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Time Magazine
5 days ago
- Politics
- Time Magazine
Inside Donald Trump's Mass-Deportation Operation
Trump is testing the moral and legal extremes to which the government is willing to go 'Pay attention to the noise,' says Belarmino Garcia, the warden of El Salvador's Terrorism Confinement Center. He ushers a group of foreign visitors inside CECOT's Module 8, a unit unlike others at the sprawling facility situated at the base of a volcano. This one holds 238 Venezuelan nationals who were shipped from the U.S. on March 15 to be held in one of the world's most infamous prisons at the behest of President Donald J. Trump. The cacophony is overwhelming. Inmates climb out of their bunks, lean on the bars, and plead and whistle for attention. Module 8 is different from a typical CECOT unit in several ways, Garcia explains. The detainees are allowed blankets and pillows. They eat fast food. They are rambunctious and defiant. As the warden leads the visitors out, the prisoners appear on the verge of mutiny, chanting 'Libertad! Libertad!' Next, Garcia takes the visitors into Module 7. It's silent inside. The prisoners are Salvadoran nationals, some of whom have been at CECOT for years. They wear white shirts, white shorts, and face masks, and sit upright, staring blankly through the bars. Their cells contain nothing but a pila —a tub they use as a toilet—and bare steel bunks. Inmates spend all day inside, emerging only for 30 minutes of calisthenics or Bible study, according to the warden. There are no TVs or radios. The prisoners can't make or accept phone calls. They can't receive visitors, or even letters. They have spoken to no one outside the prison since their arrival. Staff remind them what El Salvador's President, Nayib Bukele, has said publicly: No one who goes into CECOT will ever come out. 'They have lost the will to fight or resist us,' Garcia says. The prospect of the U.S. sending migrants to a foreign prison notorious for alleged human-rights violations would have been unimaginable less than a year ago. But it is only one dramatic component of Trump's unprecedented deportation project. The President has revoked the temporary legal status of hundreds of thousands of people and expanded the power of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to round up and remove millions of others. He is authorizing ICE to direct a network of law-enforcement agencies, from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives to the DEA and U.S. Park Police, to assist the effort. He has pressed the Internal Revenue Service and the Postal Service to share information to identify targets. Homeland Security Operations has developed new software technology, called RAVEn, to consolidate data about migrants. Trump has used federal powers to coerce cities and counties to cooperate with the mission and threatened to withdraw federal funding if they don't. Working with sheriffs and local police departments, ICE has raided schools, parks, and restaurants across the U.S., detaining some 82,000 people in a few short months. The work is only beginning. On June 7, Trump ordered National Guard troops to Los Angeles to quell anti-ICE protests. The Department of Justice is weighing arresting and prosecuting public officials who impede their immigration agenda, according to Administration sources familiar with the matter. The White House is considering suspending habeas corpus, a protection against illegal government detention enshrined in the Constitution that grants every person the right to have a judge review their imprisonment. 'We're looking at every option,' Trump border czar Tom Homan tells TIME. In addition to sending Venezuelans to CECOT, Trump has deported asylum seekers to Panama and sent others to Guantánamo Bay in Cuba and South Sudan. Homan says the Administration is in talks with three more countries to accept U.S. deportees. It also plans to build and expand other detention centers in the U.S., he says, with the goal of doubling capacity to hold detainees awaiting deportation to 100,000. So far, the Administration has deported more than 139,000 migrants, which is behind pace to reach Trump's aggressive targets. Even so, the number in immigration detention has spiked 30%. This sweeping effort has few analogues in recent world history. Its ambition goes beyond anything attempted in the U.S. since the Eisenhower-era Operation Wetback in its aims to expel millions of people and change the makeup of the country. Removing that many undocumented immigrants, as Trump has promised, would eliminate a key source of labor. It would end a decades-long wave of migration that has made the country progressively more multiethnic. And it would change how the U.S. has treated those seeking refuge from violence and oppression since before the end of the Cold War. Trump officials say all this is overdue. The U.S. experienced a surge in migrants, including undocumented immigrants, under President Biden, who revoked some of Trump's first-term border policies. Trump officials say they intend to reverse a trend that has displaced American workers, depleted state and local governments of resources, and, they argue, undermined social cohesion. Already, Trump's deportation program is instilling fear in newcomers. 'I can't go back,' says Hilda Espinoza Telon, a refugee from Guatemalan gang violence, whose lawyer says she was recently fitted with an ankle monitor by ICE. 'Nearly my whole family has been murdered over there.' She has given her 14-year-old son instructions for what to do if she disappears from their Virginia home. A TIME investigation, based on interviews with more than 20 Trump Administration officials, exclusive access to detention facilities in the U.S. and abroad, and conversations with numerous migrants, immigration experts, and attorneys reveals how Trump is testing the moral and legal extremes to which the government is willing to go. Catholic bishops and Republican-appointed judges have joined those speaking out against his deportation project. District courts have issued injunctions. Constitutional scholars have alleged Trump's team is not only abusing presidential power but also breaking laws. 'The Administration is treating immigration not as a law-enforcement matter but is trying illegally to repurpose the tools of war and counterterrorism against migrants,' says Brian Finucane, a lawyer at the independent International Crisis Group and former State Department official. 'It's a turducken of illegality.' Trump Administration officials say they are complying with all laws they deem constitutional. Whether they are correct will ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court, which has halted some of Trump's actions while the Justices consider the merits. But moves to slow or reverse his agenda have only hardened the President's resolve. 'We have to do it,' Trump told TIME in late April, arguing he had been elected on a promise to crack down on illegal immigration. 