The Emergency Is Here

New York Times

17-04-2025

transcript
The Emergency Is Here
The emergency is here. The crisis is now. It's not six months away. It's not another Supreme Court ruling from happening. It is happening now. Maybe not to you, not yet, but to others. To real people whose names we know, whose stories we know. The president of the United States is disappearing people to a Salvadoran prison for terrorists. A prison known by its initials, CECOT. A prison built for disappearance. A prison where there is no education or remediation or recreation, because it is a prison that does not intend to release its inhabitants back out into the world. It is a prison where the only way out — in the words of Salvador's justice minister — is in a coffin. [CLIP] Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem visited the most notorious prison in the Americas to drum up some support for the Trump administration, deporting hundreds of men there without a trial. NOEM: First of all, do not come to our country illegally. You will be removed and you will be prosecuted. [CLIP] NOEM: But know that this facility is one of the tools in our tool kit that we will use if you commit crimes against the American people. [END CLIP] On Monday, President Trump said in the Oval Office, in front of the eye of the cameras, sitting next to El Salvador's president, President Bukele, that he would like to do this to U.S. citizens as well. [CLIP] TRUMP: I'd like to go a step further. I mean, I say I said it to Pam, I don't what the laws are. We always have to obey the laws, but we also have homegrown criminals. [END CLIP] Why do we need El Salvador's prisons? We have prisons here. But for the Trump administration, El Salvador's prisons are the answer to the problem of American law. The Trump administration holds a view that anyone they send to El Salvador is beyond the reach of American law. They've been disappeared not just from our country, but from our system and from any protection or process that our system affords. [CLIP] TRUMP: They're great facilities. Very strong facilities. And they don't play games. [END CLIP] In our prisons, prisoners can be reached by our lawyers, by our courts, by our mercy. In El Salvador, they cannot. Let me tell you one of their names, one of their stories, as best we know it. Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia is from El Salvador. His mother, Cecilia, ran a pupuseria in San Salvador. A local gang, Barrio 18, began extorting the business, demanding monthly and then weekly payments. If the family didn't pay, Barrio 18 threatened to murder Kilmar's brother Cesar or rape their sisters. Eventually, Barrio 18 demanded Cesar join their gang, at which point, the family sent Cesar to America. Then Barrio demanded the same of Kilmar. And Kilmar, at age 16, was sent to America too. This was around 2011. This is what we mean when we say he entered illegally. A 16-year-old, fleeing the only home he's ever known. Afraid for his life. Abrego Garcia's life here just seems to have been a life. Not an easy one. He lived in Maryland. He worked in construction. He met a woman — her name is Jennifer — a U.S. citizen. She had two children from a past relationship. One has epilepsy, the other autism. In 2019, they had a child together. That child is deaf in one ear and also has autism. Jennifer was pregnant in 2019 on the day Abrego Garcia dropped one kid off at school, dropped the other off with a babysitter, and drove to Home Depot to try to find construction work. He was arrested for loitering outside Home Depot. Asked if he was a gang member, he said no. And he was put into ICE detention. The story gets stranger from here. About four hours after he was picked up — and that appears to be the first contact he's ever had with local police — a detective produces an allegation, citing a confidential informant that Abrego Garcia is actually a gang member. Abrego Garcia has no criminal record. Not one here. Not one in El Salvador. He was accused, strangely, of being part of a gang that operates in New York, a state that he has never lived in. Whoever produced the allegation, they were never cross-examined. And when Abrego, Garcia's attorney tried to get more information, he was told that the detective behind the accusation had been suspended, and the officers in the gang unit would not speak to him. Abrego Garcia's partner Jennifer said she was 'shocked when the government said he should stay detained because Kilmar is an MS-13 gang member. Kilmar is not and has never been a gang member. I'm certain of that.' In June of 2019, while Abrego Garcia was still detained, he and Jennifer got married, exchanging rings through an officer separated by a pane of glass. Later that year, a judge ruled that Abrego Garcia could not be deported back to Salvador because he might be murdered by Barrio 18 — that his fear was credible. Abrego Garcia was then set free. Each year since then, he has checked in with immigration authorities. He's been employed as a sheet metal apprentice. He's a member of the local union. He was studying for a vocational license at the University of Maryland. There is no evidence anywhere, offered by anyone that has suggested Abrego Garcia poses a threat to anyone in this country. But on March 12, Abrego Garcia was pulled over while driving, his 5-year-old in the back seat. He was told his immigration status had changed. On March 15, in defiance of the 2019 court ruling, Abrego Garcia was flown to El Salvador and imprisoned at CECOT as a terrorist. It was a mistake. [CLIPS] The Trump administration is now acknowledging they wrongly deported an immigrant to that notorious prison in El Salvador, calling it an administrative error, an administrative error, a clerical error. It was an administrative error. Mistakenly deporting a Maryland father. This so-called administration error has destroyed my family's happiness. My children's innocence. [END CLIPS] I want to read to you from the editorial of The National Review, probably the country's leading conservative magazine. Here is the first sentence: 'The court fight over Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia is a most unusual one, in that no one denies that the government violated the law in deporting him.' No one denies. [CLIP] TRUMP: If the Supreme Court said, bring somebody back, I would do that. I respect the Supreme Court. [END CLIP] This case has made its way to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court ordered that the administration, ''facilitate' Abrego Garcia's release from custody in El Salvador and ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.' I feel I don't have the proper words to describe this next part. How grotesque it is. How dangerous it is. The Trump administration has no argument that they did not deport Abrego Garcia unlawfully. What they deny is that they have the authority to bring him back. [CLIP] MILLER: Because he is a citizen of