A college student was stopped after turning right on red. Now she could be deported
Ximena Arias-Cristobal has lived in Georgia 's Whitfield County since she was four years old.
On Monday, Dalton Police Department officers pulled over the 19-year-old college student for allegedly making an illegal right turn at a red light. She told officers she didn't have her international driver's license on her, according to a police report, and she was taken into custody.
Now she faces the possibility of being deported from the country along with her family.
Arias-Cristobal was wearing chains around her wrists and ankles when she was moved to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center this week, according to friends and family.
Online records reviewed by The Independent show she is jailed inside the Stewart Detention Center, roughly four hours away from Dalton in Lumpkin, home to one of the largest and most notorious immigration detention centers in the country, operated by private prison firm CoreCivic, formerly the Corrections Corporation of America. At least 10 people died in the facility between 2017 and 2024, according to a report from the American Civil Liberties Union, which had previously criticized the facility for inadequate conditions and due process violations.
Arias-Cristobal's parents did not have legal permission to enter the United States from Mexico in 2010 when she was a toddler, and she did not qualify for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which ended the year before her family entered the country, according to family friends.
She is not expected to appear before an immigration judge for several weeks, and she is isolated from her family members — except one. Her father Jose Francisco Arias-Tovar was recently arrested after going 19 miles over the speed limit and is inside the same ICE detention center, according to online records.
Arias-Cristobal is a recent graduate of Dalton High School and a cross country athlete now attending Dalton State College. She was enrolled for the spring 2025 semester, a college spokesperson told The Independent.
The family came to the United States 'with big dreams because they wanted a big future for my older sister,' Arias-Cristobal's younger sister told Georgia's WTVC NewsChannel 9.
'My sister goes to college, and she was an honor student since middle school. And she runs. She loves to run. It's her passion, and the only reason they came is to follow my sister's dreams,' she said.
Arias-Cristobal was a babysitter for family friend Hannah Jones for years, Jones said.
'We adore her,' she wrote on a GoFundMe that has raised nearly $50,000 as of this publication.
Republican state Representative Kacey Carpenter is pressing an immigration judge for her release.
'The reality is, the conversation has always been that we need to get hard criminals out of the country,' Carpenter told NewsChannel 9. 'Unfortunately, the people that aren't hard criminals are getting caught up in the wash. It seems like we are much better at catching people that are committing misdemeanors than people that are actually a danger to society.'
Polling has routinely shown a wide majority of American support legislation that would open a pathway to permanent legal status for young immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children. In January, days before Donald Trump entered office, a federal appeals court ruled against DACA, but the decision did not deliver any immediate changes for the program's more than 500,000 beneficiaries, teeing up a Supreme Court challenge.
'The overwhelming majority of the American public' supports legal protections for immigrants who entered the country with their parents as children, said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior Fellow with the American Immigration Council.
'It makes no sense to deport this woman. We make the USA worse off by doing it,' he wrote.
The Independent has requested comment from ICE and the Department of Homeland Security.
Dalton Police is among local law enforcement agencies with a 'jail enforcement model' agreement with ICE, which allows federal officers to 'identify and process removable aliens — with criminal or pending criminal charges — who are arrested by state or local law enforcement agencies.'
The Trump administration is seeking to expand the use of those so-called 287(g) agreements, named after Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which lays the groundwork for partnerships between local police and federal law enforcement.
Arias-Cristobal's arrest follows several high-profile cases across the country involving immigrant families with mixed legal statuses, as the president and immigration officials embark on a sweeping, aggressive anti-immigration agenda.
though it's unclear how the administration is counting those numbers.
