice. People struggle to hold both realities in their mind at once. The truth is that people are morally complex, but identifying abuse doesn’t have to be.

In my years of reporting on abuse, I have found that there is no “poster child.” Our legal systems and our society at large are prejudiced against victims. Any wrongdoing or imperfection will be seized upon to discredit the abuse they suffered and empower perpetrators in the process. Even if a victim could be perfect, they would still be vulnerable to smear campaigns.

This talking point against Abrego Garcia reminded me of another case I’ve reported on. When Johnny Depp engaged in a years-long campaign of lawfare against Amber Heard, his legal team and supporters dug up a previous incident where Heard was accused of domestic violence against a female partner. Heard’s former partner defended her and said the incident was "misinterpreted and over-sensationalized,” but it didn’t matter. It was used to deny that Depp could have abused Heard in their relationship. Eventually, a jury sided with Depp over her.

Overlapping spheres of harm, marginalization, and violence can be used to muddy the waters around clear-cut cases of abuse, which ultimately makes it difficult, if not impossible, to hold perpetrators accountable. This is a fallacy perfected by abusers and their enablers. It helps no one.

Even if Abrego Garcia has been a perpetrator of abuse, that does not preclude him from being a victim. The U.S. government is not punishing Abrego Garcia for abusing Sura. And if it was, the fundamental injustice would be the same: the government cannot imprison someone without due process.

The way people have stripped Sura’s agency from this equation also shows that this is not really about justice for abuse victims. Right now, in her own words, the greatest injustice that Sura is experiencing is at the hands of the U.S. government.

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