Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker El Salvador ― The tiny neighborhood of Los Nogales with its pinkish-red bougainvilleas and a small knot of streets rising above El Salvador’s capital seems cut off from the sprawling city below a cul-de-sac at the heart of the neighborhood Neighbors walk a few steps to makeshift tiendas nestled inside front rooms behind plastic sheeting This is the street where Kilmar Abrego Garcia spent his early years He was a teenager when he left to build a new life in a new country. He’s 29 now and back in El Salvador, this time in prison, a father of three caught in a standoff among President Donald Trump some members of Congress and the Salvadoran government Abrego Garcia’s deportation – and the Trump administration’s refusal to return him to the United States, even though it admits he was sent back to El Salvador by mistake – has made him the most high-profile target of Trump’s campaign to expel millions of migrants who entered the United States illegally The Justice Department insists Abrego Garcia is a member of a dangerous criminal gang who had lived in Maryland for years before he was deported The small terrace house he lived in with his parents and two siblings is still standing referred to affectionately as “Cece” by old friends made pupusas there with the help of her three young children every Friday Saturday and Sunday and sold them to neighbors who is in her 30s and lives just two doors down proudly showed off photos of Abrego Garcia his sister and his older brother Cesar attending a birthday party in her home At the time, San Salvador was the domain of violent gangs. Two rival gangs, MS-13 and Barrio 18, or the 18th Street gang, fought over turf block by block, running the Central American country’s murder rate in 2012 up among the highest in the world at 41 per 100,000 people, according to the United Nations “There was never trouble with gangs here,” said a man who would only give his name as Jorge “I’ve lived here for 20 years and never had a problem.” Jorge’s sentiments were echoed by almost a dozen of Abrego Garcia’s close neighbors friends and neighborhood acquaintances interviewed by USA TODAY The paper is identifying Jorge and other locals only by their first names because they fear reprisals from El Salvador’s increasingly authoritarian government Members of Abrego Garcia’s family denied multiple USA TODAY interview requests to speak about his early years in El Salvador and his home life a five-minute walk to the calle principal would land him in gang territory Los Nogales was surrounded on all sides by “troubled” neighborhoods where bandidos run rampant The burgeoning pupuseria business run by Cece They demanded monthly protection money from the family and threatened to enlist Abrego Garcia in the gang as payment or even to stalk according to court records entered by his attorneys A short distance from where Cece once rolled out her pupusas sits the local watering hole beer-swilling revelers crowded inside and listened to rancheras and watched fútbol Waiters carried plates of seafood and fried potatoes from the kitchen to the simple wooden tables Patrons covered the mouths of their beer bottles with paper napkins against the flies buzzing around gangsters from the surrounding barrios historically swarmed around local businesses that made money in Los Nogales – even if they’re tucked away and shut behind metal bars and barbed wire Insects and extortionists always find their way in The bar’s previous owners had to sell because the payments to Barrio 18 were too burdensome His wife pointed to where a cluster of popular restaurants once sat closed because of financial pressure from the bandidos Whether Abrego Garcia’s family was the victim of Barrio 18 But they did know the family had fallen on hard times that’s why they had to sell up and leave,” Fredy said Cece long planned for her sons to leave El Salvador and the dangers lurking there He entered the United States illegally near McAllen Home Depot is where homeowners shop for supplies for do-it-yourself repairs and where construction crews come for materials It’s also where migrants look for day jobs Groups of men from Latin American countries wait in the parking lot Some help customers carry supplies in exchange for a cash tip or A woman sells tamales out of the back of a van while a small boy plays in the back It was here that Abrego Garcia’s new life started to unravel An 'administrative error': A Maryland dad was sent to El Salvador prison by mistake. Can his community get him back? Abrego Garcia met the woman who would become his wife “It would amaze him that no matter what life put me through I would face it,” she said in a phone interview with USA TODAY in early April Vasquez Sura had two children from a previous relationship a daughter who has epilepsy and a son with autism The girl wanted to be a makeup artist and her brother Abrego Garcia raised the two children as his own filed a custody claim against Vasquez Sura in 2018 allegeding she lived with a gang member The document circulated as more evidence of Abrego Garcia’s MS-13 affiliation Ramos was charged and convicted of second-degree rape and remains incarcerated in Maryland Abrego Garcia found work as an HVAC installer and was a member of CASA a nonprofit that operates day worker centers in Maryland The couple learned they were expecting a son until police spotted him in the Home Depot parking lot Abrego Garcia drove to the Hyattsville store on East-West Highway his wife would later say in court documents and Prince George’s County police say he was loitering He was standing in the parking lot with three other men Abrego Garcia was taken in for questioning had an extensive rap sheet that included assault He was known to Hyattsville police as an MS-13 gang member Prince George’s police detective Ivan Mendez suspected Abrego Garcia was also part of the gang based on three things: Abrego Garcia was sporting a Chicago Bulls hat which authorities say is worn by active MS-13 members which authorities also said was associated with or consistent with an MS-13 slogan And a confidential informant had identified him as a member of MS-13 Abrego Garcia denied he was a member of MS-13 or any gang the police detective’s credibility would come under scrutiny The force accused him of sharing confidential information about an ongoing investigation with a sex worker He was later fired and placed on the county district attorney’s do-not-call list of unreliable sources say records of their encounter with Abrego Garcia made no connection to MS-13 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were called in because police suspected Abrego Garcia was an undocumented immigrant He was assigned an Alien Registration Number The federal government could now keep tabs on him Based on the conclusions of the now-disgraced Prince George’s detective ICE wrote in Abrego Garcia’s file: “Subject has been identified as a Member/Active of M.S.13.” At a hearing before an immigration judge that April Abrego Garcia denied that he was a gang member insisting he wasn’t a risk to the community citing the gang report filed by Mendez and the tip from the confidential informant Abrego Garcia and a seven-months-pregnant Vasquez Sura married at the Howard Detention Center in Jessup is intellectually disabled with a speech disorder and has been diagnosed with autism Abrego Garcia asked the courts for a protective order preventing his deportation to El Salvador Abrego Garcia could still be expelled from the United States – he just couldn’t be returned to El Salvador Abrego Garcia was released from custody after six months in detention but was required to check in with ICE yearly No 'Maryland father': What to know on White House allegations against Kilmar Abrego Garcia A house in suburbiaThe tree-lined street where Abrego Gracia and his growing family settled sits in a quiet neighborhood Pink and white blossoms fall from branches and decorate the front lawns of small Near the bottom of a slight hill is the white-brick house that Abrego-Garcia called home A child’s scooter and a toy lawn mower rest on the grassy lawn is where Abrego Garcia was living the American dream He’d found work as a union sheet metal apprentice He took worker safety training and classes at the University of Maryland He was in the first year of a five-year apprenticeship and working toward a union “pink card” that would mean higher pay and benefits political director for the sheet metal workers Maryland-based Local 100 Abrego Garcia had grown “more reserved” after his release from detention and now had “a sadness” about him that his wife hadn’t seen prior to his time in ICE custody Vasquez Sura petitioned a court for a domestic protection order against her husband resulted in police responding to their home after he slapped and threatened her “Like at 3:00 in the morning, he would just wake up and, like, hit me,” she told a judge in a recording obtained by USA TODAY “he slapped me three times…then last week my sister called the police because he hit me in front of my sister.” Vasquez Sura petitioned for a protection order a second time ripped off her shirt and grabbed and bruised her according to Prince George’s County records Vasquez Sura said in a statement to USA TODAY that neither she nor her husband was in a good place when she filed for the protective orders “My husband was traumatized from the time he spent in ICE detention and we were in the throes of COVID,” she said we were caring for our children with barely enough to get by All of those factors contributed to the actions which caused me to seek the protective order.” she also told USA TODAY she sought the 2021 order out of precaution because she had experienced domestic violence in a past relationship Abrego Garcia was working at a job site in Baltimore installing HVAC ducts on a new University of Maryland hospital building He finished his shift on Wednesday afternoon and then picked up his 5-year-old at the home of Cece who had followed her sons to the United States Abrego Garcia was on his way home when he phoned his wife to say he was being pulled over for what he thought was a routine traffic stop Timeline: How an error led to the deportation of a legal resident of US to El Salvador Abrego Garcia wasn’t confident speaking English so Vasquez Sura told him to put her on speakerphone while he talked with the officers She could overhear the conversation as an agent told her husband to turn off the car and get out that his son with special needs was in the back seat Vasquez Sura heard the officer take his phone and hang up.Minutes later The caller gave her 10 minutes to get to the scene and pick up her son or child protective services would be contacted Abrego Garcia was on the curb and in handcuffs “I told him he would come back home,” Vasquez Sura said sent to Baltimore and transferred to a Texas detention center None of them had any idea where they were going despite the protective order barring Abrego Garcia’s return to his homeland he and others expelled by the Trump administration were placed in the Terrorism Confinement Center a notorious prison criticized for its harsh and dangerous conditions and its rough treatment of prisoners Vasquez Sura and their 5-year-old sued the federal government demanding that Abrego Garcia be returned home government attorneys admitted in court records that he had been deported by mistake – an “administrative error” was the official explanation – but said they had no authority to return him because he was now in a foreign country disagreed and ruled on April 4 that the Trump administration had committed an “illegal act” by deporting him the Supreme Court also demanded the administration start the process of bringing Abrego Garcia back to the United States Trump called Abrego Garcia a foreign terrorist A White House spokesman labeled him a “wife beater,” citing Vasquez Sura’s four-year-old request for a temporary protective order The administration released records from a traffic stop in an effort to back up its claims The Tennessee Highway Patrol had pulled Abrego Garcia over on Interstate 40 in December 2022 He was driving with eight passengers and no luggage Local authorities suspected he was smuggling people north from Texas to Maryland But the state police officer who pulled him over released him without charges or even writing a ticket Abrego Garcia’s wife said in a statement that he worked in construction and sometimes transported groups of workers between job sites which could explain why there were others in the vehicle El Salvador’s CECOT prison is a rambling complex spread across 57 acres southeast of San Salvador the maximum-security facility is surrounded by two sets of walls Abrego Garcia had last been seen frog-walking through the prison Vasquez Sura, his wife, spotted him in news photos. She recognized the two scars on his now-shaved head and the tattoos on his knuckles. From the Oval Office, Trump has shown reporters a photo of the tattoos as proof that Abrego Garcia is a gang member it had been a month since he was last sighted Questions about Abrego Garcia’s location and status – including those ordered by the federal judge overseeing the case – remained unanswered Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen wanted to know if his constituent was safe So he headed to the Central American country to check on Abrego Garcia himself The two-day trip had proved fruitless: Salvadoran Vice President Félix Ulloa had denied the senator’s request to enter CECOT. Van Hollen’s last-minute push to drive to the prison and demand a meeting was thwarted by a military checkpoint. Less than two miles away, armed military personnel pulled over his small convoy of vehicles “He is totally beyond reach,” Van Hollen said at the side of the road Van Hollen and his team headed back to their hotel they were to fly back to the United States The senator still didn’t know if Abrego Garcia was even breathing embassy: Would he be willing to meet with Abrego Garcia at his hotel that afternoon The Salvadoran government wanted the meeting to take place next to the pool in the hotel’s lush gardens Van Hollen said no and suggested the hotel restaurant instead Turned away: Van Hollen stopped at military checkpoint on way to Salvadoran prison Fans turned in the restaurant’s cream-colored ceiling Children played nearby as an afternoon breeze combed through the palm trees a plaid button-down shirt and a Kansas City Chiefs baseball cap The two men spoke alone for a few minutes, sipping coffee and water as Abrego Garcia told of his ordeal They sat in wicker chairs at a four-top wooden table set with white china 'Prayers have been answered': Sen. Chris Van Hollen meets with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man wrongly deported to El Salvador “He spoke of the trauma he had experienced and put on a plane with no way to see out of the windows,” Van Hollen told USA TODAY Abrego Garcia told the senator he had been placed into a cell with 25 people at CECOT He said he was fearful of the prisoners in other cells who called out to him But a few days earlier he had been moved out to a lower-security prison Van Hollen escorted Abrego Garcia to the front of the hotel lobby They walked over the highly polished marble tiles and past wooden furniture On the walls were framed photographs of visiting heads of state Van Hollen watched as officers whisked Abrego Garcia from the Sheraton Presidente Avenida de la Revolución was the last place he was seen National correspondent Will Carless anchored this story from El Salvador Eduardo Cuevas and Michael Collins reported from Maryland Investigations reporter and records expert Nick Penzenstadler dug through court documents and police reports