What facts remain in dispute regarding Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the 29-year-old working as a sheet metal worker apprentice working in Baltimore arrested March 12 and deported three days later to a notorious prison in El Salvador, one is inescapable: It was a mistake. The Trump administration has admitted in court documents that an “administrative error” caused the Salvadoran native, who is married to a U.S. citizen and has a five-year-old son with autism, to be picked up by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

So why aren’t President Donald Trump and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem rushing to correct this error? Why does it require lawyers representing Abrego Garcia and his family to file a lawsuit in federal court to force such action? Is it because — as the lawsuit suggests — they “found those legal procedures bothersome, so they merely ignored them and deported Abrego Garcia to El Salvador anyway, ripping him away from his U.S.-citizen wife and his disabled U.S.-citizen child”?

No one is omniscient. Whether Abrego Garcia has ties to Tren de Aragua or MS-13 or any other gang is in dispute. The U.S. legal system provides the means to resolve such matters. Following them would have been the correct procedure. Is it easy? No, it is not. Executive orders are much easier. Giving absolute power to federal security forces is easier. And ignoring one’s errors? That’s the easiest of all.

Yet we are a nation where laws and individual rights are respected. On that subject, there should be no dispute. How disappointing that some would prefer to follow the rule of law only when convenient. That Maryland’s own U.S. Rep. Andy Harris sees nothing wrong with this erroneous deportation — that the Beltsville resident who had previously been legally granted the right to work in the United States is “probably an MS-13 gang member” anyway, as Harris suggested to a telephone town hall Tuesday — makes the circumstance all the more disappointing for Marylanders.

Alas, this is not the first time that President Trump or senior members of his administration have flouted the law and court orders. Whatever one may think about Trump policies including his clearly stated desire to enhance border security, his cause is not helped — not in the long run anyway — by circumventing the law or even invoking obscure provisions like the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to impose his will on others without the inconvenience of due process.

Disrespect of the law only encourages further disrespect of the law. The Trump administration needs to rectify its mistake (and given Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele‘s close relationship with Trump it would probably not require anything more than a single phone call), or lose precious credibility — regarding not just immigration policy but a host of controversial topics. Lose the public’s trust and good luck getting it back, passport or no.