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The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Kristi Noem: the made-for-TV official executing Trump's mass deportations
Little more than a year ago, Kristi Noem's political prospects appeared to be in freefall. The then South Dakota governor was criss-crossing the country on an ill-fated book tour, widely seen, at least initially, as an audition to be Donald Trump's running mate. Instead, Noem found herself on the defensive – a position Trump never likes to be in – after revealing in her memoir that she had shot the family's 'untrainable' hunting dog, a 14-month old wirehair pointer named Cricket. Even in Trumpworld, where controversy can be a form of currency, the disclosure shocked. In the weeks that followed, she faded from contention and the breathless veepstakes rumor mill moved on. By the time Trump selected JD Vance as his vice-presidential nominee, Noem's path forward on the national stage was unclear. But a year is a lifetime in politics, the saying goes. It is even more true today, in Trump's warp speed Washington, where Noem now leads the sprawling department at the heart of the president's hardline vision to carry out largest deportation campaign in American history. Since assuming office as the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in January, Noem has played a starring role in the second Trump administration, executing the White House's immigration agenda with fierce loyalty Trumpian defiance and a made-for-TV style. Her approach has been hailed by supporters as a full-throttle push to 'Make America Safe Again' and condemned by critics as theatrical posturing with cruel – and possibly unlawful – consequences. The department oversees a vast portfolio, with a workforce of 260,000 spread across 22 federal agencies, including the Secret Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) and the nation's premier cybersecurity agency. Yet immigration has dominated her tenure. In her first days in office, Noem, 53, revoked several Biden-era programs and policies – among them initiatives crafted in response to a global rise in migration that brought record numbers of people to the US-Mexico border and helped seed the political ground for Trump's comeback in 2024. She has also deputized personnel from across federal agencies and enlisted local law enforcement to expand the administration's deportation operations. And she has been front and center in many of the administration's most closely watched legal clashes, including in the case of a Maryland man mistakenly deported to a prison in El Salvador. On Friday, in a stunning reversal by the administration, he was returned to the US, where he now faces criminal charges. 'Justice awaits this Salvadoran man,' Noem declared on X. At the department, Noem has embraced the role of high-profile surrogate. She has toured the southern border on horseback, wearing a cowboy hat, and on an ATV, camera in tow. During a recent international tour, Noem met with world leaders, served a Memorial Day meal to coast guard personnel at a base in Bahrain, and squeezed in a camel ride. While in Poland, she delivered a highly unusual endorsement of the nationalist presidential candidate, Karol Nawrocki. 'Donald Trump is a strong leader for us, but you have an opportunity to have just as strong of a leader in Karol, if you make him the leader of this country,' she said at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Warsaw. (He won.) But it has hardly been entirely smooth sailing. During a recent Senate hearing, Noem botched a question about habeas corpus – the legal right of people detained by the government to challenge their detention, guaranteed in the constitution. When she claimed habeas corpus was the president's 'constitutional right' to deport people, the Democratic senator of New Hampshire Maggie Hassan, interjected: 'That's incorrect.' Such is the trajectory of an administration official in Trump's 'central casting' cabinet – a camera-ready cast that includes Fox News personalities, a wrestling impresario and a Kennedy – all of whom serve at the pleasure of a president who prizes public displays of adulation and, perhaps above all else, unblinking execution of his agenda. DHS maintains that under Noem's stewardship, the department has returned to its 'core mission of securing the homeland'. 'The world is hearing our message,' said DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, pointing to record-low border crossings since Trump took office. 'Thanks to President Trump and Secretary Noem, we have the most secure border in history.' But critics say her approach marks a striking departure from the way past secretaries have led the department. 'The secretary went before Congress and gave an incorrect definition of habeas corpus,' said Nayna Gupta, policy director at the nonpartisan immigration advocacy group the American Immigration Council. 'That level of incompetence paired with the political theater, I think, is quite distinct from prior administrations.' Noem's first months on the job have played out like a rolling production, broadcast across the official social media accounts of the homeland security secretary. Noem, dressed in tactical gear, accompanied agents on a pre-dawn raid in New York, live-tweeting the operation as it unfolded. In February, she toured a nascent tent camp at Guantánamo Bay erected as part of the administration's costly – and controversial – mission to detain people at the US navy base in south-eastern Cuba. In April, Chaya Raichik, the far-right activist behind the LibsofTikTok account, joined Noem for a 'sting operation' in Phoenix. In a social media post, a flak jacket-clad Noem cheered the arrests of 'Human traffickers. Drug Smugglers. 18th Street Gang members' while toting a semi-automatic rifle pointed toward an agent's head. 