According to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt [Bimbo #1], you, too, could get a one-way ticket to a prison in El Salvador:
Responding to a question at Tuesday’s daily briefing, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt mentioned President Donald Trump’s “idea” to potentially deport “violent” and “heinous” U.S. citizens, adding a seemingly important caveat: “If it’s legal.”
Another incredibly stupid idea from King Donald and his band of sycophants. This would only cause hassles and an un-American “Papers, please!” society for legal immigrants who aren’t exempted. Illegal immigrants won’t bother to register.
The judge overseeing the case of a Maryland man erroneously deported to El Salvador has reiterated that the Trump administration must return him to the U.S.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, along with hundreds of other deportees from the U.S., is being held in El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), which District Court Judge Paula Xinis described as “one of the most notoriously inhumane and dangerous prisons in the world” that keeps people “in some of the most inhumane and squalid conditions known in any carceral system.”
“The officers had no warrant for his arrest and no lawful basis to take him into custody; they told him only that his ‘status had changed,'” Xinis wrote in her order issued Friday, which was obtained by Politico.
Judge to Trump: Yes, You Really Do Have to Undo ‘Lawless’ Deportation to El Salvador
They admit they screwed up, and they refuse to do anything about it. Unbelievable!
The Trump administration conceded in a court filing Monday that it mistakenly deported a Maryland father to El Salvador “because of an administrative error” and argued it could not return him because he’s now in Salvadoran custody.
Families and activists say deportees signed documents to return to Venezuela but were sent to Salvadoran jail instead
Venezuelans deported from the US to El Salvador in a case that has become a legal flashpoint for Donald Trump’s US administration had signed documents agreeing to be returned to their home country, according to families of some of the deportees and a campaign group.
Two families of men on the now notorious Saturday flights to El Salvador told the Financial Times their relatives had signed what appeared to be voluntary deportation orders in exchange for returning to Venezuela sooner.
But their families later spotted them in videos posted by El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele that showed them in his country in chains, claiming they were violent gang members.
Kelvi Zambrano, co-ordinator for the US-based Venezuelan non-profit Coalition for Human Rights and Democracy, said his organisation represented three more Venezuelans who signed agreements to return home and were now missing. Their names all appear on a US government list of deportees sent to El Salvador that was published by CBS News.
It is not clear how many of the 238 Venezuelans flown to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador from Texas on Saturday had signed the papers to return to their home country.
So they think they’re going home to Venezuela? And instead they get de facto one-year prison sentences in a Salvadoran jail with no hearing, no due process whatsoever?
Venezuelans sent by Trump to El Salvador had signed paperwork to go home
When U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem visited the mega prison in El Salvador on Wednesday and posed with the bare-chested and head-shorn inmates behind her, Retired U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Michael Franken responded to Noem on X: “It is a violation under the Fourth Geneva Convention to pose with prisoners.”
Franken, also the former Director of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) who served under Presidents Obama and Trump, added: “The first three Geneva Conventions dealt with combatants. The 4th with civilian prisoners. They are either combatants in MAGA minds or civilians without due process. Geneva signatory is germane.”
The first sentence of article 2 of the Fourth Geneva Convention very clearly states that it applies in peacetime:
In addition to the provisions which shall be implemented in peacetime, …
https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.33_GC-IV-EN.pdf
When Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem visited El Salvador’s most notorious mega-prison on Wednesday, she sported an eye-catching piece on her wrist that experts have identified as an 18-karat gold Rolex Cosmograph Daytona watch that sells for about $50,000.
The high-end Swiss watch lent a striking contrast to Noem’s tour of the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, where imprisoned men watched silently from a crowded cell as she recorded a video for a social media post warning undocumented immigrants not to enter the United States.
…
“You’re in front of all these people in a very poor country, who are in the bottom 10 or 20 percent of their country … and it looks like you’re just flaunting your wealth while you flaunt your freedom,” said Adam Isacson, an analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights group.
“This is an administration that is trying to be populist, anti-elite, appeal to the common man,” he added. Meanwhile, there’s “people stacked up like cordwood behind her.”
…
“To be wearing that in El Salvador while visiting a” maximum-security prison, he said, “is kind of like a big F you.”
Noem visited the prison as part of her trip to three Latin American nations to discuss crime, deportation and immigration. The Trump administration has sent scores of Venezuelan migrants to CECOT without judicial hearings, despite a court order to return them to the U.S.
During Noem’s tour, she walked past a containment unit, the prison armory and two crowded cell blocks, where men in a cell packed almost to the ceiling were told to remove their face masks and shirts and stand in the shot, according to a press pool report.
