On Monday, a deportation trial for General Eugenio Vides Casanova, a former Salvadoran Defense Minister (1983-1989) began in Florida. Vides Casanova is supposedly the "highest ranking military member to face possible deportation" as a result of human rights abuses committed prior to settling in the United States. The Department of Homeland Security' human rights division has deported over 400 human rights abusers since its creation in 2003.
Vides Casanova was acquitted of civil charges in a 2000 trial for failing to stop his subordinates from raping and killing four US churchwomen in December 1980. In that case, the defendants got off partly because there were no victims to confront the accused in court and partly because the plaintiffs' lawyers had presented such a chaotic situation in 1980 El Salvador that the jury was convinced Vides Casanova and General Jose Guillermo Garcia (his co-defendant) were not in control of anything and therefore could not be held responsible.
However, in 2002, Vides Casanova and Garcia were forced to pay $54.6 million to three Salvadoran citizens who suffered torture during the civil war. In that case, the torture survivors told their stories in open court. After appealing the ruling, Vides Casanova had to surrender more than $300,000 of his assets in 2006.
Senators Dick Durbin (IL-D) Tom Coburn (OK-R) were the ones responsible for pushing the Department of Homeland Security to deport the generals beginning in 2009. The US Government is seeking to deport Garcia as well.
I wonder why the US government is not trying to put them in jail for lying on the immigration papers. That's what the government is doing with the former kaibiles involved in the Dos Erres massacre. While Vides Casanova and Garcia probably couldn't have lied about their military background, they must have lied about something related to having overseen a military involved in the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians. That's got to count for something.
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