Latest news with #AaronReichlin-Melnick
New European
21-04-2025
- Politics
- New European
Donald Trump and the power of hoaxes
It turned out some of the recipients were born US citizens. Others were green card holders. One was even a Canadian resident. A Reddit user warned it was probably a scam. Others feared a spoof. Last week, a startling email popped up in inboxes across the United States. Purporting to be from the Department of Homeland Security, it was headed 'Notice of Termination of Parole', and began 'It is time for you to leave the United States.' A thread of worried, puzzled comments followed, as people tried to work out if the email was real, scouring it for clues. Someone consulted AI, which advised that it was probably fake. But it wasn't. Having spotted this torrent of confusion, Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, tweeted that the explanation appeared to lie in a Politico report that the DHS was working with Elon Musk's 'Department of Government Efficiency'. Their initial task was to 'implement parole terminations for 6,300 undocumented immigrants who either have criminal records or are on the FBI's terrorist watchlist.' If this was indeed the origin of the curious email, Reichlin-Melnick suggested, DOGE was using the wrong dataset. But what leapt out from this bizarre incident was the fact that the US government had issued a communication so odd that people struggled to believe it was real. This sounds a strange – and telling – historical echo. Distrust in the word of the US government did not begin with Donald Trump; nor is it exclusive to Republicans. By 1967, as the administration of the Democratic president Lyndon Johnson became ever more bogged down in Vietnam, its constant insistence that the war was going swimmingly led journalists to complain of a 'credibility gap'. Even the basis on which troops had been dispatched to Vietnam rested on an attack on a US warship which likely never happened. READ MORE: When Fred Trump lost his mind It was in this treacherous information environment that a group of young left wing satirists decided to send up the war and its supposed economic benefits. They concocted the story of a top-secret report, supposedly commissioned to scope out what would happen to the US economy and society if permanent peace broke out. The joke was that the report had warned that peace would be a disaster – and had had to be suppressed. The satirists hired a writer called Leonard Lewin, who wrote a book-length hoax, Report from Iron Mountain on the Possibility and Desirability of Peace, replete with real sources in the footnotes. In November 1967, this was published – as non-fiction – by the reputable Dial Press. When a journalist called the White House to ask if it was real, officials hedged, and the story hit the front page of the New York Times. Only after days of investigation, and worried memos reaching all the way up to President Johnson, did the White House declare that they had concluded it was fake. But even then, officials were whispering to journalists that it might be real after all. Lewin and his fellow satirists kept quiet – and some, not least among the young male Americans who were at risk of being drafted into the military, continued to believe the report was authentic. So those Sixties satirists managed to produce a hoax government document that convinced many people it was real. Today, meanwhile, the Trump administration has managed to produce a real government document that convinced many people it was a hoax. And the echoes don't stop there. Because Report from Iron Mountain had a rather surprising afterlife – which casts the Trump administration's relationship with reality in a revealing light. When he finally confessed to the hoax in 1972, Lewin said his goal was to draw attention to the absurdity of his country's approach to war 'in a provocative way'. As he wrote: 'If the 'argument' of the Report had not been hyped up by its ambiguous authenticity – is it, just possibly for real? – its serious implications wouldn't have been discussed. At all.' By blurring the line between fact and fiction, his satirical fake would force his fellow Americans to confront the truth. Provided they recognised the difference between satire and reality. The problem was, not everyone did. It was not only young 1960s leftists who fell for Report from Iron Mountain. In the Nineties, it was republished by fascists, who were convinced it was real. A conspiratorial Hitler fan called Willis Carto ran a network of organisations, among them a weekly newspaper called the Spotlight, which printed, promoted and circulated the book, without asking Lewin. After all, wasn't it a product of the government, and therefore not in copyright? It was all too easy to dismiss Lewin's claim to authorship as a deep state cover story, and insist his hoax was authentic. In 1982, the Spotlight had promoted the claim that The Diary of Anne Frank – which of course is wholly authentic – was a hoax. In the 1980s and 1990s, Willis Carto also backed political candidates, but none won anything like the number of Americans who voted for Donald Trump last year, and it is too simplistic to make sweeping parallels with the fascist fringe of 35 years ago. However, the story of Report from Iron Mountain does suggest some rhymes, not least in their attitudes to hoaxes and reality. Last month, the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, revealed that he had been inadvertently admitted to a group chat on the messaging app Signal, in which leading figures in the administration had discussed a military operation against the Houthis. When secretary of defense Pete Hegseth – one of those involved – was challenged by a reporter about this, he shot back, attacking Goldberg's reputation: 'You're talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who's made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again to include the – I don't know – the hoaxes of Russia, Russia, Russia or the 'fine people on both sides' hoax or 'suckers and losers' hoax. So this is a guy that peddles in garbage.' National security advisor Mike Waltz – the man who reportedly added Goldberg to the fateful Signal chat – echoed the talk of hoaxes, as did White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. But were the stories Hegseth cited really faked? 