'People have been let into our country that are very dangerous.' As the Administration escalates its efforts, critics are asking how we got here. Others wonder what took so long. But all Americans have a stake in understanding how Trump is trying to transform the country by deporting millions of its inhabitants—and what it will mean for their communities. When Cristian David Marin Leiva stepped inside the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in New Orleans on April 14, he thought his appointment would take only a few minutes. The agency had summoned Cristian, a boyish teenager with bright eyes and a patchy goatee, for a regular 'check-in.' He had reported for check-ins twice previously without incident—most recently in February—since he crossed the Texas border illegally in April 2021. Cristian moved to the U.S. to escape violence in Honduras, he says, settling with his father and stepmother in Slidell, La. 'Where I lived was full of gangs,' he says. 'They would make the minors join the gang or be killed.' Shortly after he crossed the border, he hired a lawyer, who asked a judge to designate Cristian a Special Immigrant–Juvenile. He had been abandoned by his mother in Honduras, his attorney says, and needed to live with his father in the U.S. The judge approved the petition and granted Cristian four years of 'deferred action from removal,' providing a reprieve from deportation at least until 2027. Now a high school junior, Cristian, 18, walked into the ICE office near the French Quarter around 7 a.m., planning to make it to school in time for his first-period biology class. He approached an officer and handed him the letter requesting a check-in. The agent glanced at the paper, furrowed his brow, and then looked back at Cristian. He pulled out a pair of handcuffs. 'Follow me,' he said. Cristian was led into a small holding cell with dozens of detainees and stripped of his possessions. 'They just called me over and put these on me and kept me here,' he told TIME, shackled at his wrists and ankles. Agents told him he could make a phone call after he was transferred to a processing center in Central Louisiana. There he could choose either to voluntarily board a flight to Honduras or face a judge. Nobody informed Cristian's family what was happening. Rubin Marin, Cristian's father, was oblivious when TIME reached him by phone later that afternoon. He thought his son was in school. Summoning migrants for unexpected detention is one in a range of tactics the Trump Administration has adopted. The message sent is clear: Migrants who entered the country illegally are not only unwelcome but also at risk of sudden removal or imprisonment wherever they are and whether they've followed the law since arriving or not. 'It's just getting them the hell out of here,' Homan says. To understand how the deportation dragnet works, TIME joined ICE officers on a pair of morning raids in the New Orleans area. Inside a truck, ICE officers reviewed files on their targets, including biometric data, arrest and conviction records, work histories, and frequent whereabouts. 'We surveil them for a period of time to identify patterns of behavior,' says Mellissa Harper, director of the New Orleans field office. 'Once we know that they are at a certain location at a certain period of time regularly, we plan out an enforcement operation.' The raids TIME witnessed didn't lead to arrests. In one case, the person had left the state overnight. In another, they simply weren't home. But the target list has multiplied. When he took office, Trump revoked the temporary protected status of hundreds of thousands of migrants and rescinded memos that limited ICE arrests during raids. Before that, 'if we conduct a targeted enforcement operation for one guy and we show up to his house and there are four other -illegals there, we could only arrest the one guy,' explains Scott Ladwig, Harper's deputy. 'Now we grab them all.' Local police have lined up in support, transferring migrants they arrest on other alleged crimes or even traffic violations. After the fruitless predawn raids on April 14, the ICE officers returned to the New Orleans field office to find 12 migrants transported from the Kenner, La., police department. The detainees walked in a single-file line, wearing handcuffs and leg restraints. When they reached the offices, ICE agents interviewed them using a Spanish translation app on their government phones. One of the detainees, Fernando Milla, 28, had been arrested on suspicion of drunk driving. The officer who ran his license, Milla says, saw he had overstayed a student visa. After two nights in the county jail, police transferred Milla, a Honduran national, to ICE custody. Sitting inside a holding cell, Milla was resigned to his fate. 'I'm not going to hire a lawyer or anything,' he tells TIME. 'I'm going back.' As the migrants in Milla's group were being questioned by the ICE agents processing their paperwork, Cristian emerged from the holding cell. He spent 16 minutes answering questions from an officer. Then he was left waiting again, hoping he ends up back with his father and not on a flight to Honduras. The detention of migrants like Cristian is the first link in Trump's new deportation chain. It's the product of years of planning. Trump left office in January 2021 determined to make immigration a centerpiece of his political comeback. Top aides found refuge at friendly think tanks to plot the next steps. Homan, who was acting ICE director in Trump's first term, took residency at the America First Policy Institute and the Heritage Foundation, where he contributed to the latter organization's manifesto for a second term, titled Project 2025. Russell Vought, the Office of Management and Budget director, founded the Center for Renewing America, where he studied Trump's rally speeches and devised plans to turn promises into policy. Longtime adviser Stephen Miller, an architect of Trump's first-term immigration crackdown that included separating families, founded America First Legal to sue the Biden Administration, and explored legal mechanisms for Trump's deportation goals. Together they sketched the contours of a new, even more aggressive immigration agenda. It would concentrate power in the Oval Office and use federal powers to pressure state and local jurisdictions, withholding funds for sanctuary cities and forcing agencies with access to sensitive data to assist in the deportation effort. Vought and others suggested pulling federal funding from state and local police departments that refused to cooperate. Miller proposed declaring a national emergency to invoke extraordinary powers to round up and remove migrants. Homan wanted to restructure ICE, reassigning employees with desk jobs to conduct field operations and ramping up the agency's capacity to identify and arrest people. They looked for ways to move fast, and studied the law to devise the methods and legal defenses for their most boundary-pushing measures, according to several current Administration officials. Working with Miller at America First Legal was Gene Hamilton, the principal author of Trump's controversial family-separation policy, according to a January 2021 Justice Department inspector general report. All four men now work out of the White House. 