Isaac Elementary staff to keep working Friday, hopeful for paychecks
Isaac Elementary School District educators opted Thursday night to continue working Friday, hopeful they would receive paychecks after not being paid so far this week amid the district's financial crisis that led to its takeover by the state. Their payday was scheduled for Tuesday.
"We were extremely hopeful that we would be paid today," said Marisol Garcia, an Isaac Elementary teacher and the president of the Arizona Education Association, a statewide educators' union.
On Wednesday night, the Tolleson Union High School District's Governing Board approved a deal with Isaac Elementary that would essentially allow the neighboring high school district to loan Isaac Elementary $25 million.
By Thursday afternoon, the transaction had taken place, and all requested documents had been sent to the Maricopa County Treasurer's Office, according to Tolleson Union spokesperson Joseph Ortiz.
But by 5 p.m. Thursday, Garcia said, Maricopa County Treasurer John Allen had not yet greenlit the payroll checks.
"Nobody understands why we're still waiting for him," she said. "There's money in there to spend. I'm not sure what the treasurer's waiting for."
The Maricopa County Treasurer's office did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.
More than 300 staff members deliberated Thursday evening, Garcia said, over whether they should return to work Friday. Garcia said they were "significantly traumatized."
"There was a lot of emotion, tears," she said.
The Arizona Education Association passed out $15,000 in gift cards Thursday — raised by donations from other state and local unions, along with individuals — to make sure staff could buy food and gas, Garcia said.
"The feeling is extremely tense on what may happen tomorrow if they are not paid," Garcia said. She added that several staff members were interviewing for other positions and "intend on leaving the district."
"These folks are living off $50 gift cards right now," she said. "It's pretty humiliating."
Still, they planned to return Friday and would be "monitoring the process of getting checks printed" and handed to employees, Garcia said.
Meanwhile, legislation that would advance $2.5 million to the district has stalled after passing the House Education Committee earlier this week. House Bill 2610, introduced by Rep. Matt Gress, R-Phoenix, would direct Allen to issue funds to cover one payroll for the school district. The money would be drawn from Isaac's basic state aid. Garcia said Thursday that she was disappointed that the bill had stalled.
Isaac Elementary, which serves approximately 4,800 students in Phoenix, was placed under receivership two weeks ago by the Arizona State Board of Education because it had overspent its budget by millions. Last week, the district's superintendent and chief financial officer resigned.
According to Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chair Thomas Galvin, the district owes the county $28.5 million. The county has said it would not provide any more funding for the district's expenses until the district could demonstrate the ability to pay back its debt, leaving the district without cash to fund operations. The U.S. Department of Education agreed to return $6 million in pandemic relief funds that the district had inadvertently forfeited, and the Treasurer's Office said that money would go toward Isaac Elementary's debt.
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes has launched an investigation into the financial mismanagement at Isaac Elementary.
Getting help: Tolleson Union will transfer $25 million to ailing Isaac Elementary
Reach the reporter at mparrish@arizonarepublic.com.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Isaac Elementary staff to keep working Friday, hopeful for paychecks
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Yahoo
12 hours ago
- Yahoo
Inside Donald Trump's Mass-Deportation Operation
Detainees board an ICE deportation flight on May 29 in Alexandria, La. Credit - Christopher Lee for TIME "Pay attention to the noise," says Belarmino Garcia, the warden of El Salvador's Terrorism Confinement Center. He ushers a group of foreign visitors inside CECOT's Module 8, a unit unlike others at the sprawling facility situated at the base of a volcano. This one holds 238 Venezuelan nationals who were shipped from the U.S. on March 15 to be held in one of the world's most infamous prisons at the behest of President Donald J. Trump. The cacophony is overwhelming. Inmates climb out of their bunks, lean on the bars, and plead and whistle for attention. Module 8 is different from a typical CECOT unit in several ways, Garcia explains. The detainees are allowed blankets and pillows. They eat fast food. They are rambunctious and defiant. As the warden leads the visitors out, the prisoners appear on the verge of mutiny, chanting 'Libertad! Libertad!' Next, Garcia takes the visitors into Module 7. It's silent inside. The prisoners are Salvadoran nationals, some of whom have been at CECOT for years. They wear white shirts, white shorts, and face masks, and sit upright, staring blankly through the bars. Their cells contain nothing but a pila—a tub they use as a toilet—and bare steel bunks. Inmates spend all day inside, emerging only for 30 minutes of calisthenics or Bible study, according to the warden. There are no TVs or radios. The prisoners can't make or accept phone calls. They can't receive visitors, or even letters. They have spoken to no one outside the prison since their arrival. Staff remind them what El Salvador's President, Nayib Bukele, has said publicly: No one who goes into CECOT will ever come out. 'They have lost the will to fight or resist us,' Garcia says. The prospect of the U.S. sending migrants to a foreign prison notorious for alleged human-rights violations would have been unimaginable less than a year ago. But it is only one dramatic component of Trump's unprecedented deportation project. The President has revoked the temporary legal status of hundreds of thousands of people and expanded the power of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to round up and remove millions of others. He is authorizing ICE to direct a network of law-enforcement agencies, from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives to the DEA and U.S. Park Police, to assist the effort. He has pressed the Internal Revenue Service and the Postal Service to share information to identify targets. Homeland Security Operations has developed new software technology, called RAVEn, to consolidate data about migrants. Trump has used federal powers to coerce cities and counties to cooperate with the mission and threatened to withdraw federal funding if they don't. Working with sheriffs and local police departments, ICE has raided schools, parks, and restaurants across the U.S., detaining some 82,000 people in a few short months. The work is only beginning. On June 7, Trump ordered National Guard troops to Los Angeles to quell anti-ICE protests. The Department of Justice is weighing arresting and prosecuting public officials who impede their immigration agenda, according to Administration sources familiar with the matter. The White House is considering suspending habeas corpus, a protection against illegal government detention enshrined in the Constitution that grants every person the right to have a judge review their imprisonment. 'We're looking at every option,' Trump border czar Tom Homan tells TIME. In addition to sending Venezuelans to CECOT, Trump has deported asylum seekers to Panama and sent others to Guantánamo Bay in Cuba and South Sudan. Homan says the Administration is in talks with three more countries to accept U.S. deportees. It also plans to build and expand other detention centers in the U.S., he says, with the goal of doubling capacity to hold detainees awaiting deportation to 100,000. So far, the Administration has deported more than 139,000 migrants, which is behind pace to reach Trump's aggressive targets. Even so, the number in immigration detention has spiked 30%. Read More: Exclusive: Inside Trump's First 100 Days. This sweeping effort has few analogues in recent world history. Its ambition goes beyond anything attempted in the U.S. since the Eisenhower-era Operation Wetback in its aims to expel millions of people and change the makeup of the country. Removing that many undocumented immigrants, as Trump has promised, would eliminate a key source of labor. It would end a decades-long wave of migration that has made the country progressively more multiethnic. And it would change how the U.S. has treated those seeking refuge from violence and oppression since before the end of the Cold War. Trump officials say all this is overdue. The U.S. experienced a surge in migrants, including undocumented immigrants, under President Biden, who revoked some of Trump's first-term border policies. Trump officials say they intend to reverse a trend that has displaced American workers, depleted state and local governments of resources, and, they argue, undermined social cohesion. Already, Trump's deportation program is instilling fear in newcomers. 