The wife of Kilmar Abrego García, the Maryland man mistakenly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador by the Trump administration, has been moved to a safe house by supporters after U.S. officials posted a court document on social media that included the family’s address.
A US State Department cable was sent from the American Embassy in Kigali, Rwanda, on March 13th with some major news: Rwanda said it was willing to accept deportees from the United States who are unable to be sent to their country of origin for fear of persecution. A copy of the cable reviewed by The Handbasket in March confirmed the news. And now according to a new cable, which has also been reviewed by The Handbasket, the first person has officially been deported from the US to Rwanda via this new arrangement.
The Trump administration’s efforts to deport as many people as possible is loudly and publicly underway, most notably with the 238 men who were sent to El Salvador in March without due process. Unlike those cases, however, the administration has opted to quietly send Iraqi national Omar Abdulsattar Ameen from the US to Rwanda, wherein Rwanda acts as a “third country.” But it remains unclear what legal processes allowed for this to happen.
The cable, sent today—April 22, 2025—confirms Ameen’s “relocation” has already happened.
https://www.thehandbasket.co/p/us-rwanda-relocates-iraqi-refugee-omar-ameen
Some Democrats fear they’re playing into Trump’s hands by fighting his mass deportations rather than focusing on his failures on bread-and-butter issues like the cost of living.
But it’s not either-or. The theme that unites Trump’s inept handling of deportations, his trampling on human and civil rights, his rejection of the rule of law, his dictatorial centralization of power, and his utterly inept handling of the economy is the ineptness itself.
In his first term, not only did his advisers and Cabinet officials put guardrails around his crazier tendencies, but they also provided his first administration a degree of stability and focus. Now, it’s mayhem.
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/ineptitude-incompetence-stupidity
The commander of Fort McCoy was relieved of duty after the U.S. Army base failed to install photos of President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on a wall displaying their chain of command.
Col. Sheyla Baez Ramirez was suspended as garrison commander of Ft. McCoy in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. “This suspension is not related to any misconduct,” the U.S. Army Reserve Command said in a statement, “We have no further details to provide at this time while this matter is under review.”
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warned on Tuesday of possible prosecutions of former senior advisors who were fired during a probe into leaks of Pentagon information to the media, saying evidence would be handed over to the Department of Justice once the investigation is completed.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/pentagon-says-leak-probe-may-lead-us-prosecutions-2025-04-22
Detained pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil missed the birth of his son on Monday after US authorities refused a temporary release, his wife said.
A graduate student at New York’s Columbia University who was one of the most visible leaders of nationwide campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza, Khalil was arrested by immigration authorities on March 8.
He was ordered deported even though he was a permanent US resident through his American citizen wife, Noor Abdalla.
Abdalla said that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) denied a request to release Khalil temporarily for the birth of their child.
“This was a purposeful decision by ICE to make me, Mahmoud and our son suffer,” she said in a statement.
The outlooks for the U.S. and global economies have significantly worsened in the wake of President Donald Trump’s tariffs and the uncertainty they have created, the International Monetary Fund said Tuesday.
The IMF said that the global economy will grow just 2.8% this year, down from its forecast in January of 3.3%, according to its latest World Economic Outlook. And in 2026, global growth will be 3%, the fund predicts, also below its previous 3.3% estimate.
Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) became the first House Republican to suggest that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is no longer fit to keep his job, in scathing comments made to Politico’s Rachel Bade on Monday.
“I had concerns from the get-go because Pete Hegseth didn’t have a lot of experience,” Bacon told Bade, following the bombshell revelations over the weekend that Hegseth had shared national security details in a second Signal group chat – this time one that included his wife.
Bacon, a retired Air Force general, added, “ … I find it unacceptable, and I wouldn’t tolerate it if I was in charge,” …,
Colorado officials say President Donald Trump’s administration appears to be wielding its “political power” to give unprecedented help to a former county election clerk who was convicted of allowing Trump supporters to access election equipment after his 2020 defeat.
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Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser wants Magistrate Judge Scott T. Varholak to block the Justice Department from getting involved. Lawyers from Weiser’s office said the Justice Department has not given any good reason why it should intervene and has just repeated Peters’ arguments.
“Tina Peters was not prosecuted because of any political pressure; she was prosecuted because she broke the law. And just as they did not prosecute her for political reasons, her prosecutors will not accede to any political pressure to give her preferred treatment in sentencing or terms of confinement,” lawyers from Weiser’s office said in a filing.
In late January, Ricardo Prada Vásquez, a Venezuelan immigrant working in a delivery job in Detroit, picked up an order at a McDonald’s. He was heading to the address when he erroneously turned onto the Ambassador Bridge, which leads to Canada. It is a common mistake even for those who live in the Michigan border city. But for Mr. Prada, 32, it proved fateful.
The U.S. authorities took Mr. Prada into custody when he attempted to re-enter the country; he was put in detention and ordered deported. On March 15, he told a friend in Chicago that he was among a number of detainees housed in Texas who expected to be repatriated to Venezuela.
That evening, the Trump administration flew three planes carrying Venezuelan migrants from the Texas facility to El Salvador, where they have been ever since, locked up in a maximum-security prison and denied contact with the outside world.
But Mr. Prada has not been heard from or seen. He is not on the list of 238 people who were deported to El Salvador that day. He does not appear in the photos and videos released by the authorities of shackled men with shaved heads.