Men in the prison, which can house up to 40,000 inmates, sleep on metal bunks with no mattresses and are not allowed visits from lawyers or family members.
During her visit, Noem turned her back to the bars to record a selfie video. When Noem left, the cell block erupted in indecipherable chants, according to the pool report.
How Kristi Noem’s $50,000 Rolex in a Salvadoran prison became a political flashpoint
With no court to verify anything the Trump regime alleges, you could be arrested and sent to a prison in El Salvador for having views the regime dislikes
Friends,
Let’s say you don’t like what the Trump administration is doing, or you don’t like Trump. You express these views on Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.
You take a two-week vacation in France. When you try to return to the United States, U.S. immigration agents arrest you. They detain you in solitary confinement. They don’t let you contact your family. They don’t let you contact a lawyer. Then they send you to a brutal prison in El Salvador.
But wait! You scream over and over. You can’t do this! I’m an American citizen!
Your screams have no effect.
…
Do you see how perilously close we are to the edge?
In a 2-1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the March 15 ruling from Boasberg that temporarily halted deportations under the Alien Enemies Act after ordering that the government’s “emergency motions for stay be denied,” according to court documents reviewed by Newsweek.
US Appeals Court Hands Trump Defeat in Deportation Case – Newsweek
Friends,
Let’s say you don’t like what the Trump administration is doing, or you don’t like Trump. You express these views on Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.
You take a two-week vacation in France. When you try to return to the United States, U.S. immigration agents arrest you. They detain you in solitary confinement. They don’t let you contact your family. They don’t let you contact a lawyer. Then they send you to a brutal prison in El Salvador.
But wait! You scream over and over. You can’t do this! I’m an American citizen!
Your screams have no effect.
Sound far-fetched? Recently, a French scientist was prevented from entering the United States because U.S. Border Patrol agents had found messages from him in which he had expressed his “personal opinion” to colleagues and friends about Trump’s science policies.
In another case, immigration agents detained Dr. Rasha Alawieh, a kidney transplant specialist and professor at Brown University who was trying to return to the United States after visiting relatives in Lebanon.
Dr. Alawieh was not allowed to do that. She was deported despite having a valid visa and a court order blocking her removal. Federal authorities alleged that they found “sympathetic photos and videos of prominent Hezbollah figures” in her phone and that she attended the funeral for the leader of Hezbollah in February.
But these are just the Trump regime’s allegations. No court has been able to review this evidence.
U.S. border officials concede they’re using more aggressive tactics these days, which the administration calls “enhanced vetting,” at ports of entry to the United States.
Okay, so maybe you don’t go abroad. You just express views that the current U.S. government regime dislikes. As a result, U.S. government agents arrest and detain and then “disappear” you. They say you’re a threat to national security.
Again, not as far-fetched as it sounds.
The regime has begun to target legal immigrants in the United States who have expressed views that the Trump regime believes threaten national security and undermine foreign policy.
Investigators for Immigration and Customs Enforcement have been searching videos, online posts, and news clippings of campus protests against the Israel-Hamas war.
To deport people living in the United States with green cards or valid visas, the Trump regime has invoked a rarely used provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act that gives the secretary of state sweeping power to expel foreigners who are seen as a threat to the country’s foreign policy interests.
Using that authority, ICE agents arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia graduate who has Palestinian heritage and took on a prominent role in the pro-Palestinian protests at the school, and Badar Khan Suri, an Indian citizen who has been studying and teaching at Georgetown.
Mr. Khalil has a green card, which means he is a legal permanent resident.
Apparently, the State Department believes Dr. Suri engaged in antisemitic speech that would undermine diplomatic efforts to get Israel and Hamas to agree to a ceasefire. He is in the United States on a visa for academics.
On Monday night, Dr. Suri was surrounded by masked Homeland Security agents outside his home in Virginia, arrested, and placed in an unmarked SUV. A judge has temporarily blocked his removal from the country.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, accuses Khalil of “siding with terrorists” and Dr. Suri of “spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media.”
But why should we believe her? She has provided no evidence. Why should we believe anything the Trump regime alleges? Neither Khalil nor Suri has been charged with a crime.
Or consider Venezuelan and Salvadoran men who have been detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Where are they now? Their families don’t know. They’ve been disappeared over the past week, with no explanation provided by the government over why or where they may be.
None of these cases has been reviewed by a court of law. There have been no independent findings that any of these people constitute a danger to the United States, or even that their views are dangerous.
There’s not even been an independent finding that these people are non-Americans. For all we know, they could be just like you or me — Americans who have expressed views that the Trump regime dislikes.
Do you see how perilously close we are to the edge?