Trump's diciest deportations, examined

Washington Post

09-05-2025

On no issue has the clash between the Trump administration and the courts been as intense and consequential as it has been on deportations.
The administration has repeatedly flouted and possibly defied court orders. The resolutions in these cases will say a lot about how much the courts can constrain a president who is clearly trying to wield an extraordinary amount of power — and whether we could drift into a constitutional crisis.
But while that legal battle has huge ramifications, the political battle is also important. Democrats have somewhat uneasily highlighted the deportations as the epitome of a lawless president. Some are concerned about aligning too closely with the causes of undocumented immigrants, coming out of an election in which Republicans were seen as stronger on border issues.
And as the details of those individual deportations trickle out, it's become clear that the administration has created some major potential perception problems for itself. The Washington Post this past weekend published an authoritative look at how the administration's efforts were often rushed and arguably hasty, and some of the results certainly speak to that.
Several cases appear to be particularly problematic. Let's run through them.
This has been the most widely discussed deportation, with the U.S. Supreme Court even weighing in at one point.
To recap: The Trump administration has acknowledged in court that it wrongly deported Abrego García to a brutal El Salvador prison, saying it was due to an 'administrative error.' (Abrego García is an undocumented immigrant, but the government wasn't legally allowed to deport him to El Salvador, specifically.)
But despite courts of all levels ordering the administration to 'facilitate' Abrego García's return, the administration has resisted taking significant steps to accomplish that. President Donald Trump recently agreed that he could get Abrego García returned if he wanted to, but he added, 'We have lawyers that don't want to do this.' The administration has argued that courts can't dictate such foreign policy actions.
The American people, though, do want Abrego García returned. A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll two weeks ago showed Americans said by 16 points that Abrego García should be returned. A YouGov poll, meanwhile, showed they said 53-21 that the administration should comply with the Supreme Court's order to facilitate his return.
The polls also show Americans disagree with the El Salvador deportations in principle. The administration has sent many people it has claimed are gang members but who don't have apparent criminal records to the notorious prison — as many as three-fourths of them, according to a '60 Minutes' report.
An earlier YouGov poll showed Americans said more than 2-to-1 that people without criminal records should not be sent to the El Salvador prison. A CNN poll last month showed Americans opposed deporting any migrants to the prison, 51 percent to 29 percent.
While Abrego García has gotten the most attention, he's not the only wrongly deported man. A Trump-appointed judge recently ruled that the administration also wrongly deported a 20-year-old identified only as 'Cristian' to the El Salvador prison.
U.S. District Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher ruled that the deportation violated a legal settlement that allowed certain migrants who arrived as unaccompanied minors to remain in the United States as they pursue asylum claims. She went further than other courts in ordering the administration to not only 'facilitate' Cristian's return, but to make 'a good faith request' that El Salvador release him. The administration has also resisted this order.
Some of the above poll numbers also apply here. But it's worth emphasizing that having wrongly deported a second man could confirm many people's notions about how careless this effort has been.
An Economist-YouGov poll released before these two wrongful deportations came to light showed a majority of Americans believed the administration was making at least 'some' mistakes in its deportations. Just one-third thought there were no mistakes or 'only a few.'
A big question in just about all of these deportation controversies is whether these men are actually gang members, as the administration has claimed. That doesn't necessarily matter when it comes to their due process rights, but it does matter when it comes to public perception.
And perhaps nobody epitomizes that portion of this controversy like Andry José Hernández Romero. The New Yorker initially reported on his case in late March, identifying him as a makeup artist from Venezuela. Like others, the administration identified him as a gang member based on tattoos, which experts say can be unreliable.
It would obviously be a major problem if the administration is sending not just people without criminal records but also non-gang members to the El Salvador prison. And that would again reinforce people's reservations about these deportations.
The late-March Economist-YouGov poll showed just 15 percent of Americans believed that all of the Venezuelans who were deported to the El Salvador prison were gang members. And a more recent YouGov poll showed a slight plurality of Americans doubted that Abrego García was actually a gang member.
In other words, the administration hasn't convinced people that these people meet the low threshold it has set for instant deportation to a brutal foreign prison.
The Washington Post reported late last month that three U.S. citizen children from two families have been sent to another country. One of them was a 4-year old with Stage 4 cancer who was sent without their medications, according to the family's lawyer.
The administration has sought to argue that these children weren't 'deported' because their undocumented mothers allegedly wanted to bring them. But a Trump-appointed judge has cast doubt on that explanation and raised strong concerns that the administration has now sent U.S. citizens to another country 'with no meaningful process.'
This appears to be a problem for the administration. A YouGov poll last week showed Americans said by a 55-26 margin that it was 'unacceptable' to send to another country the U.S. citizen children of undocumented immigrants.
Americans have also generally disliked the idea of deporting undocumented migrants who have citizen children, if it means separating families (which happened in this case). A Scripps-Ipsos poll last year showed Americans opposed mass deportations if they led to that outcome, 57-38.
And despite the administration's arguments, Trump has floated the idea of sending U.S. citizens — criminals, specifically — to the El Salvador prison. That doesn't appear legally possible. (U.S. citizens have also been caught up in Trump's immigration crackdown in other ways, including being detained.)
The early-April YouGov poll showed Americans opposed sending U.S. citizens to foreign prisons, 68-16.
The Washington Post reported over the weekend that at least two of the men deported to the El Salvador prison had won State Department approval to resettle as refugees in the U.S. That process includes extensive vetting by the federal government.
The early April YouGov survey showed just 14 percent of Americans supported sending refugees without criminal records to the El Salvador prison. About 7 in 10 opposed it.