Contributing: Cybele Mayes-Osterman in Washington and Julia Gavarrete in San Salvador Editing: Romina Ruiz-Goiriena and Doug Caruso editor-in-chief of El Faro and co-author of the article told EL PAÍS that “[this interview] describes how gangs turned Bukele into a relevant politician It allows us to reach the stark conclusions that it is impossible to understand Bukele’s rise to total power without his association with gangs.” Bukele launched his so-called war against gangs on March 27 following a massacre of 87 people organized by criminal organizations across the country this massacre occurred after the government’s secret pact with the Mara Salvatrucha 13 gang and the two factions of Barrio 18 was broken nearly 85,000 people have been imprisoned in deplorable conditions and nearly 400 of them have died without trial revealed that Charli was captured on April 21 25 days after the start of the state of emergency he was not only released but even “escorted to his home,” all due to “higher orders.” A day after the magazine story was published the interview with Charli came out in El Faro Bukele has not reacted to either publication Charli became one of the most famous gang members in El Salvador after starring in the BBC miniseries Eighteen with a Bullet already emerges as the leader of one of the most important strongholds of Barrio 18 he confesses to having committed several murders and other crimes His criminal record has only lengthened over the years and he is currently a fugitive from justice Charli was accused of one homicide and 46 extortions including against a mayor’s office and two companies authorities arrested thousands of people for reasons as generic as being the target of an anonymous complaint being a relative or a neighbor of a gang member or simply for getting nervous during a police search and others have died without being convicted of any crimes after El Faro reported that he had been released and transferred to Guatemala with the help of a public official the State Department sanctioned two senior Salvadoran officials for negotiating with gangs to reduce homicides in exchange for prison benefits El Faro interviewed another Barrio 18 gang leader The latter showed his gang-related tattoos on camera but asked to remain anonymous both leaders reconstructed details about the gangs’ pacts with the Bukele administration Both assert that their rapprochement with Bukele’s circle began in 2014 when the current president decided to run for mayor of San Salvador Bukele had been a council member of a small municipality called Nuevo Cuscatlán and was aspiring to a position of national relevance “Remember that whoever controls San Salvador controls everything The important thing back then was getting to be mayor of San Salvador because that was what would propel him to where he‘s gotten now,” says Charli the approaches began through Carlos Marroquín who has been by Bukele’s side throughout his political career According to various journalistic investigations Slip has been the main liaison between Bukele and the gangs and he is one of two current government officials sanctioned by the U.S The gang members claim that as part of the negotiations Marroquín would warn them about police operations targeting their neighborhoods and he also brought projects to their communities to curry favor with them ‘I’m coming on behalf of so-and-so,’ and this is going to be done And it happened,” says the other gang member interviewed by El Faro of gang members threatening opposition activists in their neighborhoods as well as forcing their families and neighbors to vote for Bukele Bukele managed to rehabilitate San Salvador’s historic center something he has touted as the crown jewel of his administration his popularity increased exponentially until he became a presidential candidate He subsequently maintained his pact until he reached the central government El Salvador has seen an unprecedented reduction in homicides — until the gangs made a clear statement with the March 2022 massacre There is a wealth of evidence regarding the negotiations between the Salvadoran gangs Barrio 18 and Mara Salvatrucha 13 with the various governments of Nayib Bukele: prison intelligence documents these two testimonies from gang leaders are added providing details of the pacts for the first time the investigations into the negotiations between Bukele and the gangs are not yet over The gang pacts with Bukele are not a thing of the past; it’s a present-day aspect of how one man came to amass total power,” he says Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition ¿Quieres añadir otro usuario a tu suscripción ¿Por qué estás viendo esto? cambia tu suscripción a la modalidad Premium Cada uno accederá con su propia cuenta de email lo que os permitirá personalizar vuestra experiencia en EL PAÍS ¿Tienes una suscripción de empresa? Accede aquí para contratar más cuentas En el caso de no saber quién está usando tu cuenta, te recomendamos cambiar tu contraseña aquí. Si decides continuar compartiendo tu cuenta, este mensaje se mostrará en tu dispositivo y en el de la otra persona que está usando tu cuenta de forma indefinida, afectando a tu experiencia de lectura. Puedes consultar aquí los términos y condiciones de la suscripción digital. With this series of weekly updates, WOLA seeks to cover the most important developments at the U.S.-Mexico border. See past weekly updates here Your donation to WOLA is crucial to keeping these paywall-free and ad-free Updates going. Please contribute now and support our work. There’s a phone on this desk.PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I could.TERRY MORAN: You could pick it up you could call up the president of El Salvador and say “Send him back,” right now.PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: And if he were the gentleman that you say he is I would do that.TERRY MORAN: But the court has ordered you —PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: But he’s not.TERRY MORAN: — to facilitate that — his release–PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I’m not the one making this decision We have lawyers that don’t want —TERRY MORAN: You’re the president.PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: — to do this but the — but the buck stops in this office —PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I — no If I were the president that just wanted to do anything I’d probably keep him right where he is — Subscribe to get the latest on analysis and policy Washington Office on Latin America1666 Connecticut Ave NW, Suite 400Washington, DC 20009(202) 797 2171info@wola.org Subscribe with your email to receive exclusive reports and expert research directly to your inbox every week. (Your privacy is important to us; your information will be kept confidential and secure.) Now it turns out that random people are ending up in migrant prisons alongside real criminals How Tren de Aragua became a transnational crime syndicate Доступно на русском In March, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele posted two videos on social media that showed military and police officers dragging shackled men out of airplanes The prisoners are forced to run down the airstrip to buses that take them to El Salvador's largest and most heavily guarded prison “On your knees!” the guards command are corralled into a huge common cell with metal three-tier bunks “They are all confirmed murderers and particularly dangerous criminals including six rapists of minors,” Bukele explained in his caption under the Mar the Republican candidate insisted time and again that thousands of dangerous criminals were among the migrants who had entered the country under President Biden and that only their mass deportation could save the U.S authorities believe the deportees to be members of Tren de Aragua one of the most dangerous criminal groups in the Western Hemisphere recognized as a terrorist organization in the U.S But has the deportees' involvement actually been proven a foundation that brings together experts studying organized crime in Latin America Officials in the government of Hugo Chavez — who ruled the country from 2002-2013 — allowed Niño Guerrero to take full control of the prison where he was serving time and the gang leader turned the facility into the headquarters of Tren de Aragua the megagang had spread its influence throughout Venezuela while also taking root in Colombia Venezuelans were mainly involved in racketeering Tren de Aragua soon went international. The severe drop in living standards resulting from Chavez’s rule led to the largest mass emigration in Venezuela's history. According to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, 7.7 million people — one Venezuelan in four — fled the country when the official border crossings between Venezuela and Colombia were permanently closed Tren de Aragua set up an illegal migrant smuggling operation They also took money for transportation and levied a “tax” from every hotel As InSite Crime explains, in the new territories, gang members eliminated possible competitors, bribed police and officials, and extorted money from local businesses. In Peru Tren de Aragua is infamous for brutalizing prostitutes who refused to share their earnings with Venezuelan criminals gang members videotaped the murders of sex workers and distributed them in chat rooms After the prison was cleaned up, the authorities organized a press tour Journalists touring the prison grounds could see swimming pools Tren de Aragua members came to the U.S. the same way they came to other countries — mixed in with the influx of refugees. According to the latest U.S. Census Bureau data there are more than 900,000 Venezuelan nationals living in the country Venezuelans have made up the majority of asylum seekers the Salvadoran criminal group Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Tren de Aragua “foreign terrorist organizations.” authorities failed to present any serious evidence that the Venezuelans they have deported are linked to Tren de Aragua CBS News journalists and human rights activists found that 75% of the Venezuelan migrants sent to the Salvadoran prison had no criminal records The vast majority of those who did have previous convictions had committed non-violent crimes — mostly theft The Department of Homeland Security told CBS News that the deported migrants “are actually terrorists They just don't have a rap sheet in the U.S.” According to journalists, many migrants were accused of having ties to Tren de Aragua based on tattoos and social media postings. The Texas Department of Public Safety, for one, has published an illustrated list of tattoos that supposedly indicate membership in the megagang: a star on the shoulder and a silhouette of basketball player Michael Jordan scoring a basket Tattooed phrases like “Hijos de Dios” (“Sons of God” ) and “Real Hasta la Muerte” (“Real till death”) were also grounds for legal action One of the oldest human rights NGOs in the U.S., the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), submitted a report on Mar. 28 on the “points-based system” used by U.S authorities to charge Venezuelan detainees with having ties to Tren de Aragua and of involvement in terrorism A migrant needs only to score eight points out of a possible 87 to be deported a migrant can “earn” as many as 14 points simply if U.S police officers consider that their manner of dress or graffiti indicate their affiliation with Tren de Aragua the White House said that of the 238 Venezuelans sent out of the country 137 were deported under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act and 101 were deported under regular immigration law — that is it has no intention to return the Salvadoran to the U.S. where he has a wife and five-year-old son (both of whom are American citizens) TIME Magazine photographer Philip Holsinger was present during the arrival of deported migrants to CECOT He said he noticed one of the men crying as he was being shaved “He was being slapped every time he would speak up…he started praying and calling out literally crying for his mother,” Holsinger told reporters The Venezuelan kept saying he was gay and a makeup artist family and friends were horrified to recognize 31-year-old Andry Hernandez Romero The Venezuelan had indeed worked in his home country and in Colombia as a makeup artist and has never been in trouble with the law border after receiving an invitation on the official U.S CBP One app and applied for LGBT refugee status The Venezuelan was immediately apprehended The immigration authorities were suspicious about the two crowns with his parents' names tattooed on his wrists Andry spent seven months in a migration prison in Texas before being deported to El Salvador demanding the return of the prisoners to their homeland Bukele promised to hand over all Venezuelan detainees to Caracas with one condition: that the Maduro government would release the same number of political prisoners Venezuela now has 890 such prisoners — opposition activists The shackled Venezuelans were escorted to a prison that is notorious for its harsh conditions authorities at a rate of $20,000 per inmate per year given that he himself has claimed that El Salvador spends $200 million on its prisons annually CECOT is not just any prison — it is President Bukele's brainchild and a source of pride (to him) the Terrorism Confinement Center is officially Latin America's largest penitentiary facility meaning somewhere around 22,000 cots remain vacant The “mega-prison,” as the media call it covers an area the size of six soccer fields CECOT is separated from the outside world by a 40-foot wall built so that it will not collapse even if a booby-trapped car crashes into it at full speed It has eight pavilions separated from one another by internal fences Security is provided by specially trained police and military personnel who work in week-long shifts. These features were revealed in an official 30-minute video showing President Bukele's visit to the “mega-prison.” CECOT only holds convicts sentenced to life terms They are prohibited from having personal belongings and receiving any visits — whether from relatives or attorneys Seventy-five prisoners can be housed in each cell sleeping on three-tier metal bunks that do not feature mattresses the cells have bars with an armed guard on top 24 hours a day Bukele has publicly promised that he will not let these prisoners see sunlight until the day he dies The only opportunity to leave the cells is the daily 20-minute walk in the spacious corridor Prisoners whose trials are ongoing participate remotely from specially equipped rooms CECOT holds thousands of members of so-called maras — the most dangerous Salvadoran gangs in the Western Hemisphere. The most numerous and threatening of these are the Mara Salvatrucha Bukele became famous for defeating criminal gangs in El Salvador — a feat that required putting more than 2.5% of the country's adult population behind bars Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18 emerged in the 1980s in California which became home to thousands of Salvadoran migrants fleeing the civil war (1979-1992) in their homeland all they wanted was to counter the already existing street gangs of African Americans but they ended up outdoing all their rivals in brutality — using machetes and axes in their attacks Maras members emerged from American prisons even more ruthless and united Seeking to lower crime rates in the early 1990s authorities expelled around 46,000 migrants to several Central American countries — primarily El Salvador the maras found themselves in an environment offering an ideal mix of poverty and lawlessness they essentially became a parallel government there The maras were ruthless and corrupted