'Russia, Russia, Russia' refers to the claim that Donald Trump is being blackmailed by Moscow. This is highly dubious, but so is the accusation that it is a deliberate hoax, rather than just an anti-Trumpist over-reading of the evidence. Either way, it's hard to see how Goldberg can credibly be accused of involvement, given that he wrote in 2016, 'I am not suggesting that Donald Trump is employed by Putin' – merely that their worldviews had something in common. Meanwhile, 'fine people on both sides' refers to a 2017 Atlantic report that Trump had said that at confrontations in Charlottesville triggered by the 'Unite the Right' rally, there were 'fine people on both sides', while denying he was talking about 'neo-Nazis and white nationalists'. This came down to a disagreement about whether anyone not on the extreme right was attending the rally – but quoting Trump in this context was not a 'hoax'. And finally, 'suckers and losers' refers to a 2020 article by Goldberg which cited anonymous sources to claim that Trump had used those insults to describe certain US soldiers killed in the first world war – which Trump's former White House chief of staff John Kelly confirmed. So none of Hegseth's examples of hoaxes stand up. But then neither does his boss's insistence that the 2020 election was rigged, nor his insistence, during last year's election campaign, that climate change is 'all a big hoax'. Meanwhile, the belief that Report from Iron Mountain proved there were dark cabals at the heart of power, which went on to influence Oliver Stone's blockbuster movie JFK, and the US militia movement, continues today. It even inspired a second hoax, which has been invoked as though it were real by Alex Jones and QAnon's 'Q'. Wherever they appear, these patterns of thinking can be incredibly tenacious. But to push back, it's not enough to check facts, wag fingers, or mock foolishness. It is necessary to recognise the potency of blurring the boundary between hoax and reality, whether it's done deliberately or not. Not least because, as we've seen, this blurring can work in both directions – casting a hoax as real is effective, but so is casting reality as a hoax. Both degrade the whole idea of shared trust in truth – the foundation on which democracy depends. This works in quite a sophisticated way. A novel, for example, is presented, factually, as fiction. But a hoax is more fictional than fiction, because it's a fiction presented, fictionally, as fact. To say that something real is a hoax is to present a fact fictionally as a fiction presented as a fact. Given that this kind of thing is now fairly standard, it's not surprising we've reached the point where people think a real government email is a spoof or a scam. And that's before AI and its deep-fake possibilities really kick in. The one consolation in all this is that those who use these techniques often end up rendering themselves unsure about what is real and what is not. Which tends not to be to their advantage. Phil Tinline's new book Ghosts of Iron Mountain: The Hoax That Duped America and Its Sinister Legacy is out now, published by Head of Zeus
Yahoo
30-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
ICE List Shows How Tattoos and Clothing Are Used to Label Immigrants as Gang Members
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has obtained a list from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that reveals just how terrifyingly easy it is for the government to designate a Venezuelan immigrant as an 'Alien Enemy,' including allowing ICE officers to declare tattoos and items of clothing as containing gang signs. Immigration Council Senior Fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick shared on X (formerly Twitter) a copy of the 'Alien Enemies Act Validation Guide' on Sunday. The guide outlines a point system ICE can use to deport immigrants it designates as members of the Tren de Aragua (TDA) gang and send them to the infamously cruel and inhumane Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in El Salvador. Earlier this month, the administration flew nearly 300 Venezuelans to CECOT because it alleged they were members of TDA despite a court order instructing the government not to deport the immigrants. The administration has appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing judges do not have legal authority to halt its deportations. The ACLU and Democracy Forward have filed suit against the administration over the deportations, saying they violate the limits of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act and 'improperly attempt… to bypass the procedures and protections in immigration law.' According to the checklist, an ICE official must determine that the immigrant is a Venezuelan citizen older than 14. After that, the guide lays out a point system the agency created with different allegations and point allotments. Any conviction for violating 'federal or state law criminalizing or imposing civil penalties for activity related to TDA' constitutes 10 points. Self-identifying 'as a member or associate of TDA verbally or in writing to law enforcement… even if that self-identification to a law enforcement officer is unwitting, e.g., through