'I can't go back,' says Hilda Espinoza Telon, a refugee from Guatemalan gang violence, whose lawyer says she was recently fitted with an ankle monitor by ICE. 'Nearly my whole family has been murdered over there.' She has given her 14-year-old son instructions for what to do if she disappears from their Virginia home. A TIME investigation, based on interviews with more than 20 Trump Administration officials, exclusive access to detention facilities in the U.S. and abroad, and conversations with numerous migrants, immigration experts, and attorneys reveals how Trump is testing the moral and legal extremes to which the government is willing to go. Catholic bishops and Republican-appointed judges have joined those speaking out against his deportation project. District courts have issued injunctions. Constitutional scholars have alleged Trump's team is not only abusing presidential power but also breaking laws. 'The Administration is treating immigration not as a law-enforcement matter but is trying illegally to repurpose the tools of war and counterterrorism against migrants,' says Brian Finucane, a lawyer at the independent International Crisis Group and former State Department official. 'It's a turducken of illegality.' Trump Administration officials say they are complying with all laws they deem constitutional. Whether they are correct will ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court, which has halted some of Trump's actions while the Justices consider the merits. But moves to slow or reverse his agenda have only hardened the President's resolve. 'We have to do it,' Trump told TIME in late April, arguing he had been elected on a promise to crack down on illegal immigration. 'People have been let into our country that are very dangerous.' As the Administration escalates its efforts, critics are asking how we got here. Others wonder what took so long. But all Americans have a stake in understanding how Trump is trying to transform the country by deporting millions of its inhabitants—and what it will mean for their communities. When Cristian David Marin Leiva stepped inside the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in New Orleans on April 14, he thought his appointment would take only a few minutes. The agency had summoned Cristian, a boyish teenager with bright eyes and a patchy goatee, for a regular 'check-in.' He had reported for check-ins twice previously without incident—most recently in February—since he crossed the Texas border illegally in April 2021. Cristian moved to the U.S. to escape violence in Honduras, he says, settling with his father and stepmother in Slidell, La. 'Where I lived was full of gangs,' he says. 'They would make the minors join the gang or be killed.' Shortly after he crossed the border, he hired a lawyer, who asked a judge to designate Cristian a Special Immigrant–Juvenile. He had been abandoned by his mother in Honduras, his attorney says, and needed to live with his father in the U.S. The judge approved the petition and granted Cristian four years of 'deferred action from removal,' providing a reprieve from deportation at least until 2027. Now a high school junior, Cristian, 18, walked into the ICE office near the French Quarter around 7 a.m., planning to make it to school in time for his first-period biology class. He approached an officer and handed him the letter requesting a check-in. The agent glanced at the paper, furrowed his brow, and then looked back at Cristian. He pulled out a pair of handcuffs. 'Follow me,' he said. Cristian was led into a small holding cell with dozens of detainees and stripped of his possessions. 'They just called me over and put these on me and kept me here,' he told TIME, shackled at his wrists and ankles. Agents told him he could make a phone call after he was transferred to a processing center in Central Louisiana. There he could choose either to voluntarily board a flight to Honduras or face a judge. Nobody informed Cristian's family what was happening. Rubin Marin, Cristian's father, was oblivious when TIME reached him by phone later that afternoon. He thought his son was in school. Summoning migrants for unexpected detention is one in a range of tactics the Trump Administration has adopted. The message sent is clear: Migrants who entered the country illegally are not only unwelcome but also at risk of sudden removal or imprisonment wherever they are and whether they've followed the law since arriving or not. 'It's just getting them the hell out of here,' Homan says. Read More: Read the Full Transcript of Trump's '100 Days' Interview With TIME. To understand how the deportation dragnet works, TIME joined ICE officers on a pair of morning raids in the New Orleans area. Inside a truck, ICE officers reviewed files on their targets, including biometric data, arrest and conviction records, work histories, and frequent whereabouts. 'We surveil them for a period of time to identify patterns of behavior,' says Mellissa Harper, director of the New Orleans field office. 'Once we know that they are at a certain location at a certain period of time regularly, we plan out an enforcement operation.' The raids TIME witnessed didn't lead to arrests. In one case, the person had left the state overnight. In another, they simply weren't home. But the target list has multiplied. When he took office, Trump revoked the temporary protected status of hundreds of thousands of migrants and rescinded memos that limited ICE arrests during raids. Before that, 'if we conduct a targeted enforcement operation for one guy and we show up to his house and there are four other -illegals there, we could only arrest the one guy,' explains Scott Ladwig, Harper's deputy. 'Now we grab them all.' Local police have lined up in support, transferring migrants they arrest on other alleged crimes or even traffic violations. After the fruitless predawn raids on April 14, the ICE officers returned to the New Orleans field office to find 12 migrants transported from the Kenner, La., police department. The detainees walked in a single-file line, wearing handcuffs and leg restraints. When they reached the offices, ICE agents interviewed them using a Spanish translation app on their government phones. One of the detainees, Fernando Milla, 28, had been arrested on suspicion of drunk driving. The officer who ran his license, Milla says, saw he had overstayed a student visa. After two nights in the county jail, police transferred Milla, a Honduran national, to ICE custody. Sitting inside a holding cell, Milla was resigned to his fate. 'I'm not going to hire a lawyer or anything,' he tells TIME. 'I'm going back.' As the migrants in Milla's group were being questioned by the ICE agents processing their paperwork, Cristian emerged from the holding cell. He spent 16 minutes answering questions from an officer. Then he was left waiting again, hoping he ends up back with his father and not on a flight to Honduras. The detention of migrants like Cristian is the first link in Trump's new deportation chain. It's the product of years of planning. Trump left office in January 2021 determined to make immigration a centerpiece of his political comeback. Top aides found refuge at friendly think tanks to plot the next steps. Homan, who was acting ICE director in Trump's first term, took residency at the America First Policy Institute and the Heritage Foundation, where he contributed to the latter organization's manifesto for a second term, titled Project 2025. Russell Vought, the Office of Management and Budget director, founded the Center for Renewing America, where he studied Trump's rally speeches and devised plans to turn promises into policy. Longtime adviser Stephen Miller, an architect of Trump's first-term immigration crackdown that included separating families, founded America First Legal to sue the Biden Administration, and explored legal mechanisms for Trump's deportation goals. Together they sketched the contours of a new, even more aggressive immigration agenda. It would concentrate power in the Oval Office and use federal powers to pressure state and local jurisdictions, withholding funds for sanctuary cities and forcing agencies with access to sensitive data to assist in the deportation effort. Vought and others suggested pulling federal funding from state and local police departments that refused to cooperate. Miller proposed declaring a national emergency to invoke extraordinary powers to round up and remove migrants. Homan wanted to restructure ICE, reassigning employees with desk jobs to conduct field operations and ramping up the agency's capacity to identify and arrest people. They looked for ways to move fast, and studied the law to devise the methods and legal defenses for their most boundary-pushing measures, according to several current Administration officials. Working with Miller at America First Legal was Gene Hamilton, the principal author of Trump's controversial family-separation policy, according to a January 2021 Justice Department inspector general report. All four men now work out of the White House. 