'Kristi Noem doesn't know how to hold a gun or run the Department of Homeland Security,' the Arizona senator Ruben Gallego, a Democrat who served as a lance corporal in the US Marines, chided on X. At a recent Senate hearing, Noem defended her travel, saying that her on-the-ground presence 'meant the world' to staff and personnel after four years of what she has described as neglect by Biden administration officials. But even allies have occasionally winced at the pageantry. Conservative media personality Megyn Kelly said Noem was doing an 'amazing' job protecting the homeland, but, on an episode of her eponymous podcast, begged her not to 'cosplay Ice agent'. The former Fox News host, gesturing to her own cascading tresses and studio make-up, said of Noem: 'She looks like I look right now, but she's out in the field with her gun being like: 'We're gonna go kick some ass.'' 'Just stop trying to glamorize the mission,' Kelly advised. Noem has long been deliberate about shaping her public image. As governor in 2019, she installed a 'six-figure TV studio' in the basement of South Dakota's capitol building, according to a local news investigation. (Noem's office told the outlet the expense was far less than flying to the nearest studio for her frequent Fox News appearances.) In her second term, she starred in a series of workforce recruitment ads, appearing as a nurse, a plumber and a highway patrol officer in an effort to attract job seekers to the state. 'Kristi Noem, you might say, is very public-facing,' said Jon Schaff, a political science professor at Northern State University in South Dakota, who has observed Noem's political career. 'She likes the celebrity aspects of politics.' It's a trait she shares with her boss, the former host of The Apprentice. As his homeland security chief, Noem said Trump asked her to cut a series of ads that amplify the administration's message. She obliged. In February, DHS launched a multimillion dollar international ad campaign in which Noem warns undocumented immigrants living in the country to 'leave now' or the government will 'hunt you down'. DHS says the ads have had an impact. While the department did not provide statistics, Tom Homan, the border czar, recently told reporters that at least 8,500 people have self-deported through the government's 'CBP Home' app and estimated that 'thousands' more were leaving without notice. In March, Noem delivered the message in person. Amid a legal standoff over the administration's decision to deport scores of Venezuelans to El Salvador under an 18th-century wartime law, the secretary traveled to the country. Wearing combat boots, an Ice baseball cap and a $50,000 Rolex on her wrist, she toured a notorious Salvadorian prison holding scores of Venezuelan migrants deported from the US. Standing in front of a cell packed with prisoners bare from the waist up, Noem spoke into the camera: 'If you come to our country illegally, this is one of the consequences you could face.' On Wednesday, a federal judge ruled that the men sent to El Salvador must be given a chance to challenge their removals, finding that many had likely been imprisoned on the basis of 'flimsy, even frivolous, accusations' of gang membership. DHS said it provides adequate due process to all deportees. In public statements, officials at DHS and the White House repeat that their mass removal effort targets the 'worst of the worst'. 'We are focusing on dangerous criminals,' Noem said during a Sunday appearance on Fox News. 'We are going out there and ensuring that people that repeatedly break our laws are being held accountable.' But the far-reaching campaign has ensnared legal residents, children with cancer and even US citizens. In multiple instances, the administration has blamed 'administrative errors' for deporting Salvadorians who had court orders protecting them from removal. This week, the government returned to the US a Guatemalan man wrongfully deported to Mexico. 'The administration wants to project fear and cruelty, with no limits as to how far they will go,' said Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of the pro-immigration advocacy group America's Voice. 'It's working in the sense that it is creating fear. There are pockets of communities that are changing their whole lives to adjust to the fact that our government is now using all its levers to go after immigrants.' A self-described 'farm kid' who took over her family's ranch after her father's sudden death, Noem catapulted to national prominence during the Covid pandemic. As governor of South Dakota, she mirrored Trump's handling of the virus, denouncing mask mandates and stay-at-home orders even as her state struggled, at times mightily, to contain its spread. In 2020, Noem feted Trump in South Dakota with a star-spangled Independence Day celebration. It was then that Noem famously gifted him a 4ft replica of Mount Rushmore that depicted his likeness alongside the faces of the four presidents carved into the granite over the Black Hills of South Dakota. 'At that point, she went all in and being Maga really became a part of her image,' Schaff said. Noem worked studiously to burnish her national profile, becoming a regular presence in conservative media. She adopted Trump's rhetoric, especially on border security. Despite South Dakota's considerable distance from the US-Mexico border – roughly 1,000 miles north – Noem made the issue a top priority. 