The story of Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a warning of either American lawlessness or American decline. Garcia was detained in March and deported to his native El Salvador, where he is being held in a system where human beings are routinely dehumanized. It’s true that many of the prisoners in El Salvador’s prisons have committed horrific crimes and don’t deserve our sympathy, but any time human beings are locked up in crowded cages, something in the collective soul of humanity dies. Americans can accept the need for widespread detention, especially in a place like El Salvador that until recently suffered one of the highest murder rates in the world, without celebrating its existence. The photographs taken at a Salvadoran prison by Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem in front of a display of human suffering suggests a serious flaw in her character. Americans do the hard things because justice and order demand them, but we should never take pride in showing off the suffering of others.

The Garcia case has shown that one of two things is true: Either President Donald Trump is ignoring the will of the Supreme Court, or his radical remake of American foreign policy has left our nation so weak that we no longer have the power to convince a tiny country to acquiesce to our will. The Supreme Court’s order to the Trump administration is clear and directed the government to facilitate Garcia’s return. In response, President Trump claimed that he lacked the power to facilitate that return. Given Trump’s propensity for pushing the boundaries of constitutional norms, his response was probably cover intended to allow his administration to ignore the ruling of the court. But there is another possibility: that Trump is being honest, that he truly lacks the power to facilitate Garcia’s return. Perhaps his intention to annex Canada and Greenland, his economic confrontation with China, his strange belief in the goodness of Russia and his trade war against the world has so weakened America’s geopolitical standing that the leader of a tiny nation in Latin America can simply look an American President in the eye and say “no.”

If the United States is unable to compel El Salvador to return Abrego Garcia, rather than making America great again, our nation will have reached its weakest point in at least a hundred years. President Trump frequently talks about American strength, but if El Salvador can dictate terms to us, we should question every single national security decision our president has made. And if the situation isn’t that dire, if our geopolitical power under President Trump is still strong enough to influence the behavior of one small Latin American state, then the Trump administration is choosing to disobey the orders of our nation’s Supreme Court.

The undermining of the Supreme Court by politicians has been one of the great tragedies of contemporary times, even if the court has made several decisions recently that probably won’t age well. But the court hasn’t surrendered its authority and isn’t inherently corrupt. Justices, especially John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett, still sometimes vote against the interests of the political parties of the presidents who appointed them. The widely supported plan by Democrats to expand the Supreme Court gave the impression that the court was incapable of acting fairly. Democrats were wrong, and this wasn’t true then and isn’t true now. By refusing to comply with the order of the Supreme Court in the Abrego Garcia case, if in fact the United States is still powerful enough to influence El Salvador, President Trump is attacking the credibility of the court in a different way. Where the Democrats worked hard to convince Americans that the Supreme Court was corrupt and unreliable, the Republicans under Trump seem intent on convincing Americans that the orders of the court are only suggestions. This is far more destructive to the foundations of our nation than was the misguided Democratic plan to pack the court with friendly justices.

The Abrego Garcia case is about the rule of law. A federal court in 2019 barred Garcia’s deportation to El Salvador, but the U.S. government deported him anyway. The government admitted its mistake but has proven unwilling or unable to correct its error and effect Garcia’s return. President Trump is either willfully ignoring the Supreme Court or failing to admit the dangerous implications of our country lacking the power to influence a small place like El Salvador. Abrego Garcia should return to the United States, and the government should present evidence of his gang affiliation in court. If the evidence is compelling, his protected status should be removed, and he should be returned to El Salvador. Even without proving the gang affiliation, if the courts determine his deportation is warranted, he should leave the country. If he does, we should remember his five-year-old son and proceed stoically, forgoing celebrations and staged photographs.

Colin Pascal (colinjpascal@outlook.com) is a retired Army lieutenant colonel and a graduate student in the School of Public Affairs at American University in Washington, D.C. He lives in Annapolis.