'The President and the entire Administration are certainly open to all legal and constitutional remedies to ensure we can continue with the promise of deporting illegal criminals,' White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. Just how 'legal and constitutional' the White House actions are is a matter of dispute. Normally, Executive Orders are vetted by experts at the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department, in order to ensure the President is following the law. Trump has reportedly curtailed that front-end review, leaving government lawyers to defend controversial claims of powers granted to the President only in extreme circumstances, like wartime. Asked to illustrate how this approach to following the law differs from the norm, one litigator who left the Justice Department in February tells TIME, 'Draw a horse and put a cart in front of it.' Read More: Donald Trump, TIME's 2024 Person of the Year. Even those willing to advocate for the broadest presidential powers in pursuit of deportations have found themselves out of a job. Erez Reuveni, a veteran federal litigator who had defended in court Trump's 2017 ban on travelers from Muslim-majority countries, was fired after Reuveni told a court the Administration had mistakenly sent a Salvadoran man named Kilmar Abrego Garcia to CECOT because of a clerical error. The Department also placed on leave Reuveni's supervisor, August Flentje, who had defended Trump's family-separation policy in court in 2018. Traditionally, Justice Department lawyers have been required to keep their distance from the White House to avoid the appearance of politicization. Attorney General Pam Bondi, by contrast, has emphasized 'zealous' advocacy of Trump's agenda. 'Any attorney who fails to abide by this direction will face consequences,' Bondi said the day after Reuveni's court appearance. Eight hours after his arrest, Cristian was sent to the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Jena, La., about four hours from New Orleans, on the edge of a forest of loblolly and longleaf pines. The facility, which holds nearly 1,200 inmates, is run by the private corrections company GEO Group, a Trump donor for which Homan worked as a paid consultant. Most days, the prison is quiet, though on occasion hundreds of protesters show up to demand the release of its most famous inmate, Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student whom the Trump Administration arrested without a warrant in March for his role in the campus' pro-Palestinian protests, and has accused, without supplying evidence, of 'activities aligned to Hamas.' When TIME visited the Jena facility on May 29, nine landscapers in lime green shirts sat in the intake room on long benches, waiting their turn to be formally admitted. Their shirts read Twin Shores Landscape & Construction Services. Two days earlier, they had been starting a project on the Mirabeau Water Garden construction site in New Orleans, part of a $30 million federally funded drainage project to reduce flooding in the area. At 7 a.m., ICE officers surrounded the site, blocking the exits to the park, as a government helicopter hovered overhead. Donald Tercero, 36, was among those arrested. Tercero, who is Nicaraguan, had worked on farms and as a teacher before arriving in the U.S. in 2022. He presented himself to the Border Patrol at McAllen, Texas, seeking humanitarian parole under a program the Biden Administration had started that year. He's not planning to fight his deportation. 'I want to go back,' Tercero says. Manuel Carillo, a 29-year-old from Guatemala, was also among the construction crew arrested in the New Orleans ICE raid. 'Not everyone wants to do the work we are doing,' he says. 'Unfortunately, Donald Trump doesn't want us to stay.' Jimmy Bingham, the warden at Jena, says fewer detained migrants are resisting deportation these days. 'They don't feel like it's worth their time to fight,' Bingham says. Upon admission, inmates are given colored uniforms—red and yellow garb for the most serious felonies, green and orange for lesser offenses, blue for those with no conviction. They are separated according to these classifications and housed in dorms that hold 80 people apiece, with showers, phones, televisions, and a gaming system. They get two hours for recreation in the morning and another two hours in the afternoon, says the prison administrator. When TIME enters one of the dorms, a group of inmates rushes over, asking to tell their stories. Some had been there a few days, others a few weeks, and some even a few months as they waited to have their cases heard. The lucky ones are granted bond and can return home until a judge is ready to determine their fate. Read More: Trump's 2024 Person of the Year Interview Transcript. Jena is one of around 200 ICE detention facilities across the U.S., but agency officials like to send prisoners there for a few reasons. It's cheaper to detain migrants in Louisiana than in other parts of the country, and the state has a conservative federal Circuit Court that's more likely than some others to rule in the government's favor when it seeks a removal. Jena is also located near the Alexandria Staging Facility, a small airport managed by GEO. On average, the Alexandria facility flies six planes a day to other countries, says Ragan Lewis, an ICE officer who runs the airport. Some days see as many as 12 outgoing flights. As a plane loaded up with prisoners, Lewis waved his hand toward a stretch of grass next to the airfield. If there were money to expand the holding cells, he says, he could fit 2,000 people there. Lewis hopes the broad legislative package moving through Congress will allocate funding to expand the Jena facility to house more migrants, who could then be flown out of the country on planes from Alexandria. Just after dawn on May 29, the swish of chains dragging on asphalt was loud enough to be heard over idling engines. Roughly 70 men shuffled across the tarmac toward a chartered jet that would take them to Nicaragua. Before boarding, guards patted each down, looking for hidden weapons, unlocking and relocking their restraints, and directing them to make the awkward ascent up the stairs to the plane. One of the men, wearing a black hoodie, shook the chains around his wrists at a guard and said, 'Como perros! Como perros!' (Like dogs.) Once the detainees were on board, agents brought in a van with dozens of women, also manacled, to board next. Then came the only migrants without chains: family units. A woman with her teenage son got on first, followed by a woman with her young daughter. By the time the flight lifted off, there were 118 passengers on board. Whether Cristian will end up on one of these planes isn't yet clear. In May he was let out of Jena on a $4,000 bond. He is due back in immigration court in New Orleans on Sept. 2 to find out whether he will be sent back to Honduras or can remain in the U.S. with his father. The deportation chain in Louisiana exemplifies a nationwide operation that is redefining American immigration policy, legally and morally. The fallout is reaching far beyond those who entered the country without permission. Law-enforcement officials have snatched foreign students off the street for engaging in speech the Administration doesn't like. Trump has revoked student visas and put foreign students into deportation proceedings without warning. 'A visa is a gift,' Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on March 28. 'No one is entitled to a visa.' Trump is targeting younger children too. His attorneys have argued in federal court that he should be allowed to ignore the 14th Amendment's guarantee of citizenship for those born in the U.S. and terminate the rights of children born to parents who were in the country illegally. The President has cut federal funding to social-service nonprofits that offer legal representation to people facing deportation to ensure their cases are fairly decided. 