If there is one specific competency where the United States government remains the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world, it is the logistical application of misery. We cannot build bridges that don’t collapse, we cannot educate our children to read at a grade-school level, and we certainly cannot figure out how to provide healthcare without bankrupting the patient. But give the federal bureaucracy a 21-year-old woman, eight months pregnant and in medical distress, and watch the machinery of the state hum with the precision of a Swiss watch forged in Hell.

This week, the Department of Homeland Security—an Orwellian moniker that grows more ironic with every passing indignity—successfully exported Zharick Daniela Buitrago Ortiz back to Colombia. The triumph of this operation lies not just in the cruelty, but in the timing. It was a photo finish between the wheels of the deportation plane lifting off and the gavel of a federal judge coming down. The plane won. The court order to keep her out of the air arrived with the punctual utility of a screen door on a submarine. Justice is blind, we are told, but in America, it is also arthritic, lethargic, and consistently outpaced by the sheer kinetic energy of xenophobia.

Let us appreciate the absurdity of the scenario. Ms. Ortiz was not merely pregnant; she was eight months along and in a state of "medical distress." For those unfamiliar with human biology—a demographic that apparently overlaps significantly with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) leadership—this is the point in a pregnancy where most airlines hesitate to let you board because they don't want to deliver a baby in the beverage cart aisle. Yet, the federal government looked at a woman potentially going into labor, or suffering complications that could kill her or the fetus, and saw only a logistical hurdle to be cleared before happy hour.

The attorney for Ms. Ortiz, Anthony Enriquez of the Kennedy Human Rights Center, is now left "trying to get her the medical attention she needs immediately" in Colombia. One has to admire the quaint optimism of human rights lawyers. They continue to file paperwork and cite statutes as if they are participating in a system that operates on logic or morality. They act as if the "rule of law" is a tangible shield rather than a rhetorical bludgeon used selectively by whichever sociopath happens to be holding the handle at the moment. The court order was issued. It existed. It had the weight of federal authority behind it. And it mattered absolutely zero percent because the engines were already revving.

This incident is a perfect microcosm of the bipartisan failure that is American governance. The Right will look at this and see a victory for "law and order," ignoring the fact that deporting a medically distressed woman requires a level of moral bankruptcy that usually triggers a villain monologue in bad movies. They will cheer the efficiency of the removal while ignoring the cost of the humanity lost in the process. Meanwhile, the Left will perform their ritualistic dance of outrage—tweets will be drafted, pearls will be clutched, and fundraising emails will be blasted out by NGOs—but the infrastructure that allowed this to happen remains entirely intact, funded and lubricated by the very politicians they likely voted for.

Consider the medical aspect alone. The United States has the highest maternal mortality rate in the developed world. Perhaps ICE was simply doing the math? By ejecting a high-risk pregnancy into Colombian airspace, they technically lowered the domestic statistics. It’s the kind of ghoulish accounting that passes for policy in the halls of Washington. Why treat a patient when you can reclassify them as cargo and make them someone else's problem?

So, Ms. Ortiz is back in Colombia, presumably receiving the care that the wealthiest nation on Earth was too stingy and sadistic to provide. The plane has landed. The paperwork is filed. The agents involved have likely gone home to their own families, slept soundly, and justified their actions as "just following orders," the historical refrain of the spineless bureaucrat through the ages. We are left with the reality of what we are: a nation that is terrified of a 21-year-old girl and her unborn child, but utterly fearless when it comes to abandoning our own souls.