President Trump’s handling of the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an immigrant who was mistakenly sent to a prison in El Salvador, is inflaming tensions with libertarians and some rule-of-law conservatives.

Trump has further alarmed some conservative allies by declaring last week that his administration is exploring the possibility of deporting incarcerated U.S. citizens to serve out their sentences in foreign prisons, such as El Salvador’s sprawling Terrorism Confinement Center.

Senior White House officials view the political battle over Abrego Garcia as a winning political message, and polls show Trump is doing well on the issue of immigration, but the president’s handling of Abrego Garcia has also driven a wedge between his administration and libertarians and rule-of-law conservatives, who traditionally make up a key part of the GOP.

Some of them are uncomfortable with the White House’s reluctance to comply with a court order to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return.

“Under the theory that the administration is touting, they could take you or me, throw us to El Salvador and say, ‘Sorry, nothing we can do about it. We agree it was an administrative error. Tough,’” said Bruce Fein, a Justice Department official during the Reagan administration who describes himself as a “rule-of-law conservative.”

The Justice Department lawyer who initially argued the case for the administration, Erez Reuveni, conceded that Abrego Garcia should not have been sent to El Salvador and said the government only had “jurisdictional” arguments against returning him. That lawyer was later fired, according to media reports.

Fein said the Constitution does not draw a distinction between U.S. citizens and persons who are not citizens living in the United States when it comes to granting due process under the law.

“Conservatives believe in due process,” said Fein, who added that he would not have any problem with Abrego Garcia’s deportation if the Trump administration had obtained a deportation order.

But he noted that the........

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