Trumptatorship 2: Of Enemies, Alien & Domestic [Updated Below]

This is the 2nd in a series of articles covering Donald Trump's efforts to end liberal democracy in the United States and replace it with authoritarian autocracy--a Trumptatorship. The 1st part, an introduction, is here.

As part of his fanatical crusade against immigrants, Trump has just invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which grants a president extraordinary powers to apprehend, detain, expel subjects of a foreign government with which the U.S. is at war. That last is a requirement--by law, the powers Trump is claiming require that either congress has declared war against a foreign government or that foreign government has invaded or otherwise attacked the U.S.. Neither of those things have happened; Trump's invocation of the law was aimed at--not making this up--a Venezuelan prison-gang, Tren de Aragua (TdA). It has no more legal validity than would a Trump declaration that he's now the hereditary monarch, but Trump has invoked the law, claimed those powers, asserted a version of them more extreme than has ever existed and then used them to rendition over 130 people, whom his regime arbitrarily accused of being foreigners and members of the gang, to a gulag in El Savador without any semblance of due process, without even so much as a hearing, in violation of both the law and an explicit court order not to rendition until the legal matters surrounding the Act had been addressed. The attacks on the court subsequently levied by Trump and his ghouls are specifically aimed at undermining the constitutional order itself, a full-bore effort to convert public support for that order into disdain for it.

As this writer documented at some length, Trump, in the 2024 cycle, went full Nazi on immigrants, directly appropriating the rhetoric of the Third Reich in describing them as disease-carriers, as "animals," as "savages," as "garbage," as "predators" who "rape, pillage, thieve, plunder and kill." And, infamously, eat your pets. He vowed he would "liberate... our entire nation from this mass migrant invasion of murderers and child predators and gang members, terrorists, drug dealers, and thugs." Trump made this one of his top campaign "issues." As I wrote at the time,

"One can point out that none of this is true, that all available data indicates that immigrants commit crimes at notably lower rates than the native-born, that even if one accepts "migrant crime" as a real presidential issue--and it isn't one--it's a microscopic one, that Trump's "sources," on the rare occasions when he even has any, don't at all support his assertions, but fact-checking such talk completely misses the point, which is to demonize and dehumanize brown untermenschen as a means of politically organizing Aryan voters around hating them... It's the fascism, stupid."

In mixed company, Trump would--in a game also often indulged by his apologists--sometimes take a step back and pretend to be opposed only to illegal immigrants, which wouldn't make any of his ugly rhetoric any better or defensible even if it was true, but, of course, it wasn't, and he was constantly betraying himself on the point. He embraced Nazi pseudoscience, saying immigrants commit murder because they're genetically predisposed to do so: "it's in their genes." He, in fact, repeatedly said immigrants were "poisoning the blood of our nation," directly contextualizing his virulent anti-immigrant campaign as racist blood-and-soil Nazism.

Trump's rhetoric was one of war; he vowed a fanatical crusade of, essentially, ethnic cleansing against the foreign-born blood-poisoners.

That's what's been playing out this year. The U.S. Constitution requires that those targeted by the government be given due process, and the government has established a large body of laws and system of adjudication for providing it but in an entirely cynical bid to create a pretext for getting around this, for activating, instead, extraordinary war powers, Trump arbitrarily designated several criminal gangs--Tren de Aragua was one of them--as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs). But entirely lacking any political program--the central component of terrorism--they aren't. These gangs carry on regular criminal activity--peddling drugs, prostitution, theft, protection rackets, etc. Their violence is that of capitalists looking to make more and more money but operating outside the law. Moreover, the notion that TdA is a major threat within the U.S. is completely unsupportable, a politically-motivated phantom. The Department of Homeland Security recently estimated TdA's presence in the United States at only about 600 people. Admittedly, that comes with lots of caveats. The number is based on reassessments of Venezuelans who are known to have come to the U.S. and the U.S. and Venezuela don't share law-enforcement intel. At the same time, the 600 are people who may (or may not) have connections to TdA, not 600 members of TdA. A December Americas Quarterly article by a pair of academics, Charles Larratt-Smith and John Polga-Hecimovich, surveys the evidence and makes the case that claims about the danger allegedly posed by TdA are absurdly overblown, noting, among other things, that

"[N]early no claims made by U.S. law enforcement about crimes committed by purported members of TdA have been substantiated by hard evidence that directly connects the accused with the organization in Venezuela. In fact, none of the national, state, and local law enforcement agencies contacted in the U.S by InSight Crime in April 2024 reported any significant presence of TdA in their jurisdictions."

Despite a major diaspora of those fleeing economic collapse, political repression and growing violence in Venezuela--a truly horrific situation that has Venezuelans fleeing to their regional neighbors in droves--USA Today reports that "in November, Immigration and Customs Enforcement told USA TODAY that agents had arrested fewer than 30 people with TdA connections."

On 15 March, Trump issued a proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act against TdA, and later that same day, he ordered 261 people to be renditioned to El Salvador, where the "president," Nayib Bukele, has been busily making himself a president-for-life, those so shipped to be stored in CECOT, a prison notorious for human rights abuses and from which no one ever leaves alive. Of those, the Trump regime said 137 were TdA and removed under the "authority" of the Alien Enemies Act, 101 were removed as a result of regular immigration proceedings (which authorized their deportation, not their rendition to a foreign torture dungeon) and 23 were said to be members of the MS-13 gang (also falsely designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the regime). As noted earlier, the renditions happened in direct violation of a court order.