'The President and the entire Administration are certainly open to all legal and constitutional remedies to ensure we can continue with the promise of deporting illegal criminals,' White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. Just how 'legal and constitutional' the White House actions are is a matter of dispute. Normally, Executive Orders are vetted by experts at the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department, in order to ensure the President is following the law. Trump has reportedly curtailed that front-end review, leaving government lawyers to defend controversial claims of powers granted to the President only in extreme circumstances, like wartime. Asked to illustrate how this approach to following the law differs from the norm, one litigator who left the Justice Department in February tells TIME, 'Draw a horse and put a cart in front of it.' Even those willing to advocate for the broadest presidential powers in pursuit of deportations have found themselves out of a job. Erez Reuveni, a veteran federal litigator who had defended in court Trump's 2017 ban on travelers from Muslim-majority countries, was fired after Reuveni told a court the Administration had mistakenly sent a Salvadoran man named Kilmar Abrego Garcia to CECOT because of a clerical error. The Department also placed on leave Reuveni's supervisor, August Flentje, who had defended Trump's family-separation policy in court in 2018. Traditionally, Justice Department lawyers have been required to keep their distance from the White House to avoid the appearance of politicization. Attorney General Pam Bondi, by contrast, has emphasized 'zealous' advocacy of Trump's agenda. 'Any attorney who fails to abide by this direction will face consequences,' Bondi said the day after Reuveni's court appearance. Eight hours after his arrest, Cristian was sent to the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Jena, La., about four hours from New Orleans, on the edge of a forest of loblolly and longleaf pines. The facility, which holds nearly 1,200 inmates, is run by the private corrections company GEO Group, a Trump donor for which Homan worked as a paid consultant. Most days, the prison is quiet, though on occasion hundreds of protesters show up to demand the release of its most famous inmate, Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student whom the Trump Administration arrested without a warrant in March for his role in the campus' pro-Palestinian protests, and has accused, without supplying evidence, of 'activities aligned to Hamas.' When TIME visited the Jena facility on May 29, nine landscapers in lime green shirts sat in the intake room on long benches, waiting their turn to be formally admitted. Their shirts read Twin Shores Landscape & Construction Services. Two days earlier, they had been starting a project on the Mirabeau Water Garden construction site in New Orleans, part of a $30 million federally funded drainage project to reduce flooding in the area. At 7 a.m., ICE officers surrounded the site, blocking the exits to the park, as a government helicopter hovered overhead. Donald Tercero, 36, was among those arrested. Tercero, who is Nicaraguan, had worked on farms and as a teacher before arriving in the U.S. in 2022. He presented himself to the Border Patrol at McAllen, Texas, seeking humanitarian parole under a program the Biden Administration had started that year. He's not planning to fight his deportation. 'I want to go back,' Tercero says. Manuel Carillo, a 29-year-old from Guatemala, was also among the construction crew arrested in the New Orleans ICE raid. 'Not everyone wants to do the work we are doing,' he says. 'Unfortunately, Donald Trump doesn't want us to stay.' Jimmy Bingham, the warden at Jena, says fewer detained migrants are resisting deportation these days. 'They don't feel like it's worth their time to fight,' Bingham says. Upon admission, inmates are given colored uniforms—red and yellow garb for the most serious felonies, green and orange for lesser offenses, blue for those with no conviction. They are separated according to these classifications and housed in dorms that hold 80 people apiece, with showers, phones, televisions, and a gaming system. They get two hours for recreation in the morning and another two hours in the afternoon, says the prison administrator. When TIME enters one of the dorms, a group of inmates rushes over, asking to tell their stories. Some had been there a few days, others a few weeks, and some even a few months as they waited to have their cases heard. The lucky ones are granted bond and can return home until a judge is ready to determine their fate. Jena is one of around 200 ICE detention facilities across the U.S., but agency officials like to send prisoners there for a few reasons. It's cheaper to detain migrants in Louisiana than in other parts of the country, and the state has a conservative federal Circuit Court that's more likely than some others to rule in the government's favor when it seeks a removal. Jena is also located near the Alexandria Staging Facility, a small airport managed by GEO. On average, the Alexandria facility flies six planes a day to other countries, says Ragan Lewis, an ICE officer who runs the airport. Some days see as many as 12 outgoing flights. As a plane loaded up with prisoners, Lewis waved his hand toward a stretch of grass next to the airfield. If there were money to expand the holding cells, he says, he could fit 2,000 people there. Lewis hopes the broad legislative package moving through Congress will allocate funding to expand the Jena facility to house more migrants, who could then be flown out of the country on planes from Alexandria. Just after dawn on May 29, the swish of chains dragging on asphalt was loud enough to be heard over idling engines. Roughly 70 men shuffled across the tarmac toward a chartered jet that would take them to Nicaragua. Before boarding, guards patted each down, looking for hidden weapons, unlocking and relocking their restraints, and directing them to make the awkward ascent up the stairs to the plane. One of the men, wearing a black hoodie, shook the chains around his wrists at a guard and said, 'Como perros! Como perros!' (Like dogs.) Once the detainees were on board, agents brought in a van with dozens of women, also manacled, to board next. Then came the only migrants without chains: family units. A woman with her teenage son got on first, followed by a woman with her young daughter. By the time the flight lifted off, there were 118 passengers on board. Whether Cristian will end up on one of these planes isn't yet clear. In May he was let out of Jena on a $4,000 bond. He is due back in immigration court in New Orleans on Sept. 2 to find out whether he will be sent back to Honduras or can remain in the U.S. with his father. The deportation chain in Louisiana exemplifies a nationwide operation that is redefining American immigration policy, legally and morally. The fallout is reaching far beyond those who entered the country without permission. Law-enforcement officials have snatched foreign students off the street for engaging in speech the Administration doesn't like. Trump has revoked student visas and put foreign students into deportation proceedings without warning. 'A visa is a gift,' Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on March 28. 