lawful interception of communications' is also 10 points. Communicating with known TDA members is six points. A section titled 'Symbolism' allots four points for having 'tattoos denoting membership/loyalty to TDA' or wearing clothing 'to indicate allegiance to TDA.' Social media posts 'displaying symbols of TDA or depicting activity with other known members of TDA' get two points. In the 'Association' section, merely being in 'group photos with two or more known members of TDA' or living with known members of TDA is worth two points. Eight points or more is enough to classify immigrants 'validated as members of TDA.' For example, someone could be given six points for texting with a 'known member of TDA' and another three points for sending money to a 'known member' of TDA, Reichlin-Melnick pointed out. That totals to nine points, enough for deportation as an alleged TDA member. The guide notes that if all points are from the Symbolism and/or Association categories, agents should 'consult your supervisor and [the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor] before determining whether to validate the alien as a member of TDA.' But if a supervisor allows it, a Venezuelan adult in the U.S. who has tattoos and clothing an ICE officer says contain TDA symbols could be deported to CECOT for those reasons alone. It's a scary thought, especially considering the case of Neri Alvarado Borges, a native of Venezuela who ICE sent to CECOT with several dozen other Venezuelans the government accused — without due process — of affiliating with TDA. Alvarado told a friend that an ICE agent told him he was detained 'because of your tattoos.' 'We're finding and questioning everyone who has tattoos,' the ICE agent said, according to what Alvorado said to his friend, who spoke to Mother Jones. Alvarado has a tattoo of an autism awareness ribbon in tribute to his 15-year-old brother who is autistic. Even though Alvorado said an ICE agent later declared him 'clean' after searching his phone and hearing Alvorado's explanation of the meaning behind his tattoos (the agent reportedly said, 'I'm going to put down here that you have nothing to do with Tren de Aragua') they still sent him to CECOT where he remains. 'With this checklist, ICE can declare any Venezuelan an 'Alien Enemy' without ANY concrete evidence — based solely on an ICE officer's interpretation of tattoos and hand signs, or the bad luck of having a roommate ICE thinks is TDA,' Reichlin-Melnick wrote. 'This is why due process matters!' More from Rolling Stone ICE Is Canceling Students' Legal Status Without Informing Them or Their Schools: Report Trump Admits He's Open to Using 'Military Force' to Seize Greenland Trump Says He Is 'Very Angry' and 'Pissed Off' at Putin Over Ukraine Best of Rolling Stone The Useful Idiots New Guide to the Most Stoned Moments of the 2020 Presidential Campaign Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal The Radical Crusade of Mike Pence
Yahoo
26-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump To Courts: What I Do With Migrant ‘Terrorists' Isn't Your Business
The Trump administration is building a case in court for its ability to send people in the United States to an overseas detention camp — and then refuse to bring them home even if they're innocent. In a new court filing Tuesday night, the administration referred to a group of Venezuelan migrants and asylum seekers it moved from the U.S. to an infamous Salvadoran prison — a gay makeup artist and a professional soccer player reportedly among them — as not only enemy combatants but also terrorists, supposedly subject to presidential powers that U.S. judges cannot review at all once they are outside of the country. 'The President doubtlessly acts within his constitutional prerogative by declining to transport foreign terrorists into the country,' administration lawyers wrote, explaining why they assert they did not violate a judge's order to turn around planes carrying the migrants in question and bring them back to the United States. 'The President's ultimate direction of the flights at issue here—especially once they had departed from U.S. airspace—implicated military matters, national security, and foreign affairs outside of our Nation's borders,' government lawyers added later. 'As such, it was beyond the courts' authority to adjudicate.' Once the planes were outside of the United States, the government argued, 'the Constitution itself provided sufficient authority to act, and any dispute over the President's extraterritorial exercise of that authority would present a non-reviewable political question.' To some legal observers, it was a shocking assertion of presidential power. 'This argument suggests the existence of some kind of foreign policy loophole whereby the Executive could disregard the law to bring anyone accused of a national security threat outside of US territory, at which point he, as President, could do whatever he wants to them on national security ground,' said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, calling the government's argument 'a WILD claim.' The Venezuelan migrants sent to El Salvador's brutal supermax prison known as CECOT were claimed by Donald Trump's administration to be members of a gang called Tren de Aragua — despite ample evidence, in some cases, to the contrary. For example, at least one man had already successfully passed the extensive refugee screening process, only to be deemed a gang member by an immigration agent at an airport due to his tattoos, The Miami Herald reported. Several others were exercising their legal right to pursue asylum in the United States. Now, lawyers and family members are unsure of the fate of the men sent to CECOT, which is known for its brutality and inhumane