U.S. Rep. Yassamin Ansari of Arizona did not travel all the way to El Salvador with other congressional Democrats to talk about the criminals who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Ansari and the others went to El Salvador to draw attention to President Donald Trump's illegal use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1789 to fast-track the deportations of suspected Venezuelan gang members to a notorious prison in that country.
There's a simple comparison to be made between the U.S. Capitol rioters - who were indicted, represented by attorneys, received trials (if they wanted them), got convicted and were then freed by Trump - and the Venezuelans who were rounded up and shipped out with no due process.
Criticism of Trump's deportation policy ramped up after a Maryland man named Kilmar Abrego Garcia was deported. Administration officials at first admitted it was a mistake. They've since changed their tune.
In El Salvador, Ansari said, "It isn't just about Kilmar. It is the fact that our government is relentlessly going after any immigrant that's trying to come to the United States, or is in the United States, without any regard for due process."
Trump's office called what Ansari and the Democrats did an "apology tour" for a "deported illegal immigrant gang member."
Republican U.S. Rep. Abe Hamadeh of Arizona, a diehard Trump sycophant, chimed in, saying he was "the ONLY freshman Arizona Representative NOT fighting on behalf of an El Salvadoran illegal immigrant & accused gangbanger/wife-beater."
Note the last part of what Hamadeh said, particularly the word "accused."
Abrego Garcia has not been convicted of a crime. And, like the other deportees, he had no opportunity to defend himself in court.
That wasn't the case for the nearly 1,600 individuals charged in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. All of them had opportunities to make their cases. They were represented by lawyers. They got to challenge the evidence against them. They could have gone to trial. Many did. And roughly 80% were convicted.
Soon after his second presidential inauguration, Trump, calling them "patriots," either pardoned them or commuted their sentences.
An NPR investigation of those "patriots" later found that dozens of them had prior convictions or pending charges for all manner of ugly crimes. Things like rape, sexual abuse of a minor, domestic violence, manslaughter, production of child sexual abuse material and drug trafficking.
Funny, though, I do not recall Hamadeh - or other Republicans - howling about letting such people off the hook for their Jan. 6 crimes.
Likewise, I heard no complaints from Republicans when Trump pardoned individuals who were caught on tape and convicted of beating police with flagpoles, batons, clubs and baseball bats. Or who had used stun guns and chemical sprays.
Nor do I recall former President Joe Biden trying to send the rioters to a foreign prison or ignoring their constitutional rights.
I also didn't hear any loud complaints from any Republicans in the Arizona congressional delegation when Trump pardoned Enrique Tarrio of the right-wing Proud Boys and commuted the prison sentence of Stewart Rhodes of the Oath Keepers, each of whom had been convicted of seditious conspiracy.
In other words, trying to overthrow the government.
Back in 2015, Republican U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs, who now wants to be Arizona's governor, was at an event where Rhodes said that then-U.S. Sen. John McCain "should be tried for treason before a jury of his peers. ... Then after we convict him, he should be hung by the neck until dead."
The convicted associates of Tarrio and Rhodes also were set free.
And again, no complaints from Republicans.
All of these criminals were given due process. All were either convicted or pleaded guilty.
Yet for the individuals deported to hell in El Salvador, there has been no due process.
And Trump has actually said on social media, "We cannot give everyone a trial, because to do so would take, without exaggeration, 200 years."
There is the simple, horrifying dichotomy that Ansari and others might point out: We have an American president who frees convicted criminals and imprisons those who've been convicted of no crimes.
Democratic U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who visited Abrego Garcia in El Salvador, put it this way, "If you deny the constitutional rights of one man, you threaten the constitutional rights and due process for everyone else in America."
EJ Montini is a columnist for the Arizona Republic, where this column originally appeared.