'No one is entitled to a visa.' Trump is targeting younger children too. His attorneys have argued in federal court that he should be allowed to ignore the 14th Amendment's guarantee of citizenship for those born in the U.S. and terminate the rights of children born to parents who were in the country illegally. The President has cut federal funding to social-service nonprofits that offer legal representation to people facing deportation to ensure their cases are fairly decided. 'The very idea of deporting a child without a lawyer should be unthinkable in America,' says Jojo Annobil, the CEO of the Immigrant Justice Corps. Perhaps no other issue has crystallized criticism of Trump's immigration agenda like the deportation of Venezuelan nationals to El Salvador. Like many of Trump's policies, it came about through a series of conversations, rather than a conventional legal process. On the campaign stump, Trump occasionally castigated Bukele, the Salvadoran President, for sending MS-13 gang members to the U.S. Trump ally and former Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, one of Bukele's biggest American fans, told Trump that this wasn't true. Bukele was the most popular leader in Latin America, he told Trump, and attacking him wasn't going to help win over the Hispanic voters Trump was courting. When Gaetz visited El Salvador for Bukele's second inauguration last summer, he and Bukele discussed the idea of the Salvadorans holding some of the migrants whom Trump planned to deport if he won. When Gaetz returned, he tells TIME, he brought the idea to Trump and his team. Shortly after taking office, Trump directed Rubio to cut a deal with Bukele, two senior White House officials say. Rubio came back with an offer in hand, according to U.S. officials: $20,000 per prisoner for a year. There were wrinkles in the deal. Bukele wanted the Trump Administration to send a handful of Salvadoran MS-13 members held in U.S. prisons, including some who the Treasury Department alleged in December 2021 had engaged in secret negotiations with officials of Bukele's government. At the same time, the deportations would require claims of extraordinary presidential powers. Miller and the White House Counsel's office planned to invoke the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 law that grants the President wartime authority during an invasion or 'predatory incursion.' The plan was so closely held that only a few senior members of the Administration knew it was happening, one of them tells TIME. On March 15, the Trump Administration sent 238 Venezuelan nationals to El Salvador, alleging they were gang members or terrorists. Some had recently been arrested. Many of them had not been convicted in U.S. court. The Administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act for the fourth time in U.S. history, and the first since World War II. The declaration was made at 3:53 p.m. The flights for El Salvador were scheduled for 5:26, 5:44, and 7:36 p.m. Prompted by an emergency motion from the American Civil Liberties Union and Democracy Forward, U.S. Judge James Boasberg ordered a virtual hearing on the matter for late that afternoon. Boasberg heard arguments, then ordered the government to halt the removals. 'Whether turning around a plane or not embarking anyone on the plane, or those people covered by this on the plane, I leave to you,' Boasberg told the DOJ. 'But this is something that you need to make sure is complied with immediately.' Yet two planeloads of migrants had already left ahead of schedule. A third one was still on the tarmac at a Texas airfield, but took off anyway. The Trump Administration has not confirmed the names of the Venezuelans on those flights. Nor has it shown evidence that all of the men belonged to the criminal gang Tren de Aragua. A review by the Cato Institute found that more than 50 of the Venezuelans sent to El Salvador had followed legal steps to enter the country. A CBS News investigation found that most of the Venezuelans had no criminal record in the U.S. or abroad. One of the men on the planes was Abrego Garcia, who the Justice Department would later admit had been mistakenly deported. Another was Franco Caraballo Tiapa, who worked as a barber in Venezuela. In 2023, Tiapa and his wife Johanny trekked across the Darién Gap, sleeping in the open and surviving on scraps of discarded food, until they presented themselves at the U.S. border and asked for asylum. The two lived together in Sherman, Texas, where they made money cutting hair. On Feb. 3, Tiapa visited an ICE office in Dallas for a regular check-in. This time he was arrested, according to Johanny. The Administration says his tattoos show he's a member of the Tren de Aragua gang. One is of his daughter's name. Others depict a lion; a rose; and a razor blade on the side of his neck—a symbol of his work as a barber, according to his wife. She says he has no criminal record in the U.S. or Venezuela. 'They were only looking at his tattoos,' Johanny says. Outside of CECOT's Module 7, Garcia, the warden, brings out a Styrofoam container with a hamburger, French fries, ketchup packs, and Milano cookies. This is a typical meal for the Venezuelan inmates, he says. Their diet was devised by Bukele, who instructed they be fed fast food to gain weight, as a way of trolling critics who argue CECOT's conditions are inhumane, according to Salvadoran sources. 'It's a cat-and-mouse game,' says one person close to Bukele. The maneuver is similar to the photo op Bukele staged when Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen traveled to El Salvador to meet with Abrego Garcia. The pair were photographed sitting poolside with what Van Hollen said were 'fake' margaritas. (Abrego Garcia was returned to the U.S. in early June.) After the tour of the prison, Garcia allows TIME to interview one inmate in a holding area near the unit's entrance. The man says his name is Hector Hernandez. He appears to be the nightmare that Trump has conjured time and again on the campaign trail. He says he is an MS-13 member, and has tattoos all over his body, from his face and neck to his forearms. The prisoner claims that before he was deported in 2019 and apprehended by Salvadoran authorities, he murdered 50 people in Northern Virginia—more than three times the number of reported murders in Prince William or Fairfax counties for that year. TIME was unable to verify the details provided by the prisoner, including his name, his alleged crimes, or how he came to be there. Inside CECOT, the extreme terminus for Trump's deportation program, the truth, like everything else, is under the control of the authorities. What is clear, however, are the draconian conditions to which the Salvadoran inmates at CECOT are subjected. They are under constant surveillance. The lights never go off. They share cells with rival gang members. Prisoners who get out of line face up to 14 days in pitch-black solitary confinement, says Garcia. For the past 2½ years, the man who identifies himself as Hector Hernandez says, he's had no communication with the outside world. He hasn't spoken to family. He hasn't seen or read a news report. He doesn't know who the President of the United States is. — With reporting by Harry Booth, Leslie Dickstein, and Tharin Pillay More from TIME [video id=28GTRXAF]
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump Sent Them To Hell. Now He's Erasing Them Altogether.