'The very idea of deporting a child without a lawyer should be unthinkable in America,' says Jojo Annobil, the CEO of the Immigrant Justice Corps. Perhaps no other issue has crystallized criticism of Trump's immigration agenda like the deportation of Venezuelan nationals to El Salvador. Like many of Trump's policies, it came about through a series of conversations, rather than a conventional legal process. On the campaign stump, Trump occasionally castigated Bukele, the Salvadoran President, for sending MS-13 gang members to the U.S. Trump ally and former Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, one of Bukele's biggest American fans, told Trump that this wasn't true. Bukele was the most popular leader in Latin America, he told Trump, and attacking him wasn't going to help win over the Hispanic voters Trump was courting. When Gaetz visited El Salvador for Bukele's second inauguration last summer, he and Bukele discussed the idea of the Salvadorans holding some of the migrants whom Trump planned to deport if he won. When Gaetz returned, he tells TIME, he brought the idea to Trump and his team. Shortly after taking office, Trump directed Rubio to cut a deal with Bukele, two senior White House officials say. Rubio came back with an offer in hand, according to U.S. officials: $20,000 per prisoner for a year. There were wrinkles in the deal. Bukele wanted the Trump Administration to send a handful of Salvadoran MS-13 members held in U.S. prisons, including some who the Treasury Department alleged in December 2021 had engaged in secret negotiations with officials of Bukele's government. At the same time, the deportations would require claims of extraordinary presidential powers. Miller and the White House Counsel's office planned to invoke the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 law that grants the President wartime authority during an invasion or 'predatory incursion.' The plan was so closely held that only a few senior members of the Administration knew it was happening, one of them tells TIME. On March 15, the Trump Administration sent 238 Venezuelan nationals to El Salvador, alleging they were gang members or terrorists. Some had recently been arrested. Many of them had not been convicted in U.S. court. The Administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act for the fourth time in U.S. history, and the first since World War II. The declaration was made at 3:53 p.m. The flights for El Salvador were scheduled for 5:26, 5:44, and 7:36 p.m. Prompted by an emergency motion from the American Civil Liberties Union and Democracy Forward, U.S. Judge James Boasberg ordered a virtual hearing on the matter for late that afternoon. Boasberg heard arguments, then ordered the government to halt the removals. 'Whether turning around a plane or not embarking anyone on the plane, or those people covered by this on the plane, I leave to you,' Boasberg told the DOJ. 'But this is something that you need to make sure is complied with immediately.' Yet two planeloads of migrants had already left ahead of schedule. A third one was still on the tarmac at a Texas airfield, but took off anyway. The Trump Administration has not confirmed the names of the Venezuelans on those flights. Nor has it shown evidence that all of the men belonged to the criminal gang Tren de Aragua. A review by the Cato Institute found that more than 50 of the Venezuelans sent to El Salvador had followed legal steps to enter the country. A CBS News investigation found that most of the Venezuelans had no criminal record in the U.S. or abroad. One of the men on the planes was Abrego Garcia, who the Justice Department would later admit had been mistakenly deported. Another was Franco Caraballo Tiapa, who worked as a barber in Venezuela. In 2023, Tiapa and his wife Johanny trekked across the Darién Gap, sleeping in the open and surviving on scraps of discarded food, until they presented themselves at the U.S. border and asked for asylum. The two lived together in Sherman, Texas, where they made money cutting hair. On Feb. 3, Tiapa visited an ICE office in Dallas for a regular check-in. This time he was arrested, according to Johanny. The Administration says his tattoos show he's a member of the Tren de Aragua gang. One is of his daughter's name. Others depict a lion; a rose; and a razor blade on the side of his neck—a symbol of his work as a barber, according to his wife. She says he has no criminal record in the U.S. or Venezuela. 'They were only looking at his tattoos,' Johanny says. Outside of CECOT's Module 7, Garcia, the warden, brings out a Styrofoam container with a hamburger, French fries, ketchup packs, and Milano cookies. This is a typical meal for the Venezuelan inmates, he says. Their diet was devised by Bukele, who instructed they be fed fast food to gain weight, as a way of trolling critics who argue CECOT's conditions are inhumane, according to Salvadoran sources. 'It's a cat-and-mouse game,' says one person close to Bukele. The maneuver is similar to the photo op Bukele staged when Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen traveled to El Salvador to meet with Abrego Garcia. The pair were photographed sitting poolside with what Van Hollen said were 'fake' margaritas. (Abrego Garcia was returned to the U.S. in early June.) After the tour of the prison, Garcia allows TIME to interview one inmate in a holding area near the unit's entrance. The man says his name is Hector Hernandez. He appears to be the nightmare that Trump has conjured time and again on the campaign trail. He says he is an MS-13 member, and has tattoos all over his body, from his face and neck to his forearms. The prisoner claims that before he was deported in 2019 and apprehended by Salvadoran authorities, he murdered 50 people in Northern Virginia—more than three times the number of reported murders in Prince William or Fairfax counties for that year. TIME was unable to verify the details provided by the prisoner, including his name, his alleged crimes, or how he came to be there. Inside CECOT, the extreme terminus for Trump's deportation program, the truth, like everything else, is under the control of the authorities. What is clear, however, are the draconian conditions to which the Salvadoran inmates at CECOT are subjected. They are under constant surveillance. The lights never go off. They share cells with rival gang members. Prisoners who get out of line face up to 14 days in pitch-black solitary confinement, says Garcia. For the past 2½ years, the man who identifies himself as Hector Hernandez says, he's had no communication with the outside world. He hasn't spoken to family. He hasn't seen or read a news report. He doesn't know who the President of the United States is. —With reporting by Harry Booth, Leslie Dickstein, and Tharin Pillay Contact us at letters@
Miami Herald
14 hours ago
- Miami Herald
Miami Republicans are feigning disbelief after supporting Trump's immigration policies
Predictable outcome In the June 7 online Miami Herald story, ''Inhumane:' Latinas for Trump founder condemns White House immigration crackdown,' State Sen. Ileana Garcia said, 'This is not what we voted for.' She and her Republican colleagues, U.S. Reps. Maria Salazar, Carlos Giménez and Mario Díaz-Balart, can feign disbelief that Temporary Protected Status (TPS) was rescinded and cruel deportation measures implemented against law-abiding people, but this is exactly what Garcia and others voted for. They knew Trump's plan and didn't care. These politicians played a dangerous game for their political gain. They bet Trump wouldn't follow through on an unconstitutional plan against immigrants — and they lost. They ignored glaring evidence that 'Trump 2.0' didn't want any 'brown' immigrants in our country. Trump also repeatedly maligned legal immigrants, saying they were 'poisoning the blood of our country' and 'eating pets' in Springfield, Ohio. Furthermore, The Heritage Foundation's 'Project 2025' initiative states as an objective: 'withdraw Biden Administration regulations…Repeal TPS designations.' No matter whether Garcia and others allowed immigrants to be thrown under the bus by political calculation or stupidity, they are too incompetent to do their jobs. They should be ashamed, as they share the same or similar immigrant stories as those deported and detained without due process. Vote them out. Kristin Battista-Frazee, Big Pine Key Even-year election Miami's voter turnout is notoriously low, as the Miami Herald has often indicated. However, there's mounting evidence that voter turnout in municipal elections is higher in even-numbered years. The city should move elections to even-numbered years because it has an obligation to make it easier, not harder, for voters to show up and pay attention. Greater voter participation helps reduce corruption by forcing elected officials to appeal to a larger number of constituents (instead of their voter base). However, a new proposal pushes the 2025 city elections to 2026 to accommodate