The problem is that there's no mechanism to prevent that. And there's a pretty clear route to it happening: first mistaken immigrants, then mistaken murders, then mistaken "domestic terrorists" -- and you have the federal gov. disappearing political opponents.
The issue with these extrajudicial renditions to foreign prisions is the extrajudicial part. The rest of it is just immoral -- the former part, a catastrophe.
The extrajudicial part has been around since the Clinton administration[1]. Somehow neither Obama nor Biden chose to get rid of this policy.
> Within days of his 2009 inauguration, Barack Obama signed an executive order opposing rendition torture and established a task force to provide recommendations about processes to prevent rendition torture. His administration distanced itself from some of the harshest counterterrorism techniques but permitted the practice of rendition to continue
The new part here is that it's foreign nationals being taken from US soil instead of another country's soil.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition
Yes, the new part is that it's extrajudicial. The rendition of foreign citizens can be done without a court, because they aren't covered by the US constitution. Only those "under the power of the united states government" are granted due process by US courts.
The line being cross in taking persons unknown to courts from the united states, to a forieng country, isnt "a new part". It's to suspend the constitution and grant the president the power not merely to arbitarily detain, but to do so in a foreign prison.
It's hard to understate how serious this is. If it were only this, and nothing else, we might hope it will stay bounded by the "hopefully" diligient ICE. But coupled with the assault on all rival systems to presidental power, there's nothign to be hopeful about.
The constitution has been suspend, the president has sequestered the force of the federal government to bring under his private power the whole of american society, begining with the most powerful rivals: the courts, the media, the universities, the law first, and so on.
He will next suspend the broadcasting licence for media outlets.
Optimistically, the supreme court could suspend his emergency powers -- as they ought, since there is no war or emergency. This may make the federal government unable to execute his wishes -- but if they've replaced enough workers there already, it might be too late.