The only information Ysqueibel Yonaiquer Peñaloza Chirinos' family has received about him in the past three months came from former Republican congressman Matt Gaetz. Gaetz probably didn't mean to help. But last month, as part of a propaganda video for the far-right One America News Network, he took a tour of the infamous El Salvadoran prison to which President Donald Trump has sent hundreds of U.S. immigrants for indefinite detention, without charge, trial or sentencing: El Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT. By the time Gaetz arrived, the men Trump had rendered to the prison had already been there for two months. It happens quickly: The OANN camera pans across a cluster of cells Gaetz says are being used to hold the people Trump sent to El Salvador. Many chant 'Libertad!' Some press their hands together in prayer, pleading. Peñaloza's face flashes on screen, framed by two metal bars. He looks mournful, almost crying, and does not say anything. But he does what most others are doing, opening and closing his fingers over a closed thumb, making what his lawyers say is an internationally recognized hand symbol for distress — a flashing 'send help' request popularized by domestic violence advocacy groups during the COVID-19 pandemic. Immigration policies aren't just politics — they're personal. At HuffPost, we explore the human stories behind the headlines, reporting on how immigration laws impact real people and communities. Support this vital coverage by Peñaloza's mother, Ydalys Chirinos-Polanco, spotted him in the video. She already knew he was at the prison — Peñaloza's olive branch tattoo was visible in the initial March 15 footage of the U.S. CECOT detainees — but she hadn't seen him since then. Peñaloza's only encounter with the law in the United States had been a traffic ticket, she said. 'I felt a lot of pain,' Chirinos recalled to HuffPost on a video call Wednesday, speaking in Spanish and through tears. 'But at the same time — a lot of happiness to see that he is alive and that he had the strength to stand up.' A month later, she hasn't seen any more of her son. In his absence, the U.S. government has worked to remove Peñaloza, who is Venezuelan, from domestic immigration court entirely. Six days after Gaetz's prison tour, an immigration judge granted the Department of Homeland Security's request to dismiss Peñaloza's case. As far as the United States immigration court system is concerned, he does not exist. At least 24 people sent to CECOT have had their immigration cases dismissed in their absence, Michelle Brané, the executive director of Together & Free, a nonprofit working to identify and track CECOT detainees, told HuffPost. The actual number may be higher — and it is unclear how many cases have pending dismissal requests from DHS that have not received rulings from immigration judges, who are technically Justice Department employees rather than members of an independent court system. Some immigration judges are pushing back. Last week, one such judge denied a DHS motion to dismiss a CECOT detainee's immigration case, saying the Trump administration had 'essentially rid itself of its opposing party.' But that is a rare exception to the trend. The dismissal of immigration cases for the CECOT detainees is yet another example of the Trump administration working to erase any trace of them in the United States, even though hundreds had ongoing legal cases here when they were disappeared. Without that legal toehold in the U.S. immigration system, CECOT detainees risk falling not only outside the purview of U.S. law but outside of any legal recognition whatsoever. There was no hearing in Peñaloza's case to discuss the dismissal — a May 30 court date was canceled ahead of time — and no discussion of where Peñaloza is, or how he got there. Instead, in a two-paragraph filing in April, attorneys for Immigration and Customs Enforcement said only that the 25-year-old 'was identified as an Alien Enemy and removed from the United States.' It was a perverse legal argument. Because Trump had removed Peñaloza without legal process, he was no longer present in the United States, and therefore, was not entitled to any legal process, the government claimed. On May 15, an immigration judge granted DHS's motion, stating that 'the Court does not have the authority to demand DHS return Respondent to the United States.' Peñaloza's legal team plans to appeal, and lawyers for CECOT detainees are involved in several lawsuits on their behalf. While dismissing cases, some immigration judges have said that the proper venue for legal challenges are habeas corpus lawsuits — and despite the Trump administration's open defiance, federal judges have advanced such lawsuits nationally, most notably earlier this month. 'Imagine having to explain to someone's mother, as a United States immigration attorney, that their son has an immigration hearing, and the government attorneys fighting his case say that they have no means of being able to connect you with your client — when the United States government has paid for the detention of that individual in a third country,' Margaret Cargioli, directing attorney of policy and advocacy at Immigrant Defenders Law Center and Peñaloza's attorney in the United States, told HuffPost. Like other attorneys for CECOT detainees, Cargioli argues that because the Trump administration made an arrangement with El Salvador to imprison Trump's expelled migrants, her client is still in the 'constructive custody' of the United States, and is still owed his day in court. 'It's astounding that I could not get any information about Ysqueibel to provide to their family during immigration court hearings, and that by sheer bravery on his part, he pressed his face against the bars of a dangerous prison to let his loved ones know that he's still alive,' she said, referring to the Gaetz video. The Trump administration defended the handling of these cases. 'The appropriate process due to an illegal alien terrorist with final deportation orders is removal, plain and simple,' Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told HuffPost in a statement, ignoring a lengthy list of specific questions. McLaughlin said DHS has a 'stringent law enforcement assessment in place that abides by due process under the U.S. Constitution.' But DHS has not released evidence supporting its assertions regarding the CECOT detainees, and around half of the people the Trump administration has sent to CECOT had no final deportation orders at all. Those who did mostly had orders to be deported to Venezuela, not El Salvador. White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said separately, 'Any illegal alien who is deported from the United States receives due process prior to any removal.' But that's simply not true. Human rights groups and lawyers have characterized the Trump administration's renditions of hundreds of people to CECOT as 'enforced disappearances,' in which someone is detained and deprived of their rights without due process while their captors refuse to even acknowledge their detention. Peñaloza is just one of at least 278 people, mostly Venezuelans and some Salvadorans, sent by the Trump administration to the Salvadoran prison earlier this year as part of an arrangement in which the Trump administration is paying the Salvadoran government millions of dollars to detain non-U.S. citizens. Around half of the immigrants in that group were sent to CECOT after they received 'removal' orders in standard deportation proceedings — an unprecedented punishment given immigration proceedings are civil in nature, not criminal. The other people, including Peñaloza, were accused by the U.S. government of being 'alien enemies.' They were declared members of the Tren de Aragua gang, often simply because of common tattoos. The Trump administration considers Tren de Aragua to be not only a gang but also a terrorist group, as well as essentially