These people have made the affirmative choice to join gangs that terrorize law abiding citizens. Their choke hold on El Salvador has prevented others from living safe, prosperous lives (not to mention the countless people they've killed). Removing them from society is progress. The amount of utils gained by the large majority far outweighs those lost by these criminals. And frankly, it's a false equivalence anyway bc they're, y'know, criminals.

> Would you have supported Jonathan Swift's "Modest Proposal" too, at the time? Or sterilizing poor people? I mean, those are perfectly logical suggestions that would work, wouldn't they?

You have erected a startling number of straw men in your response. I'll ignore them.

We should do things that both work and benefit society. We should not do things that don't work. Here's a short an non-exhaustive list of "progressive" things that don't work: restorative justice, tolerating crime, allowing the destruction of the commons by the mentally ill and addicted, allowing criminals to be free and wreck society due to legal technicalities, bureaucracy, and corruption.

And thus, as I wrote previously, the word "progressive" seems to have fully inverted. Things that enable or create progress are called regressive, while things that are actually regressive and destructure are called progressive.