government officials with ease El Salvador consistently ranked among the world's most dangerous countries In the bloody year of 2015, the murder rate reached 103 intentional homicides per 100,000 residents (in the U.S. the rate stands at 7.5) 30 murders a day were business as usual for El Salvador A string of governments tried to remedy the situation either by force or through negotiations with the leaders of the maras but things only deteriorated with each passing year one of the world's most dangerous countries has turned into one of the safest in the Western Hemisphere By 2025, El Salvador had become the absolute world leader in per capita incarceration rate with 1,824 inmates per 100,000 inhabitants Experts from the Institute for Human Rights at the José Simeón Cañas Central American University estimate that El Salvador has imprisoned 2.6% of the country's adult population The new Criminal Code allows for trying minors starting from the age of 12 if they are charged with participation in criminal groups The maximum penalty for those under the age of 16 is 10 years' imprisonment Teenagers between the ages of 16 and 18 can be jailed for up to 20 years To defeat the maras, Bukele declared a state of emergency in El Salvador in March 2022. It abrogates the arrestee's right to be informed of the reasons for detention and the right to be provided with a lawyer It also suspends the ban on detention for more than 72 hours without a court order law enforcement officials in El Salvador have been able to arrest and keep anyone behind bars for as long as they want based on nothing more than a suspicion or an anonymous call The state of emergency remains in effect to the present day More than 83,000 people have been arrested during that time Amnesty International, in its 2024 year-end periodic review, reports that in El Salvador there is “a widespread pattern of state abuse that includes thousands of arbitrary arrests the adoption of a policy of torture in detention centers and hundreds of deaths in state custody.” According to the latest figures Human rights defenders report that police officers make arrests in order to meet daily quotas they write about appalling conditions in overcrowded prisons and they have documented dozens of cases in which arrests were made without any grounds or preliminary investigation Experts are unanimous: while Bukele has succeeded in weakening no one can guess how many innocents are behind bars — potentially for decades and Paraguay are consistent in their support for Bukele's methods of fighting organized crime By receiving migrants deported from the U.S. who was re-elected in 2024 for a second term despite an explicit constitutional ban has received from Washington both money and a long-awaited endorsement of his regime from the nominal leader of the free world U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem visited El Salvador in March. In front of a CECOT prisoner cell, she recorded an address: “I want everybody to know this is one of the consequences you could face and you could end up in this El Salvadorian prison.” Meeting with Bukele at the White House, Trump called his Central American counterpart a friend. It was as though the two leaders were looking in the mirror. “They say that we imprisoned thousands, but I like to say that we actually liberated millions,” Bukele said referring to the drop in crime rates at home Trump’s response: “Who gave him that line We really need your help! Subscribe to donations! Сделано в Charmer устарел и не позволяет корректно отображать сайт Salvy returns to lineup as Ragans (groin) gets go-ahead on next startMay 4th BALTIMORE -- There were two pieces of good news for the Royals prior to their series finale vs. the Orioles on Sunday: Salvador Perez was back in the starting lineup and Cole Ragans is set to make his next start as scheduled Perez, who went 2-for-5 with a run scored as the designated hitter in the Royals' 11-6 win on Sunday, missed two games after exiting in the sixth inning of Kansas City’s series finale vs. Tampa Bay on Thursday with left hip soreness wasn’t serious enough to warrant an IL stint but it did keep the Royals’ captain out of the lineup for a few days “We don't know for sure how he's going to feel when he hits the ball and tries to get out of the box,” manager Matt Quatraro said pregame had started to heat up at the plate before his short absence hitting .423 with a 1.136 OPS in his past seven games after having a .185 average through April 22 slotting Luke Maile -- who the club recalled on Friday to back up Freddy Fermin -- some time behind the plate with his first start on Sunday Ragans, who exited his outing on April 24 in the third inning with a mild left groin strain felt ready to go after throwing a bullpen session on Friday He’ll be back on the bump for the Royals on Monday as they open a four-game series against the White Sox back at Kauffman Stadium we wouldn't have him out there if we weren't confident,” Quatraro said Ragans missed his scheduled Wednesday start due to the injury, but Kansas City managed to be more than fine behind a historic spot-start debut from No. 5 prospect Noah Cameron Only missing Ragans for one start is huge for the Royals who have relied heavily on their pitching -- which posted a 3.10 ERA in April (sixth best in MLB) -- as the offense stumbled to a slower start to the season (.224 average in April Last season, Ragans was stellar for the Royals, delivering a 3.14 ERA in 32 starts with an 11-9 record for a fourth-place finish in the AL Cy Young Award voting. He was even better in the postseason, too, with a 0.90 ERA in two starts (10 innings). And though he missed that final start of April, Ragans is still among the top 15 in strikeouts this season, with his 46 K’s tied for 13th most in MLB with four others: the Rangers’ Nathan Eovaldi, the Padres’ Michael King, the Tigers’ Jack Flaherty and the Braves’ Chris Sale. Ragans has a career 0.00 ERA vs. the White Sox in two starts, having allowed one unearned run with 10 strikeouts over 11 innings. Both of those starts came with Texas, though, one in 2022 and one in ‘23. Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab , opens new tab Browse an unrivalled portfolio of real-time and historical market data and insights from worldwide sources and experts. , opens new tabScreen for heightened risk individual and entities globally to help uncover hidden risks in business relationships and human networks. © 2025 Reuters. All rights reserved Imprisoning them in El Salvador makes a mockery of the Eighth Amendment 2025 ShareSave As the Trump administration rounds up people it alleges to be illegal aliens and gang members and pays to imprison them there without convicting them of any crime constitutional challenges have focused on the Fifth Amendment; the administration appears to have deprived many deportees of liberty without due process Scarce attention has been paid to another relevant part of the Bill of Rights: the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on inflicting “cruel and unusual punishment,” a limit on state power that applies regardless of whether the target is a citizen Sending deportees to a country other than their own and paying for them to be imprisoned among violent criminals officials have explicitly stated that their intent is to inflict punishment for illegal entry and other alleged crimes said that she wants to incarcerate even more deportees in the country so that they “pay the consequences for their actions of violence.” Yet when I recently consulted roughly a dozen legal experts including Eighth Amendment scholars and defense litigators even those who agreed with me that the deportees’ Eighth Amendment rights are being violated said that focusing on due-process claims is a safer legal strategy Read: El Salvador’s exceptional prison state nor does the detention of severely mentally ill people in rehabilitative institutions The late Justice Antonin Scalia captured this distinction in a 2008 interview with the 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl When Stahl asked Scalia whether the prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment would apply to a prisoner at Abu Ghraib who was brutalized by American law-enforcement officials Has anybody ever referred to torture as punishment I don’t think so.” Torture is intended to extract facts This notion that “Eighth Amendment scrutiny is appropriate only after the State has secured a formal adjudication of guilt,” as a 1983 Supreme Court case put it creates a perverse incentive for the government If the state deprives purported criminals of their due-process rights and imprisons them without charging or convicting them that makes it easier to deprive those individuals of their Eighth Amendment rights too; any cruel and unusual treatment that the government inflicts isn’t technically considered punishment people convicted of no crime at all have less Eighth Amendment protection than criminals convicted of the most heinous acts To remedy that unjust and despotic disparity the Supreme Court should clarify that the government cannot subvert any part of the Bill of Rights by skipping trials and sentences it should rule to protect their Eighth Amendment rights Both the original meaning of “cruel and unusual punishment” and some of the most frequently cited modern Eighth Amendment jurisprudence would bolster a claim by the deportees according to several of the experts I spoke with The Constitution’s protection against cruel and unusual punishment has its roots in a British common-law tradition: Judges were understood not to make law but rather to discover it by identifying customs and precedents that gained legitimacy through enduring acceptance In an essay titled “Originalism and the Eighth Amendment,” the University of Florida law professor John F Stinneford explains that in the 17th and 18th centuries cruel was understood to mean “unjustly harsh,” and unusual meant “contrary to long usage.” early American lawmakers were expressing the view that “because the common law was presumptively reasonable governmental efforts to ‘ratchet up’ punishment beyond what was permitted by longstanding prior practice were presumptively contrary to reason,” Stinneford writes was seen as reasonable due to its long usage in England and the colonies But new “significantly harsher” varieties of punishment were not especially when they were seen as disproportionate to the offense; the examples Stinneford cites from England and America include whipping and pillorying as a punishment for perjury and excessive floggings as a punishment for illegal gambling originalists should find the Trump administration’s actions highly suspect Being transferred to a brutal prison system where one has no recourse or rights with no apparent limit on how long one might be held is a fate significantly harsher than what has long been customary for a Venezuelan who enters the United States illegally and joins a gang President Donald Trump’s policy is precisely to ratchet up the effective punishment an influential Eighth Amendment case decided in 1958 he was confined to a stockade for a breach of discipline he was sentenced to three years of hard labor when he was back in the United States and applying for a passport per a provision in the Nationality Act of 1940 his desertion in wartime had triggered the loss of his citizenship David A. Graham: Due process for me, not for thee the Supreme Court restored his citizenship finding that “denationalization as a punishment is barred by the Eighth Amendment.” Although Trop hadn’t suffered “physical mistreatment” or “primitive torture,” denationalization inflicted the “total destruction” of his political existence leaving him stateless and without rights in whatever country he might find himself the expatriate has lost the right to have rights,” the Court reasoned and is subject to “a fate of ever-increasing fear and distress He knows not what discriminations may be established against him what proscriptions may be directed against him and when and for what cause his existence in his native land may be terminated.” Notice that Trop was never forcibly expatriated Fear and distress at the mere possibility of being “without rights in whatever country he might find himself” was sufficient to meet the threshold for cruel and unusual punishment are already at the mercy of a country not their own President Trump and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele have claimed that once the United States transfers a prisoner to Salvadoran custody the deportees know not what abuses may be directed against them The majority of the Court in Trop also objected that “the punishment strips the citizen of his status in the national and international political community,” which is arguably the case for the Venezuelan nationals imprisoned in El Salvador A large body of more recent Eighth Amendment case law has focused on prison conditions And although those rulings also seem to be highly relevant to the harsh prison system in El Salvador courts lack the ability to investigate or issue orders abroad a law professor at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln told me that although the Eighth Amendment ordinarily wouldn’t apply to a prison in another country it “very well could” apply to the situation in El Salvador “The Trump administration has said that it is paying El Salvador to detain these men; it is a joint U.S.