an invading army that's allegedly working hand-in-glove with the Venezuelan government. In March, Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime authority last used in World War II, to allege that the gang was actually 'supporting the [Venezuelan President Nicolás] Maduro regime's goal of destabilizing democratic nations in the Americas, including the United States.' Veteran intelligence analysts who disputed that claim were fired. Suddenly, it only took a low-level bureaucrat's say-so to banish someone from the country and into indefinite detention in one of the world's most notorious prisons, without any review by judges. The same day Trump signed his declaration, the administration began flying hundreds of Venezuelans in U.S. custody to CECOT. A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to halt the removals and turn the flights around, but government officials ignored the directive. The judge opened criminal contempt proceedings against the administration in April, but the administration made no effort to return the expelled men. Officials even defied a Supreme Court order telling them to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran immigrant who multiple government officials acknowledged was wrongfully expelled to El Salvador despite a judge's prior order protecting him from being returned there. The Trump administration finally returned Abrego Garcia to the United States on June 6, nearly two months after the Supreme Court spoke on his case; he now faces criminal charges for alleged conspiracy to transport aliens and unlawful transportation of undocumented aliens. Abrego Garcia was arraigned Friday and has entered a not guilty plea. The U.S. government has never acknowledged the full list of people sent to CECOT, but CBS News, Bloomberg and other media outlets have used leaked lists and court records to establish that the vast majority of people had no criminal record at all, either in the United States or elsewhere around the world. The administration's own records showed the same thing, journalists from ProPublica, The Texas Tribune and the Venezuelan outlets Cazadores de Fake News and Alianza Rebelde Investiga recently reported. And out of 90 cases in which the detainee's method of coming to the United States was known, 50 cases described people who had entered the United States legally — 'with advanced US government permission, at an official border crossing point,' the CATO Institute, a libertarian think tank, found. Peñaloza was one of them. He came to the United States through a pre-scheduled appointment on CBP One, the cellphone app used by the Biden administration to process asylum-seekers. Nevertheless, due to the Trump administration's actions, hundreds of active cases in U.S. immigration courts suddenly ground to a halt, with worrying implications for CECOT detainees' futures. Like other people Trump has banished to CECOT, Peñaloza had a legal right to make a case in the United States for why he should stay here — a right that the government usurped. If a given immigration case is dismissed, 'you don't have legal status and you don't have a way to get it, because you're not in the process,' said Brané, the Together & Free executive director, who previously worked as a Biden administration official focusing on immigration. Should CECOT detainees who have had their immigration cases dismissed somehow return to the United States someday, it's not clear what their next steps would be, Brané said. 'Like all this [Alien Enemies Act] stuff, it's never happened before and they're not following normal procedures,' she said, referring to the Trump administration. The detainees 'were denied due process, they are disappeared, and they are now in this legal limbo where they remain in a prison with no legal protections, excluded from the protection of the law, and they don't know if they'll ever have a chance at a fair trial,' Isabel Carlota Roby, an attorney for Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, told ABC News. Jerce Reyes Barrios, one of the people who faced having his immigration case tossed, was in the final stages of his asylum proceedings when the government disappeared him in March. A professional soccer player and youth soccer coach, Reyes Barrios fled Venezuela last year after being detained and tortured with electric shocks and suffocation for protesting authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro, his lawyer Linette Tobin wrote in a court declaration. While in Mexico, Reyes Barrios made an appointment on CBP One and presented himself to immigration officials at the U.S. border. Immigration officials detained him at a facility in San Diego and accused him of being a member of Tren de Aragua, citing one of his tattoos and a hand symbol he made in a social media post. The tattoo, which shows a crown atop a soccer ball and the words 'Dios,' or 'God,' resembles the logo of Reyes Barrios' favorite soccer team, Real Madrid, Tobin wrote in the declaration. And the hand gesture, she wrote, 'is a common one that means I Love You in sign language and is commonly used as a Rock & Roll symbol.' After submitting Venezuelan documents showing he had no criminal record, as well as letters of employment, a declaration from the tattoo artist, and documents explaining the meaning of the tattoo and the hand gesture, Reyes Barrios was removed from maximum security. His final hearing on his asylum case in immigration court was set for April 17. 'We were completely prepared. Everything had been submitted to the court. Everything was ready,' Tobin said in an interview. But by March, Reyes Barrios was feeling nervous, his lawyer said: 'Just in the seven days before his removal, he was expressing a real concern. I think he had a premonition.' In the following days, he was abruptly transferred from a detention facility in California to one in Texas. And then, he went dark. Shortly after the March 15 deportation flights to El Salvador, Reyes Barrios' family saw a picture of some of the men in CECOT with their hands clasped behind their freshly shaven heads. Their faces were mostly obscured by their arms, but his family thought they recognized Reyes Barrios. Tobin called the ICE office in Texas, Reyes Barrios' last known location. She received confirmation he had been 'removed,' but the person on the phone refused to say where, she said. The family's fears were confirmed on March 20, when Reyes Barrios' name appeared on the CBS News list naming some people detained at CECOT. His family spotted him again in the footage released by Gaetz in May. Less than two weeks after Reyes Barrios disappeared, DHS filed a motion to dismiss his immigration case. The four-line motion did not provide any clarity on his location, condition or the reason the government considered him a so-called 'alien enemy.' Instead, a DHS attorney simply argued, 'The respondent is no longer in the United States. As such, there is authority to dismiss on this ground.' Tobin urged the judge to deny the government's request, arguing 'dismissal is inappropriate' and would 'be affirming and exacerbating DHS' gross and flagrant violations of [Reyes Barrios'] due process rights.' She noted that ongoing federal litigation over the legality of the CECOT transfers could result in her client returning home — only to find that his asylum case had been tossed. Indeed, earlier this month, a federal judge ruled that the government must 'facilitate' the ability of those transferred to CECOT to pursue habeas claims, or challenge the legality of their detention. Reyes Barrios' family texted Tobin emojis of party hats in celebration of the ruling. 'To have the injustice recognized by a court made them very happy,' Tobin said. There have been four hearings for Reyes Barrios' asylum case since he was removed from the U.S. The judge asked the government to provide information in support of its dismissal motion, including confirmation that Reyes Barrios was removed from the U.S. and evidence that he is a member of Tren de Aragua. But at each hearing, the government just restated that it is moving for dismissal, Tobin said. 