conditions — or even if they'll ever see them again. The Trump administration has officially designated Tren de Aragua and other gangs as terrorist organizations. And earlier this month, Trump said that Venezuelan officials and gang members were actually both members of a 'hybrid criminal state that is perpetrating an invasion of and predatory incursion into the United States.' That, Trump argued, meant he could treat the supposed gang members as enemy combatants by invoking the Alien Enemies Act. And whereas past invocations of the Alien Enemies Act have included opportunities for people to dispute their classification as enemy combatants, Venezuelan migrants who the U.S. government expelled were not given that opportunity before their planes touched down in El Salvador. 'Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemy Act than what has happened here. … They had hearing boards before people were removed,' Judge Patricia Millett, of the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, said at a hearing Monday. 'Here, there's nothing about hearing boards or regulations and nothing was adopted by agency officials who were administering this. People weren't given notice [and] weren't told where they were going.' Even setting aside the Alien Enemies Act proclamation, which declared that supposed members of Tren de Aragua were actually part of an invading army, 'the President has ample independent authority under Article II [of the U.S. Constitution] to decline to bring foreign terrorists into the United States, including by returning to the United States foreign terrorists who were previously within the United States,' the Justice Department argued in its filing Tuesday night. Taken together, the Trump administration is arguing for a blank check to remove anyone they deem to be a gang member outside of the country without a hearing, send them to an infamous forced labor prison and then refuse to bring them back to the United States even as evidence emerges of their innocence. At several points in the legal fight over the flights to El Salvador's megaprison, the Trump administration has used secrecy to push back against legal accountability, including well before Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act last week. Starting in February, immigration agents began detaining Venezuelan asylum seekers who'd up to that point followed the legal process for pursuing asylum in the United States. In multiple cases, the detentions were the result of people's tattoos, Talking Points Memo reported Tuesday, citing interviews and lawyers' declarations in court filings. 'Over the next month and a half,' the outlet reported, 'detainees were progressively moved across the country towards the South Texas airfield from which the removal flights departed.' The secrecy of the operation all but ensured that lawyers for the affected migrants would not be able to challenge in court the government's labeling of their clients as invading soldiers. Trump signed the Alien Enemies Act proclamation in secret March 14, publicizing it the day after. The ACLU scrambled to stop expulsions in court, but in the hours that elapsed between the president's order and a hearing over the issue, the government got two flights full of migrants off the ground and headed toward El Salvador. As a result, even though the Trump administration acknowledged Monday that people subject to the Alien Enemies Act proclamation could have filed suit to prevent their expulsions from the United States — 'We agree that if you bring habeas (corpus) that you can raise such challenges,' Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign said — the reality is their lawyers had no ability to pursue those suits, because they had no idea what was happening to their clients. As Millett said in court, 'The question is the implementation of this [Alien Enemies Act] proclamation without any process to determine whether people qualify under it.' Katherine Yon Ebright, a counsel in the Brennan Center's Liberty and National Security Program who has written extensively about the Alien Enemies Act, noted that the attorney representing the Trump administration said 'that the potential Alien Enemies Act targets would need to file their habeas petitions in the right district/venue' — but also that 'he doesn't know where the targets are and doesn't think the government needs to provide notice of their impending removal.' 'Kafkaesque. Kafkaesque. Kafkaesque,' Yon Ebright reflected as the hearing concluded. Or as Slate legal writers Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern argued, 'This is not a constitutional argument, and it barely pretends to be. It is more akin to an argument from an archaic notion of the divine rights of kings: Trump is our ruler, it holds, such that anything he does is intrinsically lawful.' Millett, the appeals court judge, made a similar point during the hearing itself. 'If the government says, 'We don't have to give due process for that,' you could have put me up on a plane on Saturday and called me a member of Tren De Aragua … [with] no chance to protest it … and now you say it's somehow a violation of presidential war powers to say, 'Excuse me, no I'm not [a member of Tren De Aragua], I'd like a hearing,'' Millett said. Separately, the government told U.S. District Judge James Boasberg late Monday night that it did not have to provide any more information on the flights because it is invoking the state secrets privilege. 