President Donald Trump was elected to crack down on illegal immigration. Deportation priority was rightly given to criminals convicted of serious crimes. But support for Mr. Trump’s deportations is dwindling over the strange and surreal case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was summarily and unconstitutionally deported to a dungeon in El Salvador on March 15. Why is President Trump choosing to die on this hill?

Abrego Garcia entered the country illegally around 2012. He has not been convicted of any crime. He has not been found to be a member of any gang. On President Trump’s watch in 2019, an immigration judge entered an order withholding Abrego Garcia’s removal because of reasonable fear of death if returned to El Salvador. Trump chose not to appeal the order. Abrego Garcia fled El Salvador as a teenager after a gang threatened to kill him if he did not join.

The Trump administration has admitted Abrego Garcia’s deportation was unlawful. The administration is paying El Salvador to detain him. It has been unanimously ordered by the United States Supreme Court (including three Trump appointees) to “facilitate” his return. All the justices agreed that the Constitution protects “persons” whether they are in the country legally or not. The Trump administration has obtusely and unsuccessfully argued that the active verb “facilitate” is satisfied by doing nothing to block his entry if El Salvador spontaneously decides to return Abrego Garcia. The president of El Salvador, who styles himself the “world’s coolest dictator,” in an Oval Office meeting with President Trump maintained he would not be “smuggling” Abrego Garcia into the United States as a terrorist. But no smuggling would be required if Trump were facilitating Abrego Garcia’s return. And the United States has never proven he is a terrorist.

Moreover, Trump himself told ABC News that he could secure Garcia’s return immediately with a phone call to President Nayib Bukele. Yet his attorneys are telling federal courts that President Trump is powerless to convince Bukele to release Abrego Garcia.

President Trump has asserted that Abrego Garcia is a terrorist or gang member. If supported by credible evidence, Abrego Garcia would be deportable after returning to the United States to remedy a violation of constitutional due process. It seems folly to provoke a constitutional confrontation with the United States Supreme Court over a refusal to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return leaving President Trump free to seek a deportation order with due process of law. Compliance with the Supreme Court’s order would not set a precedent that would handicap Trump’s deportation initiatives. Further, Trump is likely to come out on the short end of contention with the court.

History is instructive. In 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt won a landslide reelection victory over Alf Landon. FDR captured 46 of 48 states. He won more than 60% of the popular vote. Democrats enjoyed landslide margins over Republicans in the House and Senate, 334-88 and 77-16, respectively. President Roosevelt had campaigned against the Supreme Court’s “horse-and-buggy” conception of interstate commerce.

Despite his overwhelming electoral mandate, President Roosevelt’s court-packing plan to undermine the independence of the Supreme Court was repudiated by Congress and the American people. It was correctly perceived as a giant step toward executive dictatorship. In the midterm 1938 elections, FDR paid a steep political price. Democrats lost 72 House seats and 6 Senate seats. Trump’s 2024 electoral mandate is nothing like FDR’s 1936 victory. He did not campaign against the Supreme Court. Public support for refusing to comply with a judicial order is slender and receding. We extend the benefits of the law to all for our own safety’s sake as explained in Robert Bolt’s play, “A Man For All Seasons”:

“William Roper: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”

Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”

Roper: “Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!”

More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil the benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!”

Armstrong Williams (www.armstrongwilliams.com; @arightside) is a political analyst, syndicated columnist and owner of the broadcasting company, Howard Stirk Holdings. He is also part owner of The Baltimore Sun.