'They never say anything else. They don't cite to regulations. They don't cite to case laws. They just say, 'Dismiss the case,'' Tobin said. At a hearing last month, Tobin asked the judge to administratively close the case, which would effectively pause proceedings. When the DHS lawyer opposed the request, the judge asked for their reasoning. 'Their response, after a very long pause, was, 'Well, because we're moving for dismissal,'' Tobin recounted. Then, on Tuesday, came a crucial development. In a ruling, the judge in Reyes Barrios' case granted Tobin's motion to administratively close it. As a result, his asylum case is still pending. 'Any opposition to administrative closure involves the Department's preference to dismiss proceedings [...] which the court deems inappropriate under the unclean hands doctrine since the Department essentially rid itself of its opposing party,' the judge wrote in his order, noting several so-called 'Avetisyan factors,' a reference to existing immigration court precedent concerning when it is appropriate to administratively close immigration cases, even if one side disagrees. 'Ongoing litigation questions the legality of the Department's removals under the [Alien Enemies Act],' the judge added. 'The court anticipates the respondent's ability to proceed with his [asylum] application, which he filed on December 3, 2024, although it is difficult to determine the ultimate outcome of his proceedings at this stage given that the respondent never had his 'day in court.'' Tobin celebrated the decision in a statement to HuffPost. 'DHS is feeding the public lies every day, saying that they're deporting violent criminals, monsters, the worst of the worst,' she said. 'To see judges call out the Government for their illegal actions, 'unclean hands,' and obfuscations gives me some degree of hope that justice will eventually prevail and people who were unlawfully disappeared/deported without due process will finally get their day in court.' In several other cases, immigration judges have been willing to grant DHS's dismissal requests quickly, sometimes without even holding a hearing. After the CECOT deportation flights, immigration lawyers around the country scrambled to keep the cases alive. In addition to Peñaloza, Immigrant Defenders Law Center has seven other clients in CECOT. Three have had their immigration cases dismissed, and one received removal orders in absentia, communications director Renee Garcia said in an email. Perhaps the most recognizable case, due to national news coverage, is that of Andry Hernández Romero, a gay makeup artist who was seeking asylum in the United States and who was targeted for indefinite CECOT detention due to benign tattoos, including two crowns with 'Mom' and 'Dad' printed under them. An immigration judge dismissed Hernandez's case late last month, as NBC News reported. A judge also dismissed the case of Arturo Suárez Trejo, a Venezuelan singer and friend of Peñaloza's, who had appeared in Suárez's music videos in the past, Garcia said. Last month, Judge Jason L. Stern, a Houston-based immigration judge, dismissed Frizgeralth de Jesús Cornejo Pulgar's case despite the government filing a motion for a continuance in the case, Mother Jones reported. Another CECOT detainee whose case was dismissed, Henrry Jose Albornoz Quintero, missed the birth of his child while languishing in El Salvador's infamous prison. Quintero and his wife, Naupari Rosila, came to the U.S. in late 2023, initially sleeping in a car until they saved enough for a deposit on a Dallas apartment. In January, when his wife was seven months pregnant, Quintero was detained during a routine ICE check-in. Rosila found an attorney and raised money for him to be released on bond. Days before a hearing in immigration court, he told her he was going to be deported home to Venezuela. He was sent to CECOT instead. In April, an ICE attorney moved to dismiss the case against Quintero, writing in a two-paragraph filing that 'the respondent was identified as an Alien Enemy and removed from the United States.' Quintero's attorney, John Dutton, told HuffPost the dismissal motion was the first time the Trump administration acknowledged using the Alien Enemies Act against his client. The motion to dismiss was 'morally repugnant,' Dutton wrote in a court filing, describing Quintero as being sent to 'an extrajudicial dungeon in a middle of the night, unannounced, covert operation between our government and a foreign dictatorship, bankrolled, directed and fully controlled by the United States.' 'The government cannot be allowed to erase people from its jurisdiction simply by shipping them abroad,' Dutton wrote. 'If DHS's motion were granted, it would establish a chilling precedent: that DHS may abduct noncitizens mid-proceedings, contract out their indefinite detention to foreign governments, and then declare the case moot due to their own unlawful conduct. This would not be an exercise of prosecutorial discretion. It would be a blueprint for lawless tyranny, a dictatorship. This is not hyperbole.' On May 1, a judge granted the government's motion. Quintero's case was dismissed. 'Regardless of the merits of the respondent's opposition to his physical removal from the United States, this Court does not have jurisdiction to consider constitutional issues,' the immigration judge wrote. 'The requirements for dismissal of the Notice to Appear have been met in this case.' *** Over the phone Wednesday, Peñaloza's mother told HuffPost about her son – that he's hard-working, principled, and respectful. He's a trained refrigerator technician who has worked in construction in the past. He's a good cook who loves making chinchurria— a stuffed, fried intestine dish popular in Venezuela — but can also dress up humble meals like vegetarian arepas or rice with tomato sauce. He's an older sibling who, in years past, would remind his younger sisters to listen to their parents. Part of his income from his time in the United States went to paying for his younger sister's physical therapy education. Valentina Polanco-Chirinos, Peñaloza's 17-year-old sister, briefly chimed in on the call. Her brother was sentimental, she said, and would cry when his mother scolded him. But especially given her mother's travels throughout Venezuela for work, she was grateful for him. He was almost a father figure to her, Valentina said. Peñaloza's mother — who'd just returned from Caracas, where a group of CECOT detainees' family members were petitioning the United Nations — said her son's disappearance to El Salvador in March came as a shock to her. He, like many others who ended up in CECOT, believed while in U.S. immigration detention that he was headed home to Venezuela. She said he'd given all of his clothes away to relatives when he'd left for the U.S., and that she'd set out to buy him a new pair of shoes. When news broke that a handful of deportation flights had landed in El Salvador, she figured they'd been diverted due to weather. Reality set in when she saw that one of the prisoners had her son's tattoo. The United States seems to be moving backward, she said: The CECOT detainees were kidnapped, and they weren't given an opportunity to defend themselves. And her son's immigration case in the United States? If he's eventually released from CECOT, did she think he would want to return and fight for his right to stay in the country? She didn't think so. 'I don't think he would feel safe there.' Lawyers Are Sounding The Alarm About Trump Disappearing People The Trump Administration Is Using A Legal Loophole To Keep Mahmoud Khalil In Custody — Despite A Court Order Kilmar Abrego Garcia Has Returned To The United States People Are 'Disappearing' Since Trump Took Office. Here's What That Means.
