The ‘dual-state theory’ explains how authoritarians bend the law to their will.
“Oopsie … Too late,” President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador wrote on X with a cry-laughing emoji on March 16. Below it was a screenshot of a headline: “Fed judge orders deportation flights carrying alleged gangbangers to return to US, blocks Trump from invoking Alien Enemies Act.”
Despite the court order, federal officials had neither prevented the takeoff of the deportation flight that was still on the ground at the time of the court’s order, nor turned around the two other planes that were already in the air. After news broke that the men were now in El Salvador, imprisoned in the notorious complex known by its Spanish acronym CECOT, Mr. Bukele’s mocking tweet made clear that he considered the deportees beyond the reach of U.S. courts.