'Further intrusions on the Executive Branch would present dangerous and wholly unwarranted separation-of-powers harms with respect to diplomatic and national security concerns that the Court lacks competence to address,' the administration's filing read. Multiple court processes are now playing out in tandem. At the district court level, Boasberg has given the plaintiffs — the ACLU and Democracy Forward — until Monday to respond to the Trump administration's invocation of the state secret's privilege. And the judge himself likely will have more to say about the Trump administration's legal reasoning. For one thing, the administration's Tuesday night filing repeatedly asserted that an oral order from the judge during a hearing on March 15 — in which he told the government to 'immediately' turn any planes around carrying people expelled under the Alien Enemies Act — was not actually a legitimate order because it was not written down. Referring to the oral order, the government's filing described it as 'a handful of lines in the 46-page transcript' that did not carry legal weight. Separately, at the appeals court level, the three-judge panel that heard arguments Monday could rule any day. If they lift the temporary pause on Trump's use of the Alien Enemies Act, the administration could quickly allege Tren de Aragua gang membership against many others — and, without disclosing any evidence or allowing time for a hearing, quickly treat them as terrorist and enemy combatants, not migrants and asylum seekers. Judge Blasts Trump With A Harsh 4-Word Analogy Donald Trump Is Tearing Up The First Amendment Pro Soccer Player Expelled By Trump Over Tattoo Of His Favorite Team, Lawyer Says Gay Venezuelan Makeup Artist Among Hundreds Deported Without Due Process
Yahoo
19-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump's use of Alien Enemies Act blasted as abuse of power
The White House's use of the Alien Enemies Act to remove Venezuelans it has accused of being gang members is an abuse of war powers that critics say could open the door to mass deportations from a country President Trump has targeted multiple times in just a few months. While accusations the White House violated a court order by flying 238 Venezuelans to a Salvadoran prison have generated significant attention, immigration and civil rights advocates say the deportations themselves are just as alarming. The more than 100 Venezuelans deported for allegedly being in the Tren de Aragua gang had no opportunity to contest the accusation and were shipped to a Salvadoran prison amid questions over whether the U.S. had legal authority to move them there. Trump is also tapping the infrequently used Alien Enemies Act in a way never seen before, relying on gang membership, not armed conflict, to use the executive's war powers to deport people. Those sent to El Salvador include people who were being removed under existing immigration authorities, raising questions about why they were sent to a foreign prison. The government is paying El Salvador $6 million to imprison all the deportees for a year. 'All of these individuals are already alleged to have been removable under normal immigration law. So we have a bunch of people that the United States already had in physical custody and that the United States already could deport under normal immigration law, that they have instead decided to essentially send to a prison in El Salvador to do hard labor, seemingly entirely on the basis of wanting to get some public relations work done,' Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, an attorney with the American Immigration Council, told The Hill. 'Under what authority is the U.S. government paying a foreign government to imprison and subject to hard labor individuals who have not been subject to normal immigration law proceedings or charged with any crime in the United States? I simply don't see any legal authority for that. The Alien Enemies Act certainly doesn't authorize it. Normal immigration law certainly doesn't authorize it either.' Civil rights advocates also have major concerns over Trump's use of the Alien Enemies Act, which was most recently used as the basis for the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. 'What we're seeing is a president who is arbitrarily calling migration and narcotics trafficking acts of war and an invasion and predatory incursion, without any actual basis or factual basis for doing so,' said Katherine Yon Ebright, an expert in the Alien Enemies Act and attorney with the Brennan Center for Justice. 'This law was enacted pursuant to Congress's constitutional war powers. It's not an immigration statute. And so, using a wartime authority that is manifestly for responding to armed attacks for peacetime immigration enforcement is as clear of a violation … as we've seen from this administration and perhaps any administration.' The Trump administration has argued the Venezuelans were 'terrorists.' 'We removed terrorists from the country this weekend,' border czar Tom Homan said Monday. 'I can't believe any media would question the president's ability to remove terrorists from this country.' Trump's plans to use the Alien Enemies Act ignited a suit from several Venezuelans already in custody who have denied any connection with Tren de Aragua, which the administration often abbreviates as TdA. A sworn statement from an official with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) notes that 'many' of those removed on the flights do not have a criminal record in the U.S. 'That is because they have only been in the United States for a short period of time. The lack of a criminal record does not indicate they pose a limited threat. In fact, based upon their association with TdA, the lack of specific information about each individual actually highlights the risk they pose. It demonstrates that they are terrorists with regard to whom we lack a complete profile,' Robert Cerna, an acting field office director with ICE, said in a sworn statement. He added that many have been accused of crimes abroad, while others are suspected of criminal activity in the U.S. Ebright noted the U.S. already has the power to push for deportations through regular immigration and court processes. 