El Salvador. That is the president of El Salvador. Your question is about per the court can only be directed to him. [CLIP] BUKELE: How can I return him to the United States? Like I smuggle him into the United States? Or what do I do? Of course I'm not going to do it. It's like — I mean, the question is preposterous. How can I smuggle a terrorist to the United States? I don't have the power to return him to the United States. [END CLIP] That Oval Office meeting between Trump and Bukele was a moment when the mask fully slipped off. If nothing else, if nothing else, Trump could slap those tariffs he is so fond of on El Salvador. But we are not angry at Bukele here. We, the government of America, are paying Bukele to imprison Abrego Garcia and others. Bukele is not doing this against Donald Trump's wishes. He is Donald Trump's subcontractor. I thought Jon Stewart pinpointed part of its horror well. [CLIP] STEWART: Well, they're [expletive] enjoying this. Each of them declaring that there was nothing they could do for Abrego Garcia. No way to allow him his day in court. No way to allow the American legal system to do its job and assess whether he is a danger. No way to follow the clear order of the Supreme Court. And from their perspective, maybe they're right. Because here's a scary thing that I think sits at least partially beneath their calculus: Politically, they cannot let Abrego Garcia out, nor any of the other people they sent to CECOT without due process. Because what if he was released? What if he returned to the United States? What if he could tell his own story? What if, as seems quite likely, he's been brutalized and tortured by Trump's Salvadoran henchmen? Well, he can't be allowed to tell the American people that. To the Trump administration. Abrego Garcia is not a mistake. He's a liability. And he's a test. A test of their power to do this to anyone. A test of whether the loophole they believe they have found, a loophole where if they can just get you on a plane, then they can hustle you beyond our laws and leave you in the grips of the kind of gulags they wish that they had here. [CLIP] REPORTER: Does that include, potentially, U.S. citizens, fully naturalized Americans? [END CLIP] They're not ashamed of this. They're not denying their desire to do it to more people. [CLIP] TRUMP: Yeah, that includes them. Why? Do you think there's a special category of person? They're as bad as anybody that comes in. We have bad ones too. And I'm all for it. Because we can do things with the president for less money and have great security. [END CLIP] We are not even 100 days into this administration, and we are already faced with this level of horror. I can feel the desire to look away from it, even in me. What all this demands is too inconvenient, too disruptive. But Trump has said it all plainly and publicly. He intends to send those he hates to foreign prisons beyond the reach of U.S. law. He does not care — he will not even seek to discover — if those he is sending into these foreign hells are guilty of what he claims. Because this is not about their guilt, it is about his power. This is how dictatorships work. Trump has always been clear about who he is and the kind of power he wants. And now he's using that power. And everyone around him is defending his right to wield that power. [CLIP] RUBIO: The foreign policy of the United States is conducted by the President of the United States, not by a court. And no court in the United States has a right to conduct the foreign policy of the United States. It's that simple. End of story. [END CLIP] [CLIP] MILLER: The Supreme Court said exactly what Marco said — that no court has the authority to compel the foreign policy of the United States. [END CLIP] [CLIP] BONDI: That's up to Salvador. If they want to return him. That's not up to us. [CLIP] NOEM: Mr. President, you wanted people to know that there was consequences if you break our laws and harm our people and endanger families. And this is a clear consequence for the worst of the worst — that we have somewhere to put them. [END CLIP] If President Donald Trump decides that you are to rot in a foreign prison, then that is his right. And you? You have no rights. And if he is capable of that, if he wants that, then what else is he capable of? What else does he want? And if the people who serve him are willing to give him that, to defend his right to do that, what else will they give him? What else will they defend? This is the emergency. Like it or not, it's here.
This is an edited transcript of an episode of 'The Ezra Klein Show.' You can listen to the conversation by following or subscribing to the show on the NYT Audio App, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.
The emergency is here.
The crisis is now. It is not six months away. It is not another Supreme Court ruling away from happening. It's happening now.
Perhaps not to you, not yet. But to others. Real people. We know their names. We know their stories.
The president of the United States is disappearing people to a Salvadoran prison for terrorists. A prison known by its initials — CECOT. A prison built for disappearance. A prison where there is no education or remediation or recreation, because it is a prison that does not intend to release its inhabitants back out into the world. It is a prison where the only way out, in the words of El Salvador's so-called justice minister, is a coffin.
On Monday, President Trump said, in the Oval Office, in front of the cameras, sitting next to President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, that he would like to do this to U.S. citizens, as well.
Archived clip of Donald Trump: If it's a homegrown criminal, I have no problem. Now, we're studying the laws right now. Pam is studying. If we can do that, that's good. And I'm talking about violent people. I'm talking about really bad people. Really bad people. Every bit as bad as the ones coming in.
He told Bukele that he would need to build five more of these prisons because America has so many people Trump wants to send to them.
Archived clip of Donald Trump: Why? Do you think there's a special category of person? They're as bad as anybody that comes in. We have bad ones, too. And I'm all for it. Because we can do things with the president for less money and have great security. And we have a huge prison population. We have a huge number of prisons. And then we have the private prisons, and some are operated well, I guess, and some aren't.
Why do we need El Salvador's prisons? We have prisons here. But for the Trump administration, El Salvador's prisons are the answer to the problem of American law.
The Trump administration holds the view that anyone they send to El Salvador is beyond the reach of American law — they have been disappeared not only from our country but from our system — and from any protection or process that system affords.
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