for this change, effectively giving current officials an extra year on their terms. This action is unnecessary. Even-year elections can be implemented simply by having officials elected in 2025 (who would be up for re-election in 2029) serve a three-year term ending in 2028. While officials scheduled to run and/or get elected in 2027 (who would be up for re-election in 2031) serve a three-year term ending in 2030. Reducing terms temporarily to three years is better than a five-year term. As a candidate for city office in 2025, I am fine with having a three-year term to make this critical change for the greater good. Rob Piper, Miami To be or not to be The Historic Coconut Grove Playhouse is a publicly-owned, civic-zoned property intended for cultural and community use. Miami-Dade County plans to replace the Playhouse with a tiny 300-seat theater, surrounded by more than 52,000 square feet of offices, restaurants and retail spilling directly into Historic West Coconut Grove / Little Bahamas. The people of Miami are tired of politicians handing over our public assets to commercial developers. Miami City Commissioner Damian Pardo and County Commissioner Raquel Regalado should recognize this and address the community's valid concerns. Anthony Vinciguerra, Miami Boating tragedy Re: the June 8 story, 'FWC chair and Miami-Dade state attorney texted about Pino boat crash.' Rodney Barreto should be removed as chairman of Florida Fish and Wildlife, along with the FWC officers who were at the scene and did not follow procedures. The FWC's handling of that horrible boat crash in September 2022 is inexcusable. George Pino, the vessel's operator, was at first minimally charged (a misdemeanor), although two passengers were seriously injured. One died the next day and the other still is re-learning how to walk. Pino should have received a sobriety check immediately. I have been boating on Biscayne Bay for at least 65 years and I am very familiar with Cutter Bank, where the crash took place. As he headed south, Pino should have been on the starboard side of the channel, clearly marked with red markers. He hit a green marker, which is used for boats heading north; that's like driving north in the south bound lane of I-95. Further, the statement that 61 containers of alcohol found on board were given to Pino by other boaters is not credible. Jack Dresner, Miami American smugglers Based on limited information at this writing, it appears Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man deported to an El Salvador prison without due process, has now been returned to the U.S. to face 'smuggling' charges for transporting immigrants — across state lines — from Texas to Tennessee. Isn't that what Texas Gov. Greg Abbott did in busing migrants from Texas to northern cities? Isn't that what our Gov. Ron DeSantis did in flying immigrants from Florida to Massachusetts? And all at taxpayer expense, no less? Who are the criminals? Richard Masington, Coral Gables Give us a rest Re: the Herald's June 8 In Depth story, 'New order in the courts.' After reading the article concerning President Trump's bashing of the Federalist Society, I was left primarily with one feeling: fatigue. I have no idea where Trump gets the time and energy to juggle so many foreign policy and domestic issues daily while, at the same time, indulging in feuds with individuals and entities such as Elon Musk and the Federalist Society. I respectfully ask him to give us all a couple of weeks off this summer to recuperate from the constant storm out of Washington, D.C.. Make America relax again! Robert E. Panoff, Pinecrest Wise investment Floridians know that strong health systems — at home and abroad — keep us safer. HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria still claim millions of lives each year. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, alongside PEPFAR, has helped cut those deaths nearly in half — saving 65 million lives and strengthening healthcare systems in more than 120 countries. This is a proven, bipartisan solution that costs a tiny fraction of the U.S. budget. Drastic cuts won't balance the budget — they only reverse progress. Clinics close, testing declines and without daily anti-retroviral medications, preventable deaths rise. The abrupt halt of promising HIV vaccine research happened just as we approached a breakthrough. As HIV and TB cases begin to rise again, backsliding puts the world and our country at risk. U.S. leadership has always been essential. Congress must honor its commitments to us and the world. This is a smart investment — for our safety, our values and the millions of lives we can save. Karyne Bury, Hollywood Bad judgment The U.S. Supreme Court recently voted to 'green light' DOGE access to sensitive Social Security data on millions of Americans. The conservative segment of the Court that voted this way, no doubt, will be sorry. This is a short-sighted decision and should have been left alone. David Myles, Aventura Mar-a-Lago wing? Re: the June 9 story, 'As FIU's prospects fade, push for Trump's library site shifts to downtown Miami.' I would tell Eric Trump, who is charged with vetting the sites, that after all his father has done to Latins and Haitians, does her really think they want his library here? Get real. Put it in West Palm Beach, where his mansion is located. Carole L. Hamilton, Miami Springs
Time Magazine
21 hours ago
- Time Magazine
Loading... Inside Donald Trump's Mass-Deportation Operation Politics Donald Trump Detainees board an ICE deportation flight on May 29 in Alexandria, La. Detainees board an ICE deportation flight on May 29 in Alexandria, La. Christopher Lee for TIME Story by Eric Cortellessa and Brian Bennett Detainees board an ICE deportation flight on May 29 in Alexandria, La. Christopher Lee for TIME
"Pay attention to the noise," says Belarmino Garcia, the warden of El Salvador's Terrorism Confinement Center. He ushers a group of foreign visitors inside CECOT's Module 8, a unit unlike others at the sprawling facility situated at the base of a volcano. This one holds 238 Venezuelan nationals who were shipped from the U.S. on March 15 to be held in one of the world's most infamous prisons at the behest of President Donald J. Trump. Advertisement The cacophony is overwhelming. Inmates climb out of their bunks, lean on the bars, and plead and whistle for attention. Module 8 is different from a typical CECOT unit in several ways, Garcia explains. The detainees are allowed blankets and pillows. They eat fast food. They are rambunctious and defiant. As the warden leads the visitors out, the prisoners appear on the verge of mutiny, chanting 'Libertad! Libertad!' Next, Garcia takes the visitors into Module 7. It's silent inside. The prisoners are Salvadoran nationals, some of whom have been at CECOT for years. They wear white shirts, white shorts, and face masks, and sit upright, staring blankly through the bars. Their cells contain nothing but a pila —a tub they use as a toilet—and bare steel bunks. Inmates spend all day inside, emerging only for 30 minutes of calisthenics or Bible study, according to the warden. There are no TVs or radios. The prisoners can't make or accept phone calls. They can't receive visitors, or even letters. They have spoken to no one outside the prison since their arrival. Staff remind them what El Salvador's President, Nayib Bukele, has said publicly: No one who goes into CECOT will ever come out. 'They have lost the will to fight or resist us,' Garcia says. The prospect of the U.S. sending migrants to a foreign prison notorious for alleged human-rights violations would have been unimaginable less than a year ago. But it is only one dramatic component of Trump's unprecedented deportation project. The President has revoked the temporary legal status of hundreds of thousands of people and expanded the power of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to round up and remove millions of others. He is authorizing ICE to direct a network of law-enforcement agencies, from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives to the DEA and U.S. Park Police, to assist the effort. He has pressed the Internal Revenue Service and the Postal Service to share information to identify targets. Homeland Security Operations has developed new software technology, called RAVEn, to consolidate data about migrants. Trump has used federal powers to coerce cities and counties to cooperate with the mission and threatened to withdraw federal funding if they don't. Working with sheriffs and local police departments, ICE has raided schools, parks, and restaurants across the U.S., detaining some 82,000 people in a few short months. The work is only beginning. On June 7, Trump ordered National Guard troops to Los Angeles to quell anti-ICE protests. The Department of Justice is weighing arresting and prosecuting public officials who impede their immigration agenda, according to Administration sources familiar with the matter. The White House is considering suspending habeas corpus, a protection against illegal government detention enshrined in the Constitution that grants every person the right to have a judge review their imprisonment. 