I’ve been involved in some of this century’s most controversial national security and human rights cases involving Americans fighting against government overreach and sometimes lawlessness – cases involving offshore torture, secret mass surveillance, drone strikes on innocent civilians, and the coverup of a friendly-fire death of a U.S. solidier. As a human rights attorney, I’ve seen some of the worst conduct by government employees, military officials, and private contractors – often done under the weighty guise of protecting the country from mythical ticking time bombs. My unfortunate niche is innocent Americans who were mistreated, maimed, or killed in the name of elastic, expansive, nebulous, and incendiary words like “terrorists,” “insider threats,” “enemies within,” “illegals,” and “traitors.” I am a first-hand witness to our nation’s decades-long descent into lawlessness. I know exactly how we got here.

President Obama’s decision to “look forward, not backwards” (an ethos also embraced by predecessors and successors alike) past the architects who carried out and covered up torture and other human rights atrocities paved the way for today’s lawless incursions on people’s fundamental constitutional due process rights and political freedoms. The shocking circumstances of Kilmar Ábrego García’s detention in an El Salvadoran gulag is the logical conclusion stemming from impunity for egregious government conduct.

After 9/11, American John Walker Lindh became the first U.S. prisoner in the Afghanistan war. Photos circulated worldwide of him naked, blindfolded, tied up, and bound to a board with duct tape by his American captors. It was our first glimpse of American-sponsored torture and we didn’t flinch; instead, we vilified Lindh. The few of us who objected to his treatment were disciplined, demoted, fired, or in my case, placed under a pretextual........

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