Yahoo
7 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Fox News Host Gleefully Mocks ICE Barbie's ‘Performance' Art
Jessica Tarlov pushed back on her Fox News colleagues who claimed that Alex Padilla's confrontation Thursday with Kristi Noem was an obvious photo op orchestrated by the California senator by reminding her co-hosts that the Homeland Security Secretary is 'in a costume all the time.' On The Five, Tarlov alluded to Noem's frequent dress-up excursions in the field—as a firefighter, a pilot, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, a Coast Guard boat operator, and a headscarf-wearing camel rider—after Greg Gutfeld described Padilla's video evidence of being wrestled to the ground and cuffed as the 'ultimate photo op.' 'Coming from the administration and a particular secretary who loves the performance art—she's in a costume all the time, she's doing a reality TV show of arresting migrants and showing up at CECOT,' Tarlov said as Gutfeld interrupted. 'You can't make us believe this is real anymore, Jessica,' he told her. 'The 'boy who cried wolf' story—I hate to bring it up, but we don't buy this B.S.' Since taking office, Noem has become known as 'ICE Barbie' due to her predilection for getting all dolled up in mission-appropriate outfits while tagging along with ICE officers. In the span of just four days in March, she also pretended to be a firefighter, a pilot, a member of the Maritime Security Response Team, and a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer. During another one of her trips to the southern border, Noem drew widespread mockery for appearing to point a rifle at an immigration officer's head. The former South Dakota governor was also criticized for filming a video in El Salvador's notorious CECOT mega-prison—while wearing what appeared to be a $60,000 gold Rolex. Optics seem to be quite important to Noem. Last month, The Daily Mail reported that her department was even in the process of pitching a reality television show in which immigrants would compete in challenges, with the winner obtaining citizenship. Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told the Daily Beast then that Noem hadn't reviewed the pitch, which was 'in the very beginning stages.' Noem, unnamed sources told The Daily Mail, supported the endeavor.
Yahoo
13-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Wrongly deported Salvadoran migrant pleads not guilty to smuggling charges
The Salvadoran migrant at the heart of a row over US President Donald Trump's hardline deportation policies pleaded not guilty on Friday to human smuggling charges. Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, 29, was summarily deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador in March and brought back to the United States last week. He was immediately arrested on his return and charged in Nashville, Tennessee, with smuggling undocumented migrants around the United States between 2016 and 2025. Abrego Garcia entered a plea of not guilty to the criminal charges on Friday before a federal district judge, US media reported. The US Supreme Court had ordered the Trump administration to "facilitate" the return of Abrego Garcia after he was mistakenly deported to a notorious maximum security prison in El Salvador. Abrego Garcia was flown back to the United States on June 6 but Attorney General Pam Bondi insisted to reporters that his return resulted from an arrest warrant presented to Salvadoran authorities. Abrego Garcia was living in the eastern state of Maryland until he became one of more than 200 people sent to the CECOT prison in El Salvador as part of Trump's crackdown on undocumented migrants. Most of the migrants who were summarily deported were alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, which the Trump administration has declared a foreign terrorist organization. Justice Department lawyers later admitted that Abrego Garcia -- who is married to a US citizen -- was wrongly deported due to an "administrative error." Abrego Garcia had been living in the United States under protected legal status since 2019, when a judge ruled he should not be deported because he could be harmed in his home country. Bondi alleged that Abrego Garcia "played a significant role in an alien smuggling ring" and was a smuggler of "children and women" as well as members of the Salvadoran gang MS-13. She said Abrego Garcia would be returned to El Salvador upon completion of any prison sentence in the United States. sst-cl/nl
France 24
13-06-2025
- Politics
- France 24
Wrongly deported Salvadoran migrant pleads not guilty to smuggling charges
Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, 29, was summarily deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador in March and brought back to the United States last week. He was immediately arrested on his return and charged in Nashville, Tennessee, with smuggling undocumented migrants around the United States between 2016 and 2025. Abrego Garcia entered a plea of not guilty to the criminal charges on Friday before a federal district judge, US media reported. The US Supreme Court had ordered the Trump administration to "facilitate" the return of Abrego Garcia after he was mistakenly deported to a notorious maximum security prison in El Salvador. Abrego Garcia was flown back to the United States on June 6 but Attorney General Pam Bondi insisted to reporters that his return resulted from an arrest warrant presented to Salvadoran authorities. Abrego Garcia was living in the eastern state of Maryland until he became one of more than 200 people sent to the CECOT prison in El Salvador as part of Trump's crackdown on undocumented migrants. Most of the migrants who were summarily deported were alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, which the Trump administration has declared a foreign terrorist organization. Justice Department lawyers later admitted that Abrego Garcia -- who is married to a US citizen -- was wrongly deported due to an "administrative error." Abrego Garcia had been living in the United States under protected legal status since 2019, when a judge ruled he should not be deported because he could be harmed in his home country. Bondi alleged that Abrego Garcia "played a significant role in an alien smuggling ring" and was a smuggler of "children and women" as well as members of the Salvadoran gang MS-13. She said Abrego Garcia would be returned to El Salvador upon completion of any prison sentence in the United States.
