When I moved to Miami for the first time, my roommate, at the time, and I rented a duplex on Mary Street in Coconut Grove. This duplex was situated in a triangular area bounded by Bird Road, 27th Avenue and South Dixie Highway, the local name for U.S 1 which runs all the way to Key West.
With South Dixie Highway being a major thoroughfare, many of the streets in this section were not through streets so there was very little traffic. And due to the congested nature of South Dixie Highway, which we had to cross to get in or out of the neighbourhood, it was difficult to make a left turn, on or off of it, anywhere in the city, so even to this day, I try to avoid left turns while driving.
Our duplex was located right behind a convenience store on Bird Road and along 27th Avenue there is the E-Z Quick Store and right on the corner of Bird Road and 27th Avenue was the Bid Daddy’s liquor store which was conjoined with the Big Daddy Lounge, the primary watering hole in the area which featured the most lovely Tammy (whom I still think of to this day) tending bar. (A rumour I was told was that she was the owner’s daughter. I don’t know
Between our duplex and Bid Daddy’s was a strip mall, at least parts of which was two-story, which included an assortment of business including, among others, a laundromat and an Italian restaurant named Buccione’s. Being a bit of a foodie, I had on my bucket list to patronize Buccione’s but never had the opportunity.
One day, I was in my kitchen and I heard someone outside yell, “Freeze!” I looked outside and saw under the tree in front at the front of the driveway (there wasn’t much of a front yard) and man holding another man at gunpoint. Now, I cannot recall if I had called the police myself, but I am pretty certain that I did and told them that there was a man with a gun pointing it at another man.
When the police arrived, I overheard them talking to the men and the man with the gun said that he had a concealed carry permit and that he had witnessed the other man breaking into a car that was parked at Buccione’s and had chased him on foot to my front yard where he caught up to him.
Reading in the Miami Herald about an incident that happened right in front of my home and right in front of my very eyes, it turned out that the car that the fellow had broken into happened to be the car of a judge that was having lunch at Buccione’s.
So you are going to break into a car, it[s probably not a good idea to break into the car of a judge. But I digress.
It turns out that Buccione’s was very popular with judges.
A little too popular.
The restaurant later became the focus of an operation involving judges who were involved in bribery and corruption. And Buccione’s was the epi-center of the illicit activity. This led to a number of judges being prosecuted and removed from the bench.
With so many judges being caught up in the sting and being such a large part of its customer base, the restaurant’s business swiftly declined. Running out of cash to operated the business, the owner failed to make the monthly remittances to the Internal Revenue Service for the tax withholdings from his employee’s paychecks. When this was discovered, an IRS agent froze the accounts of the restaurant.
When he found out that his accounts were frozen, the restaurant owner tracked down the IRS agent responsible, found his address and killed him in his own home. Then he fled the country.
After a worldwide manhunt, he was discovered and arrested in his native Italy. However, the Italian authorities, being a Catholic country, refused to extradict him to the United States because of the death penalty in the United States and especially in Florida. Nevertheless, the murder trial proceeded with the prosecutor holding the trial in a Miami courtroom while the defendant appeared via videolink from a prison in Italy.
And this brings us to the Curious Case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
What we have is a citizen of El Salvador, also a Catholic country, who is in custody in a prison in his native country. While one can argue as to the legality or validity of the chain of events that led to him to be held in that prison, the fact remains that he is there and that it where he is.
With him being in custody in his home country, by requesting that he be released and sent the United States, the Democrats are in fact requesting that he be extradicted to the United States, a country with a death penalty. It is entirely within the prerogative of his native country if they wish to extradict him or not. That is entirely not a decision that can be made by the United States government or any member of the courts for that matter.
If he is being held in prison in his home country, then one must assume that his home country has reasons to hold him in prison. If that is not the case, then the course of action would be to find lawyers in that country who would know the local laws better to examine the evidence and to find a way to have him released from prison.
Anything short of that is just political grandstanding and will be completely futile.