-El Salvadoran incarceration program,” Berger wrote by email Publicly available information about the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo or CECOT—the prison where the deportees from the United States first arrived and where most of them are presumed to be incarcerated—is limited because outside visitors are closely monitored and inmates are rarely if ever released and able to tell their stories Salvadoran officials may transfer any prisoner anywhere at any time; they have already transferred the deportee Kilmar Abrego Garcia to a different prison conditions in the Salvadoran prison system overall—about which more is known—are relevant to the fate of the deportees the Supreme Court has ruled that deliberate indifference to a prisoner’s serious illness constitutes cruel and unusual punishment “former detainees often describe filthy and disease-ridden prisons,” Human Rights Watch reports “Doctors who visited detention sites told us that tuberculosis severe malnutrition and chronic digestive issues were common.” And in the 2011 case Brown v the Supreme Court ruled that California had to release duly convicted inmates to alleviate overcrowding in state prisons Overcrowding in El Salvador is reportedly worse than in California with past detainees telling human-rights workers of cells so packed that inmates had to sleep standing up Transferring people from the United States into El Salvador’s prison system shows deliberate indifference to harmful conditions El Salvador’s prison system “would most certainly” meet even that high threshold of superadding terror Trump decides to act on his repeatedly expressed desire to send Americans who commit especially heinous crimes to prisons in El Salvador He has speculated that he could fill five prisons with such Americans “If they’re criminals,” Trump said during a meeting with Bukele in the Oval Office “if they hit people with baseball bats over the head that happen to be 90 years old and if they rape 87-year-old women in Coney Island Read: A loophole that would swallow the Constitution Several of the scholars and litigators I consulted said that they believe an Eighth Amendment challenge to that policy would arise “If Trump really meant what he said about sending American citizens convicted of crimes to prisons in El Salvador as part of their punishment,” the Harvard law professor Carol Steiker wrote to me “that clearly would be subject to Eighth Amendment limitations.” That is so not because the people involved would be citizens but because when the state convicts a person and then orders them imprisoned the Supreme Court already recognizes that that constitutes “punishment.” That conclusion is reassuring—even an Eighth Amendment that’s been interpreted more narrowly than I would prefer still confers some protection against cruel innovations in punishment But it also highlights a core injustice of the prevailing jurisprudential approach: Administration officials would be subjecting convicted Americans and unconvicted aliens to the same treatment The same president with the same motives might even pay for them to be locked up in the same prison cell the Eighth Amendment would protect the heinous criminals while offering no protection to their cellmates who were never convicted of anything Treating every deportation as a form of punishment would go too far But so does presuming that no deportation can qualify as punishment even when it includes transfer to a cruel and unusual prison system Reasonable people can and do disagree about the best test for what constitutes a punishment But any reasonable threshold is met when federal officials justify imprisoning people by alleging criminality imprison them alongside a foreign country’s most dangerous criminals and make public statements that convey a punitive intent I hope that an Eighth Amendment claim on behalf of deportees coaxes the Supreme Court to reconsider its precedents on what constitutes punishment If the Trump administration responds by arguing that it is not acting with punitive intent the Court should probe the publicly available facts rather than deferring to whatever the administration might claim even if the fate of deportees to El Salvador is never found to violate the Eighth Amendment that isn’t because they are being spared cruel and unusual treatment but because the judiciary declines to classify much that is clearly cruel and unusual as a “punishment.” The El Salvador policy Administration in touch with Nayib Bukele over detention of wrongly deported man The Trump administration has been in touch directly with the Salvadorian president Nayib Bukele in recent days about the detention of Kilmar Ábrego García, the man wrongly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador according to two people familiar with the matter The nature of the discussion and its purpose was not clear because multiple Trump officials have said the administration was not interested in his coming back to the US despite the US supreme court ordering it to “facilitate” Ábrego García’s release The contacts produced no new developments after Bukele rejected the outreach, the people said. The supreme court had ordered the administration to return Ábrego García to the US so that he would face immigration proceedings as he would have, had he not been sent to El Salvador. Read moreThe discussions appeared to be an effort by the Trump administration to window dress the underlying legal case and build a paper trail it could reference before the US district judge Paula Xinis, who previously ruled that Donald Trump raising the matter in the Oval Office was insufficient Ábrego García has since been moved out of Cecot the mega-prison officials known as the terrorism confinement center to another prison in El Salvador since the supreme court ruling which the administration has repeatedly tried to manufacture uncertainty around or otherwise misrepresent The recalcitrance from the US administration to comply has been on display for weeks as senior Trump advisers have become increasingly determined to use it as a case to test the extent of presidential power and its boast that the courts have no practical way to ensure quick compliance with orders At a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said he would “never tell” if he had been in touch with Bukele. CNN earlier reported Rubio has had discussions with Bukele directly. The New York Times reported there had been a diplomatic note sent to Bukele A judge,” Rubio said as he sat next to Trump adding it was “because the conduct of our foreign policy belongs to the president to the united states and the executive branch And in an interview with ABC News that aired the night before, the US president himself said he “could” tell El Salvador to return Ábrego García. When it was raised to him that he had the ability to call Bukele and say “send him back right now”, Trump deflected responsibility. “I’m not the one making this decision. We have lawyers that don’t want to do this,” he said. Free newsletterA deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration Read moreThe remarks could yet pose major headaches for the justice department in court as it prepares in the coming weeks to face a series of probing questions from Ábrego García’s lawyers about the administration’s efforts to comply with the supreme court ruling By Trump saying that his lawyers had told him not to call Bukele it could open the department up to bruising questions about whether they were deliberately flouting the order and place them in threat of contempt After a closed-door hearing on Wednesday in federal district court in Maryland Xinis refused the justice department’s request to extend a pause in discovery proceedings ordering it to respond to questions from Ábrego García’s lawyers about his detention by this Friday Xinis also said in an expedited deposition schedule that Ábrego García’s lawyers could interview up to six administration officials – including Robert Cerna the acting general counsel of the Department of Homeland Security – by next Thursday Your support helps make our show possible and unlocks access to our sponsor-free feed President Donald Trump met with El Salvador President Nayib Bukele in the Oval Office of the White House in April has sent people it has detained — people it calls terrorists — to a prison overseas — indefinitely after the Trump administration deported at least 261 foreign nationals to a maximum security prison in El Salvador government announced a plan to house captured Taliban and al-Qaida fighters in the military prison at the U.S John Yoo wrote the legal justification for the treatment of Guantanamo detainees now widely referred to as "the torture memos." Yoo argues that there are key legal differences between what the Bush administration did – and what the Trump administration is attempting in El Salvador For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org Email us at considerthis@npr.org This episode was produced by Connor Donevan Become an NPR sponsor Royals recall Maile from Triple-A OmahaMay 3rd The moves come after Salvador Perez who had played in 31 of Kansas City’s 32 games was out of the lineup after exiting in the sixth inning of the series finale vs Perez is dealing with lingering left hip soreness -- an issue that is persistent but under control and only flared up on Thursday “It's the same hip soreness that he's had We feel really fortunate that there wasn't something new So it's just -- I won't say just -- but it's day to day and hopefully we can stay away from him for a couple days catching-wise Perez had been starting to heat up at the plate hitting .423 with a 1.136 OPS in his past seven games after concluding play on April 22 with a .185 average He should be able to pick back up where he left off while backup catcher Freddy Fermin and Maile hold down the fort Fermin and Perez have split starting duties thus far with Perez getting 18 starts behind the plate while making seven starts at first and six as designated hitter though he -- along with Perez and the rest of the Royals’ lineup -- has also heated up of late (a .318 average in his past seven games) signed to a Minor League deal in February with an invitation to Major League camp got to know Kansas City’s arms during Spring Training Though his focus (rightfully so) has been on handling the Storm Chasers’ pitchers he still remembers a fair amount about the big league group “Gonna be relying pretty heavily on those experiences,” Maile said pregame you have to really treat it [as] what could be your last opportunity to catch a guy before a really important pitch is made So you have to really stay on your game there It's not really something you can take lightly because it'll come back to bite you if you do.” Entering his 10th season in the Majors with the selection to the big league roster Maile has plenty of experience working as a backup catcher and navigating an up-and-down role Maile feels good both at and behind the plate “Main thing is my body feels really strong,” Maile said pregame I still feel by no means fast or anything like that and I feel pretty good receiving behind the plate right now.” Sign up to receive our daily Morning Lineup to stay in the know about the latest trending topics around Major League Baseball Maile -- who spent the past two years with Cincinnati -- is reunited with teammate Jonathan India among others Maile has played alongside while spending time with Tampa Bay “It's the highest level in the world for a reason,” Maile said “So seeing these guys up close and personal and being teammates with them is refreshing Been competing against all these guys for a long time and just tough at-bats up and down this lineup The pitching staff has always been super consistent here Trump admitted in an interview on Tuesday that he could get the Maryland father back with a single phone call Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) has said that El Salvador’s vice president claims that the country is only holding American resident Kilmar Abrego García because it has a contractual obligation to the U.S. which is paying to keep him and others imprisoned Van Hollen reported that Ulloa repeatedly said the El Salvador government has no role in determining whether or not Abrego García committed a crime if the person that you send is not a criminal that’s what I’m saying… The ball is in your court,” Ulloa said Ulloa further said that the El Salvador government has not reviewed Abrego García’s file and washes their hands of any responsibility to ensure that the people imprisoned in the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) or elsewhere have committed the crimes they’re accused of “My conversation with Vice President Ulloa clearly demonstrates that the Government of El Salvador has no independent legal basis for imprisoning Mr the only reason for keeping him in prison is that they entered into an agreement with your Administration to be paid by the United States,” Van Hollen said “This also reveals that your Administration could easily facilitate his release by letting El Salvador know that — given his wrongful detention — they are not contractually bound to continue imprisoning Mr Indeed, President Donald Trump admitted in an interview with ABC on Tuesday that he could get Abrego García back with a simple phone call if he wanted to There’s a phone on this desk,” ABC’s Terry Moran said Meanwhile, it appears that officials have already made some kind of judgement about Abrego García’s innocence of the gang affiliation charges. The Maryland father has been transferred from CECOT into a facility in Santa Ana El Salvador — a prison that “categorically excludes anyone accused of belonging to a gang,” NBC reported this week Van Hollen told the administration to “put up or shut up in court” on their dubious claims against Abrego García “You are engaged in gross violations of the Constitution and due process rights,” the senator said “If your Administration can strip away the constitutional rights of one man in defiance of court orders We’ve borne witness to a chaotic first few months in Trump’s presidency each executive order has delivered shock and bewilderment — a core part of a strategy to make the right-wing turn feel inevitable and overwhelming as organizer Sandra Avalos implored us to remember in Truthout last November the Trump administration is pushing through executive orders but — as we’ve reported at Truthout — many are in legal limbo and face court challenges from unions and civil rights groups Efforts to quash anti-racist teaching and DEI programs are stalled by education faculty And communities across the country are coming together to raise the alarm on ICE raids and protect each other in moving shows of solidarity Truthout plans to be there documenting and uplifting resistance join our community of sustainers by making a monthly or one-time gift Sharon Zhang is a news writer at Truthout covering politics, climate and labor. Before coming to Truthout, Sharon had written stories for Pacific Standard, The New Republic, and more. She has a master’s degree in environmental studies. She can be found on Twitter and Bluesky. We fell short of our goals in our most recent fundraiser. Help us meet our basic publishing costs by the end of April. Make a tax-deductible one-time or monthly gift to Truthout today. conducts his weekly news conference in the Capitol Visitor Center on Thursday Inc via Getty Images)[Note: This article has been updated to include a new response from the office of Hakeem Jeffries.]HOUSE MINORITY LEADER Hakeem Jeffries was asked Monday whether Democrats should continue to advocate for the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia and the other men wrongly shipped to El Salvador by making the trip to the country to put a spotlight on the issue “Our reaction is that Donald Trump has the lowest approval rating of any president in modern American history,” Jeffries responded But while Jeffries may be publicly agnostic on El Salvador trips like the one Reps. Robert Garcia, Yassamin Ansari, Maxwell Frost, and Maxine Dexter recently took privately he sees the trips as having run their course Two Democratic aides and a lawmaker who spoke to The Bulwark said that the minority leader has discouraged further excursions to the country even as pressure mounts within the party to turn up the heat on Trump for sending 238 men to a notorious prison system known for human rights abuses “They want to let the El Salvador stuff slow down,” a senior House staffer said Jeffries’s office initially declined to comment a spokesperson put out a statement calling it false said the item was “thinly sourced,” leaving out that their office did not initially push back when contacted prior to publication Stephenson noted that “Jeffries has repeatedly said House Democrats will never stop fighting for the release of Mr after the Supreme Court ruled that the White House had to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return Jeffries demanded that the order be “aggressively” and “immediately” enforced Abrego Garcia must be returned immediately before he is killed in one of the most dangerous prisons in the world Enough with the fake bravado,” Jeffries’s April 14 statement read Whether Jeffries believes having House Democrats physically go to El Salvador will help or hinder efforts to get Abrego Garcia back is not addressed either in Stephenson’s statement or his own comments following the Supreme Court decision The debate among Democrats over how aggressively they should engage the issue of mass deportations and the use of El Salvador’s prison specifically And Jeffries’s eagerness to sidestep it suggests that the party is far from a consensus While leadership may be more eager to talk about the economy other Democrats say that there is a moral obligation to spotlight cases like that of Abrego Garcia And they believe the politics are already turning in their favor Get 30 day free trial His office did not respond to a request for comment on whether the trip was still in the works The Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) was also working on arranging a trip to El Salvador that would be led by the chair of the caucus One House Democrat said Espaillat’s trip was going to piggyback off Booker’s trip but it was contingent on being given access to Abrego Garcia “Adriano didn’t just want to do a trip like the other Democrats did,” the lawmaker said noting that the Democratic delegation was not given access to Abrego Garcia or any other detainees Never miss another Huddled Masses: Sign up for a free or paid Bulwark subscription to get it delivered to your inbox twice a week A spokesperson for the CHC told The Bulwark it has been in active conversations with El Salvador about a trip for weeks. Espaillat also attended Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s second inauguration last June “The Congressional Hispanic Caucus is working all avenues to ensure Kilmar Abrego Garcia rejoins his family and receives his constitutional right to due process,” said Espaillat Espaillat, like other Democrats, has focused on the Trump administration’s assault on due process in sending deportees to El Salvador without any hearings. It’s a line of attack that polls have shown resonates with Americans, as the president’s numbers dive sharply at the 100-day marker of his term Republicans primed the system for abuse and cruelty,” Espaillat said “and now the Trump administration is crossing every due-process line in the book But they did not rewrite the United States Constitution—due process is an inalienable right for anyone and everyone in the United States of America.” But some Democrats worry about the party growing overly consumed by the Abrego Garcia case If members in safe seats continue to flock to El Salvador it could give ammunition to Republicans to use against more vulnerable Democrats it gives fodder for the National Republican Campaign Committee to start using it against other Democrats,” a second House staffer said “They should understand that what they’re doing is going to be hurting us in the long run.” Share And he noted that his message goes beyond Abrego Garcia “Trump is taking a wrong turn on his mass deportation force and it’s going to make his position weaker.” But some Democrats also worry that Abrego Garcia has become a less-than-ideal poster child for opposition to Trump’s immigration policies after it was revealed that his wife sought a protective order against him. She recently said in a statement that she acted out of caution because she had suffered domestic violence in a previous relationship “This is not the right issue to talk about due process. This is not the right case. This is not the right person to be saying that we need to bring him back to the United States,” Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), one of the party’s more conservative members, told Fox News Radio fired back at Cuellar and Democrats who said they are worried about the politics of supporting men wrongly sent to El Salvador “The trips have proven effective both in the efforts to save Mr Abrego Garcia’s life and to save Democrats from the quagmire they are in on the issue of immigration,” he told The Bulwark “What’s needed now more than wrongheaded hot takes like those from Congressman Cuellar is action and my hope is there will be more members of Congress following the lead of Sen Van Hollen and Congressmen Garcia and Frost.” A third Democratic staffer defended the benefits of the Democratic House delegation’s trip to El Salvador despite their inability to meet with detainees “While the second trip did not deliver an explicit positive like Van Hollen’s did it was a reminder for El Salvador not to do anything crazy while they were in the country and the bigger reminder is Trump is not going to be there forever,” the staffer said he’s not going to get a third term or live to be 100.” As Democrats remain divided over how much to emphasize the Abrego Garcia case and the detentions in El Salvador more generally Other House Democrats are willing to listen to leadership but if Jeffries has a preference on El Salvador trips “As a member of a party you need to be disciplined,” a Democratic lawmaker said ‘Get on a plane,’ ‘Don’t get on a plane’—that’s what you do But you can’t take that approach if you’re not having regular communications You have to be clear in messaging what the plan is and you have to do that regularly if you want to keep people in line.” Leave a comment First on The Bulwark: The Immigration Hub is out with a new project timed to Trump’s first 100 days. In reaction to the White House’s stunt of showing mugshots of immigrants they deported, “Disappeared in America: The Faces of Trump’s Immigration Dragnet” documents more than seven hundred individuals—including legal residents and U.S or deported under the Trump administration Share this story with someone who has been closely following Democrats’ response to Trump’s deportations to El Salvador ReplyShare 1 reply 197 more comments...TopLatestDiscussionsNo posts House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) \u201COur reaction is that Donald Trump has the lowest approval rating of any president in modern American history,\u201D Jeffries responded But while Jeffries may be publicly agnostic on El Salvador trips like the one Reps. Robert Garcia, Yassamin Ansari, Maxwell Frost, and Maxine Dexter recently took \u201CThey want to let the El Salvador stuff slow down,\u201D a senior House staffer said Jeffries\u2019s office initially declined to comment said the item was \u201Cthinly sourced,\u201D leaving out that their office did not initially push back when contacted prior to publication Stephenson noted that \u201CJeffries has repeatedly said after the Supreme Court ruled that the White House had to facilitate Abrego Garcia\u2019s return Jeffries demanded that the order be \u201Caggressively\u201D and \u201Cimmediately\u201D enforced Enough with the fake bravado,\u201D Jeffries\u2019s April 14 statement read Whether Jeffries believes having House Democrats physically go to El Salvador will help or hinder efforts to get Abrego Garcia back is not addressed either in Stephenson\u2019s statement or his own comments following the Supreme Court decision and the use of El Salvador\u2019s prison specifically And Jeffries\u2019s eagerness to sidestep it suggests that the party is far from a consensus Get 30 day free trial The Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) was also working on arranging a trip to El Salvador that would be led by the chair of the caucus One House Democrat said Espaillat\u2019s trip was going to piggyback off Booker\u2019s trip \u201CAdriano didn\u2019t just want to do a trip like the other Democrats did,\u201D the lawmaker said A spokesperson for the CHC told The Bulwark it has been in active conversations with El Salvador about a trip for weeks. Espaillat also attended Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele\u2019s second inauguration last June \u201CThe Congressional Hispanic Caucus is working all avenues to ensure Kilmar Abrego Garcia rejoins his family and receives his constitutional right to due process,\u201D said Espaillat Espaillat, like other Democrats, has focused on the Trump administration\u2019s assault on due process in sending deportees to El Salvador without any hearings. It\u2019s a line of attack that polls have shown resonates with Americans, as the president\u2019s numbers dive sharply at the 100-day marker of his term Republicans primed the system for abuse and cruelty,\u201D Espaillat said \u201Cand now the Trump administration is crossing every due-process line in the book But they did not rewrite the United States Constitution\u2014due process is an inalienable right for anyone and everyone in the United States of America.\u201D it gives fodder for the National Republican Campaign Committee to start using it against other Democrats,\u201D a second House staffer said \u201CThey should understand that what they\u2019re doing is going to be hurting us in the long run.\u201D Share \u201CTrump is taking a wrong turn on his mass deportation force and it\u2019s going to make his position weaker.\u201D But some Democrats also worry that Abrego Garcia has become a less-than-ideal poster child for opposition to Trump\u2019s immigration policies after it was revealed that his wife sought a protective order against him. She recently said in a statement that she acted out of caution because she had suffered domestic violence in a previous relationship \u201CThis is not the right issue to talk about due process. This is not the right case. This is not the right person to be saying that we need to bring him back to the United States,\u201D Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), one of the party\u2019s more conservative members, told Fox News Radio \u201CThe trips have proven effective both in the efforts to save Mr Abrego Garcia\u2019s life and to save Democrats from the quagmire they are in on the issue of immigration,\u201D he told The Bulwark \u201CWhat\u2019s needed now more than wrongheaded hot takes like those from Congressman Cuellar is action Van Hollen and Congressmen Garcia and Frost.\u201D A third Democratic staffer defended the benefits of the Democratic House delegation\u2019s trip to El Salvador despite their inability to meet with detainees \u201CWhile the second trip did not deliver an explicit positive like Van Hollen\u2019s did it was a reminder for El Salvador not to do anything crazy while they were in the country and the bigger reminder is Trump is not going to be there forever,\u201D the staffer said he\u2019s not going to get a third term or live to be 100.\u201D \u201CAs a member of a party you need to be disciplined,\u201D a Democratic lawmaker said \u2018Get on a plane,\u2019 \u2018Don\u2019t get on a plane\u2019\u2014that\u2019s what you do But you can\u2019t take that approach if you\u2019re not having regular communications You have to be clear in messaging what the plan is and you have to do that regularly if you want to keep people in line.\u201D Leave a comment First on The Bulwark: The Immigration Hub is out with a new project timed to Trump\u2019s first 100 days. In reaction to the White House\u2019s stunt of showing mugshots of immigrants they deported, \u201CDisappeared in America: The Faces of Trump\u2019s Immigration Dragnet\u201D documents more than seven hundred individuals\u2014including legal residents and U.S Share this story with someone who has been closely following Democrats\u2019 response to Trump\u2019s deportations to El Salvador Four Senate Democrats introduced legislation Thursday to require the Trump administration to produce a human rights report on El Salvador. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Tim Kaine, Chris Van Holle and Alex Padilla unveiled the bill to demand a report detailing any steps the administration is taking to ensure compliance with court orders applicable to US citizens or residents wrongfully deported by the US to El Salvador. If the administration fails to produce the report, security assistance to El Salvador would be prohibited under federal law. Van Hollen said the Trump administration is "clearly refusing to comply” with orders by federal courts to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a resident from the state of Maryland who was "illegally" deported. "This legislation would require the Trump Administration to report on the actions they’ve taken in response to the court orders, the Government of El Salvador’s collusion with the Trump Administration to violate due process rights, and the broader human rights concerns in El Salvador," he said in a statement. Abrego Garcia was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in March and deported to El Salvador, where he was jailed without trial at the infamous CECOT prison under a US-backed agreement that detains some deportees. His attorneys have maintained that he was wrongly linked to the violent MS-13 gang and was denied due process. The US has acknowledged his deportation was an "administrative error," but has refused to arrange for his return. - Due process 'cornerstone' of American democracy Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland, visited Abrego Garcia in El Salvador earlier this month. El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele has refused to allow his return. Kaine said Bukele "has rounded up tens of thousands of Salvadorans without due process and jammed them indefinitely into overpopulated torture centers." "And now he’s trying to do the same to people living in the United States," he added. Padilla stands with his colleagues to hold Bukele and Trump "accountable over the corrosion of civil liberties and due process" in El Salvador which is supported by the US. Schumer said the "cornerstone" of American democracy is due process. "The Trump administration has taken a sledgehammer to the very basis of our legal system and the rights Americans have as citizens," he added. The legislation is also privileged under the Foreign Assistance Act, meaning the Senate will be forced to vote on the measure. raising the prospect of a constitutional conflict.Reporting by Nelson Renteria; Writing by Brendan O'Boyle and Sarah Morland; Editing by Aida Pelaez-Fernandez The Royals announced they have selected catcher Luke Maile from Triple-A Omaha and have optioned infielder Tyler Tolbert pitcher Alec Mash has been transferred to the 60-day Injured List The transaction was necessitated when Salvador Perez suffered a hip injury in Thursday’s game against the Rays Luke Maile is a nine-year MLB veteran with the Rays serving as a backup catcher known for his defense Last year he appeared in 53 games with the Reds and hit .178/.268/.252 in 154 plate appearances He did have the second-highest caught stealing rate in the National League nabbing 30.6 percent of would-be base-stealers The 34-year-old was hitting .286/.434/.381 with one home run in 12 games for Omaha Tolbert is sent down after appearing in 13 games with the Royals He was a perfect 6-for-6 in stolen base attempts but was 0-for-5 at the plate with three strikeouts Moving Marsh to the 60-day Injured List just means he won’t be able to be activated until at least the end of May He suffered right shoulder soreness in spring training then suffered a setback in his rehab and has been sent back to Arizona The government of a tiny Latin American nation is once again enthralling an outsized number of foreign fans using them to scrub its international image and encouraging them to take bits and pieces of its authoritarian model home to their own countries For decades, the fans were leftists and the destination was communist Cuba They flocked from all over the globe to tour Cuba‘s schools and hospitals explain away or simply ignore its hunger and political prisoners and report back glowingly on the narrow sliver of life their government minders had allowed them to see Today, the revolutionary tourists skew hard right and the destination is the police state of El Salvador run by all-powerful President Nayib Bukele and countless right-wing influencers have all made the pilgrimage Elon Musk dialogues with Bukele on X and hosted him at Tesla‘s Austin headquarters Bukele was the second head of state President Donald Trump called after inauguration day and the first and only from Latin America so far this term to visit him in the White House Not since Che Guevara has a Latin America leader boasted such an international cult of personality — or used it so effectively to sell the world on a glossy Bukele’s visitors learn that mass roundups, even if they scooped up thousands of innocents were the only way to break the grip of the gangs — much as Cuba‘s visitors once learned that its brand of communist revolution