'South Dakota is directly affected by this invasion,' she declared in an address last year. In 2021, Noem deployed South Dakota national guard troops to Texas to assist with the state's border enforcement efforts. Yet residents recall that she did not deploy them to help recovery efforts after historic summer floods. Until recently, Noem was banned from setting foot on tribal lands in her state, after accusing tribal leaders of complicity with drug cartels – an allegation they strongly deny. During her Senate confirmation hearing, held days before Trump was sworn in, Democrats questioned her credentials for leading the vast department responsible for border enforcement, disaster response and federal protection. Noem acknowledged her nomination may have come as a 'bit of a surprise'. But she said she had asked Trump directly for the position because it was his 'No 1 priority'. The job, she said, required someone 'strong enough' to carry out the president's hardline immigration agenda. So far, Noem has proven to be a faithful executor, carving out a role that is part enforcer-in-chief, part high-wattage messenger. In an early interview, she vowed to leverage the 'broad and extensive' authorities at her disposal. With Noem at the helm, DHS has targeted blue states and cities over their sanctuary city policies, escalated the administration's feud with Harvard by moving to block the university from admitting international students, and departed from longstanding precedent to allow immigration enforcement in sensitive locations, such as places of worship, schools and hospitals. In visceral scenes, masked Ice agents in plain clothes have arrested foreign students and academics on the streets. Internally, Noem has administered polygraph tests to uncover leaks to the press about upcoming immigration raids. She works with Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff and chief architect of Trump's immigration strategy, as well as 'border czar' Homan, both empowered by the president to help meet the administration's immigration crackdown. Though Noem frequently touts the administration's success removing, in the secretary's words, 'dirt bags' and 'sickos', the White House has expressed disappointment with the pace of deportations. In a tense meeting with immigration officials last month, Noem and Miller announced an aggressive new target: demanding that federal agents more than triple their arrest figures from earlier this year to 3,000 people a day. Internal emails obtained by the Guardian show senior officials at Ice have instructed staff to 'turn the creative knob up to 11' as the agency scrambles to ramp up arrests. On Tuesday, Ice reportedly detained more than 2,200 people in a single day – an agency record. Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement that the president was 'thankful for Secretary Noem's partnership in fulfilling one of his most important promises to the American people: deporting illegal aliens'. She continued: 'The Trump administration takes this promise seriously and will continue working to supercharge the pace of deportations and Make America safe again.' As the Trump administration turns to increasingly aggressive deportation tactics, federal courts are pushing back, with Noem's DHS at the center of the legal firestorm. In a ruling last month, a federal judge found DHS had 'unquestionably' violated a court order on deportations to third countries. In response to the growing number of challenges to the administration's immigration policies, Noem has largely channeled the president's defiant posture. 'Suck it,' she gloated on X, after a lawsuit against the department involving detained migrants was voluntarily dismissed. While courts have hindered Trump's mass removal effort, the supreme court handed the administration a major victory last week, temporarily allowing the US to strip provisional legal protections from hundreds of thousands of immigrants who left dangerous and unstable countries, potentially exposing them to deportation. On Wednesday, Trump unveiled a sweeping new travel ban targeting 12 countries, many of them majority-Muslim or African, framing the order as a response to the recent attack at an event in Boulder, Colorado, honoring Israeli hostages. In a video posted on social media, Noem announced that US immigration authorities had taken the family of the Egyptian national charged in the attack into federal custody. Within 24 hours, a federal judge blocked their deportation, citing constitutional concerns and warning that their swift removal could violate their due process. 'The actions of this secretary have been manifestly and almost universally determined to be unlawful and unconstitutional,' said Paul Rosenzweig, a former deputy assistant secretary for policy at the DHS. Noem, he said, seemed to be operating on 'political basis alone,' reorienting the department around Trump's priorities. 'This isn't working like it's supposed to,' he said. On Capitol Hill, the Republican-controlled Congress is racing to deliver Trump his 'big, beautiful bill' that would unlock tens of billions of dollars for mass deportations, detention facilities and construction of the border wall. House Republicans, who zealously investigated – and ultimately impeached – Noem's predecessor, Alejandro Mayorkas – have so far shown little appetite for serious oversight inquiries of Trump's cabinet officials. Outside of Washington, public concern is rising. A recent survey found nearly half of Americans believe the administration's deportation polices have 'gone too far'. If Republicans lose the House in next year's midterms, Noem's leadership of DHS would likely face much tougher congressional scrutiny. One Democrat, the representative Delia Ramirez, has already called for Noem's resignation. 'The theatrics of terror and erosion of our constitutional rights are daily DHS violations under Secretary Noem,' Ramirez, who sits on the House homeland security committee, said. Yet the secretary, now firmly re-established at the center of Trump's orbit, appears undeterred. Her embrace of the spotlight – and unflinching execution of Trump's vision – has some wondering whether she's looking even farther ahead, perhaps to 2028, where the battle to become Trump's heir is already taking shape. 'Past secretaries of DHS have wanted to be, not seen, but heard,' Rosenzweig said. 'I'll put it another way, Noem is the first DHS secretary who's running for president.'