'What the Trump administration is hoping to do is bypass the due process protections that exist in peacetime law and in immigration law,' she said. 'The only reason to rely on the Alien Enemies Act is to bypass that process, to make any Venezuelan immigrant who the president deems to be or designates to be a member of Tren de Aragua without satisfactory evidence — make that person deportable,' she added. 'And it really does echo the World War II history, where we saw the president put 31,000 noncitizens of Japanese, German, and Italian descent into camps because he had 'deemed them dangerous' without evidence and without hearings.' Reichlin-Melnick said it was 'extraordinarily unlikely' that those deported would be able to challenge the administration's actions from a Salvadoran prison. 'What we know for sure is that the U.S. government has not given any of these individuals an opportunity to challenge their claim that they are part of a gang,' he said — something that would have been possible while the group was still in ICE custody. The treatment of the other 101 Venezuelan migrants deported on the flights has also gained scrutiny. That portion of the group was removed using Title 8 immigration authorities – a standard process, but one that has not been used to remove migrants to a foreign prison. 'Yes, some people can be deported to third countries, but I have never heard of a person being deported directly to a foreign prison where they are being held, allegedly on the U.S. demand,' Reichlin-Melnick said. In just a few short weeks in office, the Trump administration has taken a number of actions seeking to roll back protections for Venezuelans. In February, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem purported to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS), spurring a swift lawsuit from advocates who said she had no power to vacate the protection given by her predecessor. Laws governing TPS require analysis of various safety factors both for granting and rescinding the protections. And Trump has also moved to end protections for Venezuelans as well as Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans who were paroled into the country under the Biden admission. Reichlin-Melnick called it a turnaround for Trump, noting that in his first term, he gave protections known as Deferred Enforced Departure to some Venezuelans, citing repression under Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro's regime. 'We are talking about more than half a million people. Many of them have been completely law-abiding after arriving in the United States, have followed every requirement of the United States, and have done nothing wrong,' Reichlin-Melnick said of the roughly 600,000 Venezuelans who immigrated to the U.S. in recent years. 'I think this is part and parcel of a broader effort to paint the United States as under siege from migrants and from immigrants.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
18-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump Deported Immigrants Over Tattoos. Here's What They Really Mean.
Some of the men that Trump illegally deported to a mega prison in El Salvador are regular civilians and not murderous Tren de Aragua gang members as Trump continues to insist. On Saturday, Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport over 200 Venezuelans on the grounds that they were Tren de Aragua gang members. A federal judge ordered the planes to turn around and return to the United States, but the Trump administration claimed that the judge's written order came too late, wrongly suggesting that a verbal and written federal order hold different weight. 'These are criminals, many many criminals … murderers, drug dealers at the highest level, drug lords. People from mental institutions. That's an invasion,' Trump said in reference to the deportees. In reality, immigration officials appear to be simply detaining any Latino men with tattoos. 'The men sent to do hard labor in a Salvadoran prison with no due process include: A tattoo artist seeking asylum who entered legally, a teen who got a tattoo in Dallas because he thought it looked cool, a 26-year-old whose tattoos his wife says are unrelated to a gang,' the American Immigration Council's Aaron Reichlin-Melnick wrote on X. 'Our [Immigrant Defenders Law Center] client fled Venezuela last year & came to US to seek asylum. He has a strong claim. He was detained upon entry because ICE alleged his tattoos are gang related. They are absolutely not,' immigration lawyer Lindsay Toczylowski wrote on Bluesky. 'Our client worked in the arts in Venezuela. He is LGBTQ. His tattoos are benign. But ICE submitted photos of his tattoos as evidence he is Tren de Aragua. His @ImmDef attorney planned to present evidence he is not. But never got the chance because our client has been disappeared.' Aguilera Agüero, one of the people detained and deported, has a tattoo that reads 'Real until death' in Spanish, a line from Puerto Rican reggaeton star and Trump supporter Anuel AA. Agüero's family denies all ties to Tren de Aragua. 'People have started identifying some of the 238 Venezuelan migrants deported to Bukele's torture dungeons by the U.S. fascist regime. The brother of one of them posted that his relative is a barber with no criminal record and no links to any criminal organisations,' another account wrote on X. We're at the point where Trump is proudly ignoring the checks and balance systems to carry out these racist and indiscriminate deportations, forcing innocent men into absolute danger in Bukele's Salvadoran prison system.