was the only fix for Latin America‘s inequalities that basic legal rights and liberal democracy are bourgeois luxuries that needed to be cleared away so justice could triumph Just as ordinary Cubans once supposedly welcomed the revolutionary firing squads do ordinary Salvadorans embrace life under the police state something Cuba‘s leaders never bothered with his rule is not (yet) as oppressive as Cuba‘s that we know of; it just surveils them and makes examples out of jailing labor leaders and environmental activists Only one prominent Bukele aide-turned-critic has so far left prison in a body bag just as there was always another Cuba — one Bukele and his foreign fans don’t want you to see This is the El Salvador of the jails that are never photographed. Not the Terrorist Confinement Center (CECOT), a showpiece built to house tattoo-covered gang members most of whom were detained before Bukele’s time and who make up a minority of the prison population the squalid gulags housing most of the other over 81,000 people detained in the last three years where torture is common and one detainee dies every four days It’s the country of prisons director Osiris Luna, sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department for doing gang leaders favors in return for their political support before the crackdown — the very same ones Bukele claims he brought to heel through pure even as government spending on opaque public contracts has soared There’s a reason Bukele puts such energy into cultivating his apologists The real tragedy of Cuba wasn’t that its proselytizers merely proselytized; it was that several of them exported the worst of its model abroad — namely to Venezuela whose socialist autocrats learned from Cuba how to coup-proof their military and thus remain in power indefinitely even as they went about systematically destroying their country it could blow a hole in Bukele’s carefully cultivated image making him look less like a valiant crime-fighter and more like a mafia state ringleader That’s why he’s only asking the Trump administration for one thing: that it drop the charges and return the gang leaders to El Salvador the United States has a sturdier judiciary — which can and should take down gangs like Tren de Aragua lawfully and a population unwilling to trade away its basic rights for the simple reason that the vast majority doesn’t live in daily mortal danger Nor is the Bukele model likely to transplant fully even within Latin America (if the public were as sold on Bukele as we often hear expect at least one serious attempt at a replica) plenty of Cuba‘s foreign fans either recanted or settled into embarrassed silence as the revolution let slip its many hypocrisies and failures Some realized they had seen only what they had wanted to see conveniently played by a cynical autocracy interested chiefly in extending its own grip on power Don’t be surprised if history repeats itself in El Salvador Will Freeman is a fellow for Latin America studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) corruption and organized crime in Latin America His writing has appeared in Foreign Affairs Among the latest crypto news for the Latam region (Latin America) following in the footsteps of Michael Saylor’s Strategy El Salvador continues to purchase BTC despite the agreement with the IMF. For the Latam area and the crypto sector, news has emerged concerning Oranje the company that could become the new Michael Saylor’s Strategy of Latin America In fact, with the support of Itaú BBA the investment bank and the largest banking company in Latam Oranje says it is ready to purchase 210 million dollars in Bitcoin while Itaú BBA is the financial advisor of Oranje the company aims to become the first listed company in the region dedicated exclusively to Bitcoin the successful strategy of the former US company MicroStrategy the governance team also includes big names like Eric Weiss Among the main objectives of Oranje is to take advantage of the relatively early stage of bitcoin adoption among institutions The Brazilian company supported by Itaú BBA plans to offer a 45% return in BTC for investments in bitcoin in its first year of operation aiming to accumulate bitcoin worth $210 million in its initial phases Oranje will focus on generating revenue through its already owned crypto assets Remaining in Brazilian territory, at the beginning of April 2025, Itaú Unibanco had announced its intention to launch its own in-house stablecoin the bank stated that it wants to see the experiences of other financial institutions that are issuing stablecoins and the finalization of the regulation on stablecoins in Brazil. This evaluation is also based on what is happening in the USA where stablecoins are now under scrutiny for regulation. according to Guto Antunes of Itaú Unibanco it seems that in the USA stablecoins have become so relevant to the point of being identified as a tool to promote and protect the sovereignty of the dollar. which seems to continue following its Bitcoin accumulation plan Recently, an official from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reported that El Salvador is complying with the agreement to abandon the use of Bitcoin as a reserve asset it is a purchase limit of BTC for the country imposed by the IMF as part of a financing agreement of 1.4 billion dollars. this limit has not stopped El Salvador with its purchases of 1 BTC per day resulting in everything being compliant according to Rodrigo Valdes of the FMI. Therefore, at the time of writing, the wallet of El Salvador holds 6,167 BTC Stay updated on all the news about cryptocurrencies and the entire world of blockchain a secretive 40,000-capacity facility built to house alleged gang members Thomas Graham in TecolucaWed 30 Apr 2025 13.00 CESTLast modified on Thu 1 May 2025 06.09 CESTShare“Don’t stop,” said the local in the backseat Soldiers watched the vehicle as it passed the turn-off and the checkpoint Then a white building flashed through a gap in the trees Without permission from the government, that is as close as anyone can get to the Terrorism Confinement Centre (Cecot), the prison at the core of relations between El Salvador and the US President Nayib Bukele bills the prison as the biggest in the Americas and specifically members of MS-13 and Barrio 18 the two gangs that brutalised Salvadorian society for decades It is also where the Trump administration has paid to send 238 Venezuelan migrants and a black hole from which no information escapes – except for what the Salvadorian government chooses to reveal The Guardian requested to visit but received no response “It’s like Guantánamo on steroids,” said Juan Pappier Human Rights Watch’s deputy director for the Americas They’re in a space essentially ungoverned by law.” Three years ago, Bukele declared a state of exception that has continued ever since, suspending constitutional rights and unleashing the state to take on El Salvador’s gangs, including through mass incarceration without due process. About 85,000 people – 1.4% of the population – have been arrested since Most are being held in pre-trial detention Human rights organisations believe many people without ties to gangs have been swept up and have documented almost 400 deaths in custody But at the same time, Salvadorians know they now live at the whim of a president who has accumulated near absolute power. In Tecoluca, the rural district in the shadow of Cecot, most were afraid to speak with their names. they accuse you of being a criminal,” said one man amen – otherwise they might take you from your home.” said that the prison was built without public consultation Locals only found out when construction trucks started arriving in 2022 The military had set up a checkpoint on the access road so Cañas approached on foot from the other side to investigate finding that farmers had been forced to sell their land or face expropriation “When Radio YSUCA published our findings, that forced the president to give his version,” said Cañas. “And he tweeted that they were building a mega-prison to house 40,000 terrorists That’s more than the population of the whole district.” The 23-hectare (57-acre) prison was finished in less than a year and the first prisoners arrived in February 2023 locals say they know almost nothing about what happens inside the prison The secrecy around Cecot is not unique: the government has released little information from any of its prisons since the state of exception began But what is unique is that no information has leaked out This reflects the fact that only one prisoner is known to have left the Cecot alive: Kilmar Ábrego García a Salvadorian man who was wrongly deported from the US and subsequently transferred to another prison where he still has no contact with the outside world making it the public face of the state of exception Those visits have shown large cells with three tiers of metal beds but no sheets or mattresses where they share basic toilets and a basin of water to wash in An inmate puts cream on a fellow inmate’s face in a cell at the Cecot mega-prison on 31 August 2023 Photograph: Marvin Recinos/AFP/Getty ImagesPrisoners are allowed to leave their cells for 30 minutes a day but the lights inside are never turned off – except for the pitch-black solitary confinement cells The government says 15,000 prisoners are currently held there “Cecot is not meant for rehabilitation,” said Noah Bullock “And that’s what is being communicated: that finally we have a leader strong enough to deal with these people how they should be dealt with The propaganda doesn’t reflect the reality of El Salvador’s state of exception nor its prison system, where people who may have nothing to do with gangs are trapped in still more terrible conditions in prisons such as Izalco Nonetheless the image is part of what makes Cecot useful to the Trump administration, said Bullock. When Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, gave a speech in the prison she did it in front of MS-13 members – not the Venezuelans they had just deported “The Venezuelans don’t have the names of gangs tattooed on their chest And when they had their heads shaved and their backs bent double Prison officials stand guard on a pavilion inside the Cecot mega-prison on 27 January 2025 Photograph: Marvin Recinos/AFP via Getty ImagesPeople in Tecoluca were alarmed by the prospect of the prison’s expansion El Milagro – the Miracle – locals complained about being caught in the penumbra of the mobile signal blockade The river has turned brown since the prison began dumping waste upstream A young man took a stick and began poking the sediment along the banks “Cecot is the international mega-prison,” he said “For me it’s shameful that Tecoluca is associated with it.” “I’d have preferred a mega-university,” he added quietly Things you buy through our links may earn Vox Media a commission he suspended due process by pressing for a monthlong state of emergency which has since been extended dozens of times by the legislature Bukele built something of a monument to his repressive approach who proudly calls himself “the world’s coolest dictator.” Indeed the punishment of detainees directly furthers his power as a strongman In this way, and others, CECOT qualifies not only as a prison but a concentration camp. That might be a shocking allegation given the term’s association with Nazis, but as the author of a global history of concentration camps When most people think of concentration camps they think of Auschwitz or other death camps of the Holocaust The Nazis created those extermination camps in the middle of World War II and their existence — as well as the millions of murders committed in them in pursuit of the Final Solution — remains a singular stain on human history But outposts of the preexisting Nazi concentration-camp system were built as early as 1933 for a different purpose: to intimidate and punish political opponents Other comparable systems elsewhere around the world and it’s these camps from before and after the Holocaust that offer a clearer comparison for what we’re seeing at CECOT The defining characteristic of any concentration camp is one that detains civilians en masse without due process on the basis of race rather than for any crime an individual has committed Detention is typically open-ended — even where there’s a sentence it might be honored but can just as easily be extended Whatever the existing legal system in the country concentration camps exist as an end run around that structure allowing a kind of detention to happen that’s otherwise not possible later facing deportation back to El Salvador and seeding gang conflict there Back then, the U.S. tried to keep its support for death squads and juntas secret. Today, the friendship between the self-proclaimed “world’s coolest dictator” and the president who promised he would be “dictator on day one” is very much public or even any specific allegations” that would suggest detainees pose any threat to public safety Tren de Aragua and MS-13 are actual gangs whose crimes need to be addressed in real ways but that’s not what the administration is doing by outsourcing U.S One likely reason that Trump’s team has resorted to such high-profile spectacle is because the administration hasn’t yet been able to make progress on the campaign promise that was core to winning the presidency: massive deportations on a previously unimaginable scale A lack of cooperation from state and local authorities have made it harder for ICE to arrest people Hiring new agents and expanding detention capacity might take years the machinery for detention and deportation of immigrants has been chugging along without mercy for decades But the kind of illicit actions that would previously be secret are now being celebrated joyfully Regimes willing to install concentration camps do not typically close them willingly The bureaucracy of detention has its own institutional momentum and becomes hard to stop as seen by its persistence for decades in places like North Korea and China My research has found that extrajudicial detention is stopped by defeat in war or by popular uprising — but rarely by the leader who started it The Trump administration appears more than willing to defy the courts It may have been galling to see Bukele and Trump at the White House acting as if there’s nothing they can do to help Kilmar Abrego Garcia because they obviously have the ability to release him back to his family at any point But when they pretend that events have been set into motion they can’t control as if the power of CECOT itself is somehow greater than the power of either man they might just be more right than we’d like to imagine By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice and to receive email correspondence from us Password must be at least 8 characters and contain: you’ll receive occasional updates and offers from New York Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern discussed the ruling and its shortcomings on this week’s episode of Amicus Dahlia Lithwick: It feels like a landmark moment and a crushing defeat for the Trump administration I want to note—even though judges hate it when we do this—that Judge Rodriguez is himself a Trump appointee and a conservative and a Federalist Society member And this is the first time we’ve gotten a ruling on the merits that says “You cannot use this law in this way,” right Mark Joseph Stern: This is the first time a court has issued a definitive decision and a permanent injunction saying that the Alien Enemies Act simply cannot be used in this way And what Rodriguez did is very straightforward only to “any invasion or predatory incursion” against U.S territory “by any foreign nation or government.” The judge analyzes these terms as they were