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘I'm paranoid all the time': surveillance and fear in a city of immigrants as White House ramps up deportations
Two months after fleeing death threats in Colombia, Juan landed a construction job in New York. But on his first day, the bulky GPS monitor strapped to his ankle caught the manager's attention. It wouldn't fit inside standard work boots. The boss shook his head. 'Come back when you've resolved your status,' he said. Since arriving in the US with his teenage daughter to seek asylum, Juan has lived in a state of constant anxiety. 'It feels like I committed a crime, like they're going to arrest me at any moment,' he said, speaking near the migrant shelter where they now live in Queens. Juan started wearing oversized pants to hide the monitor, a style he finds uncomfortable. 'I'm paranoid all the time,' he said. Genesis, a 25-year-old from Panama, lives in the same shelter as Juan with her two-year-old. She has worn an ankle monitor for more than 18 months. 'When I go to the park with my son, other parents don't want their kids to play with him,' she said. The stigma of the monitor, she added, makes her feel like a bad mother. Genesis fled after members of Tren de Aragua, a transnational criminal group from Venezuela, threatened her life there, she said. Juan and Genesis are among the more than 12,000 immigrants in New York enrolled in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) schemes called Alternatives to Detention (ATD) and the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP). Most of them are asylum seekers from Central or South America who came to the city seeking safety and the chance to work, according to a recent report from the American Bar Association, a national group of lawyers. They don't have any criminal convictions, yet without legal status, they live under constant surveillance as their cases wend their way through the badly backed-up US immigration court system. Under ATD-ISAP, people can be monitored through GPS ankle bracelets, wrist-worn trackers, telephone check-ins or a mobile app called SmartLINK. The number of undocumented people under electronic monitoring related to their lack of immigration status alone is believed to have more than doubled since 2021, when the number in the US was about 85,000, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (Trac) at Syracuse University, although the organization 'advises the public to be extremely cautious' about data on this from Ice. Ice's internal budget for ATD-ISAP has increased from $28m in 2006 to nearly $470m by the end of 2024. While attention in the second Trump administration has been on detention and deportation, electronic monitoring is still a significant factor in many immigrants' lives and has been increasingly so in recent years. Ice promotes ATD-ISAP as a 'humane and cost-effective' alternative to detention, but while it is certainly better than being locked up, lawyers and advocates argue it embeds unnecessary state control into homes, workplaces and public spaces, trapping people in cycles of fear, stigma and instability. Those assigned body-worn monitors often report skin irritation, discomfort and the need for frequent charging. When the battery runs low, the device emits a loud alert that draws unwanted attention. 'People made comments while I was working at McDonald's. I'm not a criminal,' Genesis said. Even routine activities like showering can trigger connectivity issues, leading to phone calls from ISAP officers or sudden demands for in-person check-ins. SmartLINK, by contrast, requires participants to submit geotagged selfies, typically once a week, rather than being tracked continuously throughout the day. ATD-ISAP is managed by BI Incorporated, a subsidiary of the private prison giant Geo Group. In 2020, Donald Trump's first administration awarded the company a five-year, $2.2bn contract. Regardless of the type of surveillance assigned, participants remain under acute risk of arrest and deportation. Some have started the asylum application process; others came relatively recently from Texas when that state was bussing asylum seekers to Democratic-led cities, and so far are merely trying to find their footing, perhaps a lawyer and some advice about starting the process to get papers and a work permit. They are expected to report in person to the ISAP office with little notice. The office is located in a basement near Ice's 26 Federal Plaza headquarters in lower Manhattan. Appointments are usually scheduled during working hours, forcing many to miss work, arrange childcare or lose out on daily wages, all while being in terror of arrest and summary detention. On weekday mornings, people can be seen lining up outside the building while anxious loved ones wait nearby. 'It's very difficult to have a normal life,' said a man from Guatemala whose wife has been monitored for three years. He asked to remain anonymous. 