'We're looking at every option,' Trump border czar Tom Homan tells TIME. In addition to sending Venezuelans to CECOT, Trump has deported asylum seekers to Panama and sent others to Guantánamo Bay in Cuba and South Sudan. Homan says the Administration is in talks with three more countries to accept U.S. deportees. It also plans to build and expand other detention centers in the U.S., he says, with the goal of doubling capacity to hold detainees awaiting deportation to 100,000. So far, the Administration has deported more than 139,000 migrants, which is behind pace to reach Trump's aggressive targets. Even so, the number in immigration detention has spiked 30%. Read More: Exclusive: Inside Trump's First 100 Days. This sweeping effort has few analogues in recent world history. Its ambition goes beyond anything attempted in the U.S. since the Eisenhower-era Operation Wetback in its aims to expel millions of people and change the makeup of the country. Removing that many undocumented immigrants, as Trump has promised, would eliminate a key source of labor. It would end a decades-long wave of migration that has made the country progressively more multiethnic. And it would change how the U.S. has treated those seeking refuge from violence and oppression since before the end of the Cold War. Trump officials say all this is overdue. The U.S. experienced a surge in migrants, including undocumented immigrants, under President Biden, who revoked some of Trump's first-term border policies. Trump officials say they intend to reverse a trend that has displaced American workers, depleted state and local governments of resources, and, they argue, undermined social cohesion. Already, Trump's deportation program is instilling fear in newcomers. 'I can't go back,' says Hilda Espinoza Telon, a refugee from Guatemalan gang violence, whose lawyer says she was recently fitted with an ankle monitor by ICE. 'Nearly my whole family has been murdered over there.' She has given her 14-year-old son instructions for what to do if she disappears from their Virginia home. A TIME investigation, based on interviews with more than 20 Trump Administration officials, exclusive access to detention facilities in the U.S. and abroad, and conversations with numerous migrants, immigration experts, and attorneys reveals how Trump is testing the moral and legal extremes to which the government is willing to go. Catholic bishops and Republican-appointed judges have joined those speaking out against his deportation project. District courts have issued injunctions. Constitutional scholars have alleged Trump's team is not only abusing presidential power but also breaking laws. 'The Administration is treating immigration not as a law-enforcement matter but is trying illegally to repurpose the tools of war and counterterrorism against migrants,' says Brian Finucane, a lawyer at the independent International Crisis Group and former State Department official. 'It's a turducken of illegality.' Trump Administration officials say they are complying with all laws they deem constitutional. Whether they are correct will ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court, which has halted some of Trump's actions while the Justices consider the merits. But moves to slow or reverse his agenda have only hardened the President's resolve. 'We have to do it,' Trump told TIME in late April, arguing he had been elected on a promise to crack down on illegal immigration. 'People have been let into our country that are very dangerous.' As the Administration escalates its efforts, critics are asking how we got here. Others wonder what took so long. But all Americans have a stake in understanding how Trump is trying to transform the country by deporting millions of its inhabitants—and what it will mean for their communities. When Cristian David Marin Leiva stepped inside the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in New Orleans on April 14, he thought his appointment would take only a few minutes. The agency had summoned Cristian, a boyish teenager with bright eyes and a patchy goatee, for a regular 'check-in.' He had reported for check-ins twice previously without incident—most recently in February—since he crossed the Texas border illegally in April 2021. Cristian moved to the U.S. to escape violence in Honduras, he says, settling with his father and stepmother in Slidell, La. 'Where I lived was full of gangs,' he says. 'They would make the minors join the gang or be killed.' Shortly after he crossed the border, he hired a lawyer, who asked a judge to designate Cristian a Special Immigrant–Juvenile. He had been abandoned by his mother in Honduras, his attorney says, and needed to live with his father in the U.S. The judge approved the petition and granted Cristian four years of 'deferred action from removal,' providing a reprieve from deportation at least until 2027. Now a high school junior, Cristian, 18, walked into the ICE office near the French Quarter around 7 a.m., planning to make it to school in time for his first-period biology class. He approached an officer and handed him the letter requesting a check-in. The agent glanced at the paper, furrowed his brow, and then looked back at Cristian. He pulled out a pair of handcuffs. 'Follow me,' he said. Cristian was led into a small holding cell with dozens of detainees and stripped of his possessions. 'They just called me over and put these on me and kept me here,' he told TIME, shackled at his wrists and ankles. Agents told him he could make a phone call after he was transferred to a processing center in Central Louisiana. There he could choose either to voluntarily board a flight to Honduras or face a judge. Nobody informed Cristian's family what was happening. Rubin Marin, Cristian's father, was oblivious when TIME reached him by phone later that afternoon. He thought his son was in school. Summoning migrants for unexpected detention is one in a range of tactics the Trump Administration has adopted. The message sent is clear: Migrants who entered the country illegally are not only unwelcome but also at risk of sudden removal or imprisonment wherever they are and whether they've followed the law since arriving or not. 'It's just getting them the hell out of here,' Homan says. Read More: Read the Full Transcript of Trump's '100 Days' Interview With TIME. To understand how the deportation dragnet works, TIME joined ICE officers on a pair of morning raids in the New Orleans area. Inside a truck, ICE officers reviewed files on their targets, including biometric data, arrest and conviction records, work histories, and frequent whereabouts. 'We surveil them for a period of time to identify patterns of behavior,' says Mellissa Harper, director of the New Orleans field office. 'Once we know that they are at a certain location at a certain period of time regularly, we plan out an enforcement operation.' The raids TIME witnessed didn't lead to arrests. In one case, the person had left the state overnight. In another, they simply weren't home. But the target list has multiplied. When he took office, Trump revoked the temporary protected status of hundreds of thousands of migrants and rescinded memos that limited ICE arrests during raids. Before that, 'if we conduct a targeted enforcement operation for one guy and we show up to his house and there are four other -illegals there, we could only arrest the one guy,' explains Scott Ladwig, Harper's deputy. 'Now we grab them all.' Local police have lined up in support, transferring migrants they arrest on other alleged crimes or even traffic violations. After the fruitless predawn raids on April 14, the ICE officers returned to the New Orleans field office to find 12 migrants transported from the Kenner, La., police department. The detainees walked in a single-file line, wearing handcuffs and leg restraints. When they reached the offices, ICE agents interviewed them using a Spanish translation app on their government phones. One of the detainees, Fernando Milla, 28, had been arrested on suspicion of drunk driving. The officer who ran his license, Milla says, saw he had overstayed a student visa. After two nights in the county jail, police transferred Milla, a Honduran national, to ICE custody. Sitting inside a holding cell, Milla was resigned to his fate. 'I'm not going to hire a lawyer or anything,' he tells TIME. 