used in 1798 looking at dictionary definitions and common usage And he concluded that these are words that describe either a military force or an “organized armed force”—they do not apply to alleged members of a gang who are accused of committing occasional acts of violence That’s not an armed militia invading the nation; that’s just criminals doing criminal things Rodriguez also pointed out that Trump’s proclamation actually makes no reference to the existence of any organized So he effectively used Trump’s own poorly drafted declaration against him it does represent a beatdown with the textualism stick But the ruling itself is not a searing piece of legal writing It’s a very dispassionate piece of jurisprudential writing I wonder what you think animates the choice to approach it this way and Thomas Jefferson—to show that the language of the statute was always used in connection to a military invasion and never used in connection to anything like gang violence and higher courts: It isn’t just me saying that the terms of the Alien Enemies Act could not possibly fit here It’s certainly the kind of opinion you want to write when you are playing with high stakes and you want this Supreme Court to affirm you There is a part of the opinion that’s a bit worrisome Judge Rodriguez says that he “may not adjudicate the veracity of the factual statements in the Proclamation” but “retains the authority to construe the AEA’s terms and determine whether the announced basis for the Proclamation properly invokes the statute.” A lot of smart readers said: Holy cow he just gave Trump permission to come back and lie better next time That feels like an exception that could swallow the rule This is a concern that Just Security’s Ryan Goodman, among others, has flagged Rodriguez embraces a very broad conception of the political questions doctrine a principle created by the Supreme Court that holds that the judiciary can’t weigh in on certain disputes between the political branches The Trump administration has been claiming in this litigation that judges have no ability to scrutinize the use of the Alien Enemies Act “as a matter of law.” But then he took pains to say that he couldn’t second-guess the fact-finding of the government and the factual claims of the president That raises the possibility that a different proclamation with different “facts” could lead to the lawful application of the Alien Enemies Act—for instance if Trump says Venezuelan migrants have formed a militia that’s trying to take over some city So I do think this is a concerning loophole in the opinion really; this is a conservative judge splitting the baby shooting down the administration quite harshly on the law but leaving room for Trump to come back with different factual allegations and say: You told us what the law requires and we are now giving you the facts that you say are necessary for us to invoke it The other bad news is that this decision will be appealed to the U.S the 5th Circuit is a hotbed of far-right extremists many of whom are locked in a competitive audition for Supreme Court slots You have judges like Kyle Duncan and Andrew Oldham and James Ho—Trump appointees from the first term—who are all campaigning for the court by being as provocative and hard-right and trollish as possible that that’s what Trump is looking for this time: not just someone who’s credentialed and polished but a brawler who will own the libs and defend Trump no matter what which may be a sign that even some of the flamethrowers think it goes a little too far this is ultimately on a rocket ship to the Supreme Court and I have real optimism that the Supreme Court will side with Rodriguez—especially after it halted the late-night deportations of migrants from Texas two weeks ago before Justice Samuel Alito even finished writing his dissent Rodriguez has crafted an opinion that maximizes the odds of five or more justices saying: Sounds right to me On the occasion of the International Day of Peasant Struggles issues a grave warning to the public: the systematic abandonment of agriculture by the Salvadoran government is setting the stage for an impending food crisis According to data from the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (MAG) agricultural production in El Salvador has experienced a sharp decline between the 2019–2020 and 2022–2023 agricultural cycles Both planted area and crop output have dropped significantly The country lost more than a thousand manzanas of corn resulting in over 150,000 quintals of lost yield Losses were even more severe for other staple crops: nearly 12,000 manzanas of beans were lost equating to over 200,000 quintals of produce; sorghum and coffee also suffered substantial reductions tens of thousands of manzanas have gone out of production representing millions of quintals of lost food which directly threatens national food security the agricultural sector has also seen a worrying rise in unemployment Household survey data shows that from 2019 to 2023 and fishing—sectors that form the backbone of rural livelihoods further exacerbating poverty and rural insecurity The crisis is further compounded by a drastic reduction in credit availability agricultural and livestock input costs surged while credit access plummeted by 79% dropping from $60.3 million to just $12.7 million While 98% of national bank credit is directed to consumption leaving farmers with little support to maintain or grow their production undermining national producers and making the country increasingly dependent on foreign food these trends have deteriorated rural living conditions The percentage of poor households in the countryside grew from 24.8% in 2019 to 28.3% in 2023 Most alarming is the rise in extreme poverty: households unable to meet basic food needs jumped from 5.2% to 11.1% in just four years Looking ahead to the 2025–2026 agricultural season peasant organizations estimate that up to 40% of corn and bean-producing areas could be affected The country may lose up to 6 million quintals of corn and 800,000 quintals of beans This could affect as many as 100,000 farmers and damage over 160,000 manzanas of staple crops The government’s only mitigation strategy so far has been increased imports—an approach that not only fails to address the root causes but also further harms small-scale family farming the creation of a $100 million land fund is needed to allocate land to 200,000 subsistence farmers who currently rent small plots There must also be a legal obligation for private banks to allocate at least 15% of total credit to agriculture and simplified access—especially for women producers The current agricultural bonus program must be reimagined as a sustainable and climate-resilient strategy shaped with full participation from the farming community the government should launch an emergency phytosanitary program to control the screwworm outbreak as well as a massive initiative to build reservoirs and improve water harvesting for agriculture The controversial “Technical Regulation on Biosafety of Living Modified Organisms for Agricultural Use” must be overturned as it facilitates the introduction of genetically modified seeds that threaten native biodiversity Farmers must be better integrated into local markets through the creation of a law promoting access to and development of farmers’ markets This law should establish strategic food reserves to stabilize guaranteed prices for farming families and ensure food availability while also mandating that at least 30% of public food procurement be sourced from smallholder farmers The approval of a Food Sovereignty and Security Law and the creation of a national bank of native seeds are also essential measures the government must act to halt land harassment and displacement of cooperatives and small farmers by large capital interests This post is also available in Français The Supreme Court says the Trump administration must work to bring back a Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador rejecting the administration’s emergency appeal This undated photo provided by Murray Osorio PLLC shows Kilmar Abrego Garcia the wife of Kilmar Abrego Garcia of Maryland stands with supporters during a news conference at CASA’s Multicultural Center in Hyattsville walks in the terminal after speaking during a news conference upon his arrival from meeting with Kilmar Abrego Garcia in El Salvador at Washington Dulles International Airport speaks during a news conference upon his arrival from meeting with her husband Kilmar Abrego Garcia in El Salvador speaks during a news conference upon his arrival from meeting with Kilmar Abrego Garcia in El Salvador Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s story begins in his native El Salvador but it’s become increasingly unclear where it will end quien fue deportado por error a El Salvador habla durante una conferencia de prensa en Hyattsville Trump administration officials said he was deported based on a 2019 accusation from Maryland police he was an MS-13 gang member Abrego Garcia denied the allegation and was never charged with a crime Abrego Garcia grew up in El Salvador’s capital city the nation’s signature dish of flat tortilla pouches that hold steaming blends of cheese Abrego Garcia’s job was buying ingredients and making deliveries with his older brother “Everyone in the town knew to get their pupusas from ‘Pupuseria Cecilia,’” his lawyers wrote began extorting the family for “rent money” and threatened to kill Cesar — or force him into their gang — if they weren’t paid The family complied but eventually sent Cesar to the U.S Barrio 18 similarly targeted Abrego Garcia the gang threatened to take him away until his father paid “all of the money that they wanted.” They still watched him as he walked to and from school but the gang threatened to rape and kill Abrego Garcia’s sisters and eventually sent Abrego Garcia to the U.S The family never went to the authorities because of rampant police corruption The gang continued to harass the family in Guatemala according to documents in his immigration case in Maryland and found work in construction Abrego Garcia went to a Home Depot seeking work as a laborer when he and three other men were detained by local police They were suspected of being in MS-13 based on tattoos and clothing Local police contacted a criminal informant who said Abrego Garcia was in MS-13 attorneys for Abrego Garcia say the informant had identified an MS-13 chapter in New York Prince George’s County Police did not charge the men and had no further interactions with Abrego Garcia or “any new intelligence” on him Local police turned Abrego Garcia over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement immigration judge that he would seek asylum and asked to be released Vasquez Sura was five months into a high-risk pregnancy The Department of Homeland Security alleged Abrego Garcia was a gang member based on the county police’s information The information was enough for an immigration judge in April 2019 to keep Abrego Garcia in jail as his case continued The judge said the informant was proven and reliable and had verified his gang membership Abrego Garcia appealed the judge’s decision to keep him in jail Abrego Garcia later married Vasquez Sura in a Maryland detention center an immigration judge denied Abrego Garcia’s asylum request but granted him protection from being deported back to El Salvador because of a “well-founded fear” of gang persecution Abrego Garcia checked in with ICE yearly while Homeland Security issued him a work permit He joined a union and was employed full time as a sheet metal apprentice Vasquez Sura filed a temporary protection order against Abrego Garcia scratched and ripped off her shirt during an argument after the document’s release by the Trump administration that the couple had worked things out “privately as a family “After surviving domestic violence in a previous relationship I acted out of caution after a disagreement with Kilmar,” she stated and I decided not to follow through with the civil court process.” She said the protection order doesn’t justify his deportation “Kilmar has always been a loving partner and father and I will continue to stand by him,” she said according to a report released by the Trump administration Abrego Garcia was stopped by the Tennessee Highway Patrol for speeding The vehicle had eight other people and no luggage prompting an officer to suspect human trafficking Abrego Garcia said he was driving them from Texas to Maryland for construction work Abrego Garcia’s wife said in a statement that he sometimes transported groups of workers between job sites “so it’s entirely plausible he would have been pulled over while driving with others in the vehicle He was not charged with any crime or cited for any wrongdoing.” Abrego Garcia and Vasquez Sura were raising three kids is deaf in one ear and unable to verbally communicate according to the complaint against the Trump administration They were also raising a 9-year-old with autism and a 10-year-old with epilepsy District Court for the District of Maryland in April 2025 a man identified by Jennifer Vasquez Sura as her husband is forced to sit with other prisoners by guards in the Terrorism Confinement Center in Tecoluca District Court for the District of Maryland via AP) the Trump administration designated MS-13 as a foreign terrorist organization and sought to remove identified members “as expeditiously as possible,” U.S John Sauer wrote in a brief to the Supreme Court Abrego Garcia was pulled over March 12 outside an Ikea in Baltimore with his son An agent called Vasquez Sura and said she had 10 minutes to retrieve their son or ICE would request child protective services Abrego Garcia called his wife from jail and said authorities pressed him about MS-13 They asked about a photo they had of him playing basketball on a public court and his family’s visits to a restaurant serving Mexican and Salvadoran food “He would repeat the truth again and again — that he was not in a gang,” Vasquez Sura stated in court documents Florida is once again ready to facilitate air travel for illegal immigrants And as before, Gov. Ron DeSantis proposes one-way trips During an appearance on Wednesday’s “Ingraham Angle,” the Governor said Florida could “do more” in the fight against illegal immigration But one thing’s stopping the state: a lack of a “green light” from the Donald Trump administration to revive “Air DeSantis.” wherever they need to,” DeSantis promised The Governor, of course, facilitated migrant flights from Texas to California and Martha’s Vineyard as well in the run-up to his presidential campaign But while he had previously pitched Florida as a useful funnel to internment camps at Guantanamo Bay this TV hit was his first suggestion that the Sunshine State could transport suspected illegal immigrants to the increasingly infamous Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT) DeSantis also said he needed the “blessing” of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to do more with the undocumented immigrants in the state saying the state has ample assets ready and willing to go to work we won’t even need DHS to necessarily be there We have tens of thousands of illegals in Florida that are already on deportation orders They’ve already been processed and have been ordered to be removed We can go in and get those,” DeSantis said seemingly dismissing the due process concerns that courts have spotlighted amid extrajudicial repatriation of people in the country illegally “What we can do is provide more manpower and we need that to be in tandem,” he added A.G. Gancarski has been the Northeast Florida correspondent for Florida Politics since 2014. His work also can be seen in the Washington Post, the New York Post, the Washington Times, and National Review, among other publications. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter: @AGGancarski Reply us Adults are tired of your “Muckety-Muck” Leftist commentary Reply Well Earl…thanks for volunteering to pay for it Reply Reply Who absorbed the cost of the millions Slo Joe Reply the King may go down that road a third time The world is a worse place because you are in it Reply Try looking beyond labeling people Lefty and Righty and focus on whats best for the American People as a group Things like Rising Costs and It being impossible to get help from the VA affects everyone no matter who they voted for Don’t let them distract you with the us against them strategy they use to take the pressure off THEM… Reply Reply Reply Reply Taking performative politics to a new level I see Ronnie seems to have issues with situational awareness – nobody likes him and he’ll never be president regardless of how many stupid stunts he pulls How much tax payer money will he waste before he figures that out Reply Let’s see what the governors fondness for personal jet air travel has cost taxpayers during his failed presidential run Reply Good luck getting an info on travel expenses The sunshine laws in Florida have been suspended by fiat since 2020 Reply and website in this browser for the next time I comment Δdocument.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value" This platform and all of its content are owned by Extensive Enterprises Media Publisher: Peter Schorsch @PeterSchorschFL © Copyright by Extensive-Enterprises 2025. All rights reserved. STAFF LOGIN El Salvador’s security and justice minister has cast doubt on President Donald Trump‘s claim that a wrongly deported Maryland dad’s tattoos prove he’s a member of MS-13 Gustavo Villatoro admitted that the Trump administration has not handed over any evidence linking Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the notorious gang When asked if that meant El Salvador was uncertain about Abrego Garcia’s gang ties Trump previously posted a photo on social media of Abrego Garcia’s hand showing four tattoos—a marijuana leaf the numbers and letters “M-S-1-3” were digitally added above each tattoo part of an apparent argument that the symbols were a code to signify gang membership The security minister said that Abrego Garcia has been transferred from the high security CECOT prison to one of the country’s lowest security prisons because the United States has yet to send any evidence of his criminal history The Trump administration has cited images of Abrego Garcia wearing Chicago Bulls merchandise and a confidential informant’s claim that he belonged to the gang’s clique in New York—even though he’s never lived there—to accuse Abrego Garcia of being an MS-13 member Abrego Garcia was living in Maryland with his wife and three children A 2019 court ruling barred his removal due to the risk of persecution in El Salvador His lawyers have denied that he is a gang member and said he’s not been charged with any crimes After the Supreme Court ruled this month that the Trump administration must “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return Trump argued he had no power to force El Salvador to release the father onto U.S During Tuesday’s interview, however, Trump said that he “could” bring Abrego Garcia back to the U.S. but is choosing not to. but all of that has to be according to our agreement and according to the law Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here Scopes arrested for teaching evolution in TN public schools speaks at a news conference regarding President Donald Trump’s pending tariffs on Canada and other Democrats speak to reporters about President Donald Trump’s tariffs on foreign countries speaks during a news conference at CASA’s Multicultural Center in Hyattsville during a news conference upon his arrival from meeting with Kilmar Abrego Garcia in El Salvador WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Democrats plan to force a vote in the coming weeks on a resolution to require more transparency from President Donald Trump’s administration about deportations to El Salvador “These votes are all about curbing executive power,” said Kaine who was also a lead sponsor on the two tariff bills Democrats have been under pressure from base voters to use their limited powers in the minority to fight Trump on all fronts While the resolution is unlikely to get a vote in the House even if it passes the Senate Democrats say it is about bringing attention to issues and forcing Republicans to go on record where they are reluctant to speak out publicly against Trump The Democrats are forcing the votes under different statutes that allow so-called “privileged” resolutions — legislation that must be brought up for a vote whether majority leadership wants to or not The resolution being introduced Thursday is under the Foreign Assistance Act which allows any senator to force a vote to request information on a country’s human rights practices Senate Republicans pulled similar maneuvers during President Joe Biden’s administration under the Congressional Review Act which allows lawmakers to force votes on rescinding regulations Democrats would like to expand the Congressional Review Act to help them reverse Trump’s mass firings at federal agencies Maxine Waters introduced bills in the Senate and House on Thursday that would make any president’s federal workforce reductions subject to that law and eligible for automatic votes on Capitol Hill if Congress wants to reverse them Kaine said he hopes the votes on the resolutions will force Republicans to feel pressure — and potentially slow down future actions by Trump “It’s a way of shining a spotlight on this issue,” Kaine said Congressional Correspondent Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report El Salvador (AP) — Four House Democrats have traveled to El Salvador to call attention to the plight of a man the Trump administration deported to a Salvadoran prison and has refused to help return — even after the Supreme Court ruled that it was the government’s duty to do so Maxwell Frost of Florida and Robert Garcia of California arrived Sunday in the Central American nation to investigate the condition of Kilmar Abrego Garcia who had lived in the United States for more than a decade a move that administration officials have said in court filings was done in error WATCH: Sen. Van Hollen holds briefing after meeting with Abrego Garcia in El Salvador But despite a Supreme Court ruling that ordered the Trump administration to help facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return the administration has said it has no power to bring him back a position being scrutinized by federal courts as potentially in violation of judicial rulings In a news conference Monday in El Salvador’s capital the Democratic representatives and Abrego Garcia’s lawyer said they were in El Salvador “demanding his safe return home.” The group said they hoped to continue to pressure authorities for his release and that their petition to meet with Abrego Garcia was denied “Part of what the Trump administration does is they do so much that they try to make sure people forget — forget about them breaking the law forget about them completely ignoring the Supreme Court,” Frost said “We’re not going to be the last members of Congress and senators that are here to make sure that he’s released and that our country is following our laws.” The quartet’s trip comes after Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland traveled to El Salvador last week and met with Abrego Garcia and Salvadoran officials Abrego Garcia lived in Maryland with his wife and three children Abrego Garcia’s protected legal status prohibited him from being deported to El Salvador He was deported on one of three planes filled with migrants accused of being gang members Frost said the four representatives were in El Salvador to “build off the work” of Van Hollen and that they were inquiring about where Abrego Garcia was being held and under what conditions added that his primary concerns was Abrego Garcia’s access to counsel Abrego Garcia’s whereabouts since the staged photo op on Thursday with Senator Van Hollen,” Newman said “We demand to immediately know where he is and to have access to him.” The White House press office issued a statement Monday that said the past week “has shown Americans everything they need to know about Democrats’ priorities.” The White House accused the representatives of “picking up their party’s mantle of prioritizing a deported illegal immigrant MS-13 gang member over the Americans they represent.” Garcia said he and Frost sent a letter last week to House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer requesting that an official delegation go to El Salvador to investigate Abrego Garcia’s condition and push for his return Ansari said more Democrats would be traveling to El Salvador in the coming days and weeks Justice Department lawyers said in court last week that they have no power to advance Abrego Garcia’s return because he is in a foreign country’s custody Administration officials also claimed in public comments that Abrego Garcia was engaged in human trafficking and terrorism and therefore correctly deported White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that if Abrego Garcia were to return to the U.S. “he would immediately be deported again.” Van Hollen unsuccessfully lobbied the Salvadoran government for Abrego Garcia’s return He told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that the United States is facing a constitutional crisis if the Trump administration does not follow the Supreme Court’s order to push to bring Abrego Garcia back It’s a warning Democrats are increasingly amplifying Rather than debate President Donald Trump’s hard-line immigration policy or the merits of the administration’s invocation of national security to carry out deportations Democratic lawmakers are zeroing in on the issue of due process with some noting that the Supreme Court and lower court federal judges found Abrego Garcia was deported without a proper hearing Ansari said she finds it “extremely alarming” that Trump officials seem to have no regard for due process “Even with all of the illegal actions we’ve seen over the last couple of months I think this is the one that terrifies me the most when it comes to the future of our democracy,” she said in an interview Similar concerns were echoed by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor who wrote in the court’s ruling in Abrego Garcia’s case: “The government’s argument implies that it could deport and incarcerate any person so long as it does so before a court can intervene.” Several House Republicans have visited El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, the prison where Abergo Garcia is being held and lauded the facility for what they view as El Salvador’s tough-on-crime policies Republican senators and governors have defended Abrego Garcia’s detention as part of a broader crackdown on illegal immigration But at least one Republican senator called his deportation a mistake READ MORE: El Salvadoran President Bukele proposes prisoner swap with Maduro for Venezuelan deportees “The administration won’t admit it. But this was a screw-up,” said Sen. John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” During a meeting with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele in the Oval Office, Trump remarked that “homegrown” lawbreakers should be deported to prisons in the Central American country and urged Bukele to “build about five more places” like the notorious penitentiary where Abrego Garcia is being held. Congressional Republicans have so far shown little interest in negotiating the dispute between the president and the judiciary. Democrats, who are in the minority in both chambers of Congress, have little leverage to pressure the White House. But Abrego Garcia’s case has become both an alarming and galvanizing case inside the party. Democrats “have the power to draw attention to this issue, to keep the pressure up,” Ansari said. “That’s why you know some of us are going, and so many members will be going. Because this is about the future of our democracy and the future of due process as American citizens.” Brown reported from Washington. Associated Press reporter Megan Janetsky contributed to this report from Mexico City. By Yolanda Magaña, Mary Clare Jalonick, Associated Press By Michael Kunzelman, Rebecca Santana, Ben Finley, Associated Press Thank you. Please check your inbox to confirm. © 1996 - 2025 NewsHour Productions LLC. All Rights Reserved. PBS is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization. Subscribe to Here's the Deal with Lisa Desjardins Notifications can be managed in browser preferences. El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele privately ‘expressed concern’ about who the Trump administration sent to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our Privacy notice El Salvador President Nayib Bukele asked the Trump administration for evidence that the 238 Venezuelans deported to his country’s maximum-security prison last month were actually part of a notorious gang Bukele’s concern sparked a “scramble” among U.S officials to get him evidence that the migrants belonged to the transnational Tren de Aragua gang His request for evidence reportedly materialized after the deportation flights from the U.S. had already taken off for his country, according to The Times, which reports new details about the negotiations between Bukele and Trump. Few of the deportees had documented public links to Tren de Aragua and U.S officials created a scorecard system for each alleged gang member to present to Bukele and his team which included criteria such as their tattoos as evidence eight women were among the migrants sent to the all-male facility before they were swiftly sent back to the U.S In return for holding up his part of the deal, Bukele demanded the U.S. release the El Salvadoran MS-13 leaders in its custody so they could be interrogated in their home country Bukele’s request “worried” some law enforcement officials but the administration agreed and sent around a dozen senior members of the gang back to El Salvador The new details come as the Supreme Court is due to weigh in on the Trump administration’s application of the Alien Enemies Act, something which was previously only invoked by presidents during wartime “The president has the right to remove foreign terrorists from our homeland and we are absolutely confident that truth will ultimately prevail in court,” the White House press secretary the administration continues to comply with all court orders.” The Trump administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act in March to justify the deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members without a hearing But some State Department officials were “dismayed” at what had transpired given American intelligence agencies recently assessed that the Tren de Aragua gang was not actually controlled by the Venezuelan government The administration has admitted in court filings that “many” of the people sent to a notorious prison in El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act did not have criminal records, and attorneys and family members say their clients and relatives — some of whom were in the country with legal permission and have upcoming court hearings on their asylum claims — have nothing to do with Tren de Aragua. Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies govt and politics"},{"score":0.784225,"label":"/law govt and politics/armed forces"},{"score":0.767657,"label":"/society/crime/personal offense"},{"score":0.686236,"label":"/law