'We can't even leave the city,' he added. Some people enrolled in the ADP program were arrested amid record enforcement earlier this week, NBC reported, in a national ramping-up of efforts on the orders of senior Trump administration officials, including in New York. The effects of surveillance aren't limited to those being tracked. Entire neighborhoods are feeling its presence. Liliana Torres, a psychologist who offers weekly mental health support in Spanish to newly arrived immigrants, said that cameras, patrol cars and even the sound of sirens regularly spark panic among her clients. 'Everyday elements of the city become triggers,' she said. Sign up to This Week in Trumpland A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration after newsletter promotion This fear is especially felt in areas of the city such as Corona, home to New York's largest Latin American immigrant community. Local business owners reported a noticeable drop in customers the first few months of the Trump administration. 'People think they're going to take all of us,' said a nail salon worker who asked to remain anonymous due to concerns around her legal status. 'But we can't afford to stay home. We have to work.' Vendors at Corona Plaza say police presence has increased in recent months, especially since the launch of Operation Roosevelt last fall, a citywide crackdown on unlicensed vending and sex work. The measures disproportionately affected undocumented residents. Neighbors and advocates worry the heightened enforcement signals deeper coordination between the New York police department and federal immigration authorities. 'There's a noticeable uptick in the use of digital surveillance tools, including social media monitoring and data-sharing with local agencies,' said Veronica Cardenas, an immigration attorney who left her role as an Ice prosecutor in 2023 after witnessing first-hand the treatment immigrants receive. 'More people who would have previously been considered low priority are now at risk.' Fear spreads online, too. 'We see people on TikTok saying Ice is coming when it isn't,' said Niurka Meléndez, founder of Venezuelans and Immigrants Aid (VIA), a volunteer-run group that connects asylum seekers to legal and social services. 'Or worse, spreading confusion about immigration law.' VIA has been leading a regular event called Miracle Mondays at the St Paul & St Andrew United Methodist church in Manhattan since 2022. Once considered sanctuary spaces, churches are no longer off limits to Ice, prompting VIA to take extra precautions. Event locations are now shared privately via WhatsApp, rather than being posted publicly on social media. In response to growing fears, the Venezuelan-led group has also started organizing legal clinics in neighborhoods such as Corona to reach those too afraid to attend the church. At one such event in March, dozens of Latin American migrants gathered to ask lawyers from the New York Legal Assistance Group how they could regularize their immigration status. 'If I give birth here and they deport me, will they keep my baby?' asked Stefani, a Venezuelan woman eight months pregnant. One lawyer responded cautiously, explaining that while she would have the right to bring her baby with her, the government can still act in ways that disregard the law. Lawyers also handed out one-page notices saying that individuals with pending asylum cases cannot be detained without due process. Local community groups such as Ice Watch have adapted to this new climate by educating communities about their rights. Ice Watch tracks immigration enforcement and sends real-time alerts via encrypted Signal chats across the five boroughs. Its members also conduct training to teach people how to recognize Ice agents, document encounters and support those being targeted. Social workers, English teachers activists and small business owners are often among those who attend. For Juan, who fled Colombia after gang members shot his father in the head, life in New York has come at the cost of constant paranoia and a sense that genuine safety remains out of reach. His 16-year-old daughter notices everything. 'She sees how I live and blames herself,' he said. At times, they've talked about returning to Colombia, but the risk of being kidnapped and tortured by mobsters is very real for him and his family. 'I fear something worse than death could happen if I go back,' Juan said. Despite the stress, he holds on to small signs of progress, such as watching his daughter attend school and slowly but steadily pick up English. 'I need to give her at least the option to have a better life than I had,' he said.
The Independent
3 hours ago
- The Independent
‘He's a bad guy': Trump backs decision to bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to US to face charges
Donald Trump has called Kilmar Abrego Garcia a 'bad guy' and backed the decision to return him to the US to face criminal charges. Abrego Garcia was wrongly deported to El Salvador nearly three months ago under the Trump administration. He was returned to the US on Friday (6 June) and charged with trafficking migrants into the country. The charges relate to a 2022 traffic stop, during which the Tennessee Highway Patrol suspected him of human trafficking. Speaking to reporters on Saturday, Trump said: 'By bringing him back, you show how bad he is.' 'He's a bad guy,' he added.