'I'm going back.' As the migrants in Milla's group were being questioned by the ICE agents processing their paperwork, Cristian emerged from the holding cell. He spent 16 minutes answering questions from an officer. Then he was left waiting again, hoping he ends up back with his father and not on a flight to Honduras. The detention of migrants like Cristian is the first link in Trump's new deportation chain. It's the product of years of planning. Trump left office in January 2021 determined to make immigration a centerpiece of his political comeback. Top aides found refuge at friendly think tanks to plot the next steps. Homan, who was acting ICE director in Trump's first term, took residency at the America First Policy Institute and the Heritage Foundation, where he contributed to the latter organization's manifesto for a second term, titled Project 2025. Russell Vought, the Office of Management and Budget director, founded the Center for Renewing America, where he studied Trump's rally speeches and devised plans to turn promises into policy. Longtime adviser Stephen Miller, an architect of Trump's first-term immigration crackdown that included separating families, founded America First Legal to sue the Biden Administration, and explored legal mechanisms for Trump's deportation goals. Together they sketched the contours of a new, even more aggressive immigration agenda. It would concentrate power in the Oval Office and use federal powers to pressure state and local jurisdictions, withholding funds for sanctuary cities and forcing agencies with access to sensitive data to assist in the deportation effort. Vought and others suggested pulling federal funding from state and local police departments that refused to cooperate. Miller proposed declaring a national emergency to invoke extraordinary powers to round up and remove migrants. Homan wanted to restructure ICE, reassigning employees with desk jobs to conduct field operations and ramping up the agency's capacity to identify and arrest people. They looked for ways to move fast, and studied the law to devise the methods and legal defenses for their most boundary-pushing measures, according to several current Administration officials. Working with Miller at America First Legal was Gene Hamilton, the principal author of Trump's controversial family-separation policy, according to a January 2021 Justice Department inspector general report. All four men now work out of the White House. 'The President and the entire Administration are certainly open to all legal and constitutional remedies to ensure we can continue with the promise of deporting illegal criminals,' White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. Just how 'legal and constitutional' the White House actions are is a matter of dispute. Normally, Executive Orders are vetted by experts at the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department, in order to ensure the President is following the law. Trump has reportedly curtailed that front-end review, leaving government lawyers to defend controversial claims of powers granted to the President only in extreme circumstances, like wartime. Asked to illustrate how this approach to following the law differs from the norm, one litigator who left the Justice Department in February tells TIME, 'Draw a horse and put a cart in front of it.' Read More: Donald Trump, TIME's 2024 Person of the Year. Even those willing to advocate for the broadest presidential powers in pursuit of deportations have found themselves out of a job. Erez Reuveni, a veteran federal litigator who had defended in court Trump's 2017 ban on travelers from Muslim-majority countries, was fired after Reuveni told a court the Administration had mistakenly sent a Salvadoran man named Kilmar Abrego Garcia to CECOT because of a clerical error. The Department also placed on leave Reuveni's supervisor, August Flentje, who had defended Trump's family-separation policy in court in 2018. Traditionally, Justice Department lawyers have been required to keep their distance from the White House to avoid the appearance of politicization. Attorney General Pam Bondi, by contrast, has emphasized 'zealous' advocacy of Trump's agenda. 'Any attorney who fails to abide by this direction will face consequences,' Bondi said the day after Reuveni's court appearance. Eight hours after his arrest, Cristian was sent to the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Jena, La., about four hours from New Orleans, on the edge of a forest of loblolly and longleaf pines. The facility, which holds nearly 1,200 inmates, is run by the private corrections company GEO Group, a Trump donor for which Homan worked as a paid consultant. Most days, the prison is quiet, though on occasion hundreds of protesters show up to demand the release of its most famous inmate, Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student whom the Trump Administration arrested without a warrant in March for his role in the campus' pro-Palestinian protests, and has accused, without supplying evidence, of 'activities aligned to Hamas.' When TIME visited the Jena facility on May 29, nine landscapers in lime green shirts sat in the intake room on long benches, waiting their turn to be formally admitted. Their shirts read Twin Shores Landscape & Construction Services. Two days earlier, they had been starting a project on the Mirabeau Water Garden construction site in New Orleans, part of a $30 million federally funded drainage project to reduce flooding in the area. At 7 a.m., ICE officers surrounded the site, blocking the exits to the park, as a government helicopter hovered overhead. Donald Tercero, 36, was among those arrested. Tercero, who is Nicaraguan, had worked on farms and as a teacher before arriving in the U.S. in 2022. He presented himself to the Border Patrol at McAllen, Texas, seeking humanitarian parole under a program the Biden Administration had started that year. He's not planning to fight his deportation. 'I want to go back,' Tercero says. Manuel Carillo, a 29-year-old from Guatemala, was also among the construction crew arrested in the New Orleans ICE raid. 'Not everyone wants to do the work we are doing,' he says. 'Unfortunately, Donald Trump doesn't want us to stay.' Jimmy Bingham, the warden at Jena, says fewer detained migrants are resisting deportation these days. 'They don't feel like it's worth their time to fight,' Bingham says. Upon admission, inmates are given colored uniforms—red and yellow garb for the most serious felonies, green and orange for lesser offenses, blue for those with no conviction. They are separated according to these classifications and housed in dorms that hold 80 people apiece, with showers, phones, televisions, and a gaming system. They get two hours for recreation in the morning and another two hours in the afternoon, says the prison administrator. When TIME enters one of the dorms, a group of inmates rushes over, asking to tell their stories. Some had been there a few days, others a few weeks, and some even a few months as they waited to have their cases heard. The lucky ones are granted bond and can return home until a judge is ready to determine their fate. Read More: Trump's 2024 Person of the Year Interview Transcript. Jena is one of around 200 ICE detention facilities across the U.S., but agency officials like to send prisoners there for a few reasons. It's cheaper to detain migrants in Louisiana than in other parts of the country, and the state has a conservative federal Circuit Court that's more likely than some others to rule in the government's favor when it seeks a removal. Jena is also located near the Alexandria Staging Facility, a small airport managed by GEO. On average, the Alexandria facility flies six planes a day to other countries, says Ragan Lewis, an ICE officer who runs the airport. Some days see as many as 12 outgoing flights. As a plane loaded up with prisoners, Lewis waved his hand toward a stretch of grass next to the airfield. If there were money to expand the holding cells, he says, he could fit 2,000 people there. Lewis hopes the broad legislative package moving through Congress will allocate funding to expand the Jena facility to house more migrants, who could then be flown out of the country on planes from Alexandria. Just after dawn on May 29, the swish of chains dragging on asphalt was loud enough to be heard over idling engines. Roughly 70 men shuffled across the tarmac toward a chartered jet that would take them to Nicaragua. Before boarding, guards patted each down, looking for hidden weapons, unlocking and relocking their restraints, and directing them to make the awkward ascent up the stairs to the plane. One of the men, wearing a black hoodie, shook the chains around his wrists at a guard and said, 'Como perros! Como perros!' (Like dogs.) Once the detainees were on board, agents brought in a van with dozens of women, also manacled, to board next. Then came the only migrants without chains: family units. A woman with her teenage son got on first, followed by a woman with her young daughter. By the time the flight lifted off, there were 118 passengers on board. Whether Cristian will end up on one of these planes isn't yet clear. In May he was let out of Jena on a $4,000 bond. He is due back in immigration court in New Orleans on Sept. 2 to find out whether he will be sent back to Honduras or can remain in the U.S. with his father. The deportation chain in Louisiana exemplifies a nationwide operation that is redefining American immigration policy, legally and morally. The fallout is reaching far beyond those who entered the country without permission. Law-enforcement officials have snatched foreign students off the street for engaging in speech the Administration doesn't like. Trump has revoked student visas and put foreign students into deportation proceedings without warning. 'A visa is a gift,' Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on March 28. 'No one is entitled to a visa.' Trump is targeting younger children too. His attorneys have argued in federal court that he should be allowed to ignore the 14th Amendment's guarantee of citizenship for those born in the U.S. and terminate the rights of children born to parents who were in the country illegally. The President has cut federal funding to social-service nonprofits that offer legal representation to people facing deportation to ensure their cases are fairly decided. 'The very idea of deporting a child without a lawyer should be unthinkable in America,' says Jojo Annobil, the CEO of the Immigrant Justice Corps. Perhaps no other issue has crystallized criticism of Trump's immigration agenda like the deportation of Venezuelan nationals to El Salvador. Like many of Trump's policies, it came about through a series of conversations, rather than a conventional legal process. On the campaign stump, Trump occasionally castigated Bukele, the Salvadoran President, for sending MS-13 gang members to the U.S. Trump ally and former Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, one of Bukele's biggest American fans, told Trump that this wasn't true. Bukele was the most popular leader in Latin America, he told Trump, and attacking him wasn't going to help win over the Hispanic voters Trump was courting. When Gaetz visited El Salvador for Bukele's second inauguration last summer, he and Bukele discussed the idea of the Salvadorans holding some of the migrants whom Trump planned to deport if he won. When Gaetz returned, he tells TIME, he brought the idea to Trump and his team. Shortly after taking office, Trump directed Rubio to cut a deal with Bukele, two senior White House officials say. Rubio came back with an offer in hand, according to U.S. officials: $20,000 per prisoner for a year. There were wrinkles in the deal. Bukele wanted the Trump Administration to send a handful of Salvadoran MS-13 members held in U.S. prisons, including some who the Treasury Department alleged in December 2021 had engaged in secret negotiations with officials of Bukele's government. At the same time, the deportations would require claims of extraordinary presidential powers. Miller and the White House Counsel's office planned to invoke the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 law that grants the President wartime authority during an invasion or 'predatory incursion.' The plan was so closely held that only a few senior members of the Administration knew it was happening, one of them tells TIME. On March 15, the Trump Administration sent 238 Venezuelan nationals to El Salvador, alleging they were gang members or terrorists. Some had recently been arrested. Many of them had not been convicted in U.S. court. The Administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act for the fourth time in U.S. history, and the first since World War II. The declaration was made at 3:53 p.m. The flights for El Salvador were scheduled for 5:26, 5:44, and 7:36 p.m. Prompted by an emergency motion from the American Civil Liberties Union and Democracy Forward, U.S. Judge James Boasberg ordered a virtual hearing on the matter for late that afternoon. Boasberg heard arguments, then ordered the government to halt the removals. 'Whether turning around a plane or not embarking anyone on the plane, or those people covered by this on the plane, I leave to you,' Boasberg told the DOJ. 'But this is something that you need to make sure is complied with immediately.' Yet two planeloads of migrants had already left ahead of schedule. A third one was still on the tarmac at a Texas airfield, but took off anyway. The Trump Administration has not confirmed the names of the Venezuelans on those flights. Nor has it shown evidence that all of the men belonged to the criminal gang Tren de Aragua. A review by the Cato Institute found that more than 50 of the Venezuelans sent to El Salvador had followed legal steps to enter the country. A CBS News investigation found that most of the Venezuelans had no criminal record in the U.S. or abroad. One of the men on the planes was Abrego Garcia, who the Justice Department would later admit had been mistakenly deported. Another was Franco Caraballo Tiapa, who worked as a barber in Venezuela. In 2023, Tiapa and his wife Johanny trekked across the Darién Gap, sleeping in the open and surviving on scraps of discarded food, until they presented themselves at the U.S. border and asked for asylum. The two lived together in Sherman, Texas, where they made money cutting hair. On Feb. 3, Tiapa visited an ICE office in Dallas for a regular check-in. This time he was arrested, according to Johanny. The Administration says his tattoos show he's a member of the Tren de Aragua gang. One is of his daughter's name. Others depict a lion; a rose; and a razor blade on the side of his neck—a symbol of his work as a barber, according to his wife. She says he has no criminal record in the U.S. or Venezuela. 'They were only looking at his tattoos,' Johanny says. Outside of CECOT's Module 7, Garcia, the warden, brings out a Styrofoam container with a hamburger, French fries, ketchup packs, and Milano cookies. This is a typical meal for the Venezuelan inmates, he says. Their diet was devised by Bukele, who instructed they be fed fast food to gain weight, as a way of trolling critics who argue CECOT's conditions are inhumane, according to Salvadoran sources. 'It's a cat-and-mouse game,' says one person close to Bukele. The maneuver is similar to the photo op Bukele staged when Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen traveled to El Salvador to meet with Abrego Garcia. The pair were photographed sitting poolside with what Van Hollen said were 'fake' margaritas. (Abrego Garcia was returned to the U.S. in early June.) After the tour of the prison, Garcia allows TIME to interview one inmate in a holding area near the unit's entrance. The man says his name is Hector Hernandez. He appears to be the nightmare that Trump has conjured time and again on the campaign trail. He says he is an MS-13 member, and has tattoos all over his body, from his face and neck to his forearms. The prisoner claims that before he was deported in 2019 and apprehended by Salvadoran authorities, he murdered 50 people in Northern Virginia—more than three times the number of reported murders in Prince William or Fairfax counties for that year. TIME was unable to verify the details provided by the prisoner, including his name, his alleged crimes, or how he came to be there. Inside CECOT, the extreme terminus for Trump's deportation program, the truth, like everything else, is under the control of the authorities. What is clear, however, are the draconian conditions to which the Salvadoran inmates at CECOT are subjected. They are under constant surveillance. The lights never go off. They share cells with rival gang members. Prisoners who get out of line face up to 14 days in pitch-black solitary confinement, says Garcia. For the past 2½ years, the man who identifies himself as Hector Hernandez says, he's had no communication with the outside world. He hasn't spoken to family. He hasn't seen or read a news report. He doesn't know who the President of the United States is. — With reporting by Harry Booth, Leslie Dickstein, and Tharin Pillay Must-Reads from TIME As Trump Seeks Mass Deportations, Workplace Raids May Not Help Much As Trump Vies to Blows Up Border Deal, Migrant Crisis Could Get Worse How a Dead Border Deal Led to a Trump-Biden Border Duel Can One Agency Keep the U.S. Safe and Still Be Humane? The New DHS Chief Thinks So Immigration Raids Are Sweeping Up More People Who Weren't Targets Trump Abruptly Walks Back Student Visa Cancellations. Here's What We Know