When rolling out the regime's talking-points on all of this, Trump's ghouls cranked up the gaslight, trying to sell war and the image of the Maximal Leaders standing tall and protecting his people from the foreign sub-human, but what Trump had actually done kept getting in the way.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt asserted that those who were renditioned--to slavery under an authoritarian regime (a move that raises a raft of other legal problems)--had been "foreign terrorist aliens." That's 3 separate claims in one phrase, and the Trump regime, which carried out all of this without so much as a trace of the due process required of it by the constitution, has neither proven nor even provided any evidence for any of them. The regime, which has insisted on keeping secret nearly every detail of this, provided no evidence that any of those renditioned were or had ever been part of the TdA or MS-13 gangs either. But calling them "terrorists," via that inaccurate designation from earlier, does play a lot better on the news than "the American dictator has declared people to be foreigners, members of Tren de Aragua and terrorists and renditioned them to a foreign tyranny without providing any evidence for any of that," doesn't it?

Asked about due process and how the regime was sure that those who were deported actually were who the regime claims they were, Leavitt said,

"I can assure the American people that Customs and Border Patrol and ICE and the Department of Homeland Security are sure about the identities of the individuals who were on these planes and the threat that they posed to our homeland. They take this incredibly seriously. They are putting their lives on the line to deport these designated terrorists from our country and they should be trusted to do that, and that's exactly what the American people elected this president to do... They should be trusted and respected by the American public with this operation."

The wisdom of history is that governments are never to be trusted in such matters but that's the word from the designated mouth of the most dishonest president in the history of the republic: Trust us."

Meanwhile, a growing body of credible information developed by the press when working the story directly contradicts such "assurances." From NBC News:

"The families strongly deny that their relatives are connected to the Venezuelan gang known as Tren de Aragua, a claim the Trump administration has used to justify their quick deportations under a rarely used law from 1798, the Alien Enemies Act. They say their family members have been falsely accused and targeted because of their tattoos."

Among other things, the NBC report covers a man who was legally present in the U.S., had applied for asylum and was actively going through the asylum process--kidnapped by the Trump regime and shipped off to a foreign gulag, apparently because of, in a story that has appeared again and again throughout this sordid affair, innocuous body-art.

The Miami Herald:

"Families of three men who appear to have been deported and imprisoned in El Salvador told the Miami Herald that their relatives have no gang affiliation--and two said their relatives had never been charged with a crime in the U.S. or elsewhere. One has been previously accused by the U.S. government of ties to the Tren de Aragua gang, but his family denies any connection."

The New York Times:

"A growing chorus of families, elected officials and immigration lawyers have begun coming forward in the news media to reject or cast doubt on the allegations. Some lawyers--sent into frantic searches for their clients in detention centers across the country--believe their clients have been singled out simply for their tattoos... Lindsay Toczylowski, a lawyer with the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, said her client was a young professional in his 30s who worked in the arts industry and had been in detention since he sought entry into the United States last year, when he applied for asylum using an online government app, CBP One. She said her client had come under suspicion because of his tattoos, but his lawyers had not been given the opportunity to counter the claims through a court hearing."

WLRN Radio:

"The administration has not released the names of the deportees. But at least one migrant who appears to be among them also appears not to be a gang member, let alone an alien enemy terrorist--and appears to have been branded as such for nothing more than a tattoo."

The Miami Herald:

"Frengel Reyes Mota was supposed to be dealing with his ongoing asylum case as he fought for his chance to stay in the United States. Suddenly, he instead found himself locked up in a mega prison thousands of miles away... But the 24-year-old father does not have a criminal record in Venezuela. His U.S. immigration detention records are riddled with mistakes, raising questions about how reliable they are. He does not have tattoos and his family members deny he has any gang ties."

Mother Jones:

"Mother Jones has spoken with friends, family members, and lawyers of ten men sent to El Salvador by the Trump administration based on allegations that they are members of the Venezuelan organized crime group Tren de Aragua. All of them say their relatives have tattoos and believe that is why their loved ones were targeted. But they vigorously reject the idea that their sons, brothers, and husbands have anything to do with Tren de Aragua... The families have substantiated those assertions to Mother Jones, including--in many cases--by providing official documents attesting to their relatives' lack of criminal histories in Venezuela. Such evidence might have persuaded US judges that the men were not part of any criminal organization had the Trump administration not deliberately deprived them of due process."

More generally, Colorado Public Radio reports:

"A CPR News review of court records, social media posts and immigration court proceedings finds that the evidence behind claims of gang membership is frequently little more than circumstantial, if that. Tattoos of roses and clocks. A nod at a telephone when a confidential informant asks about gang membership. Attendance at a party where an ICE claim about the presence of one member of Tren de Aragua is then extended to everyone in the room as an associate."

And so on. Leavitt repeatedly referred to those who were renditioned as "terrorists," called them "heinous monsters," said treating them this way was "saving countless American lives," but the regime was forced to concede in a court filing that "many" of those accused of being TdA "do not have criminal records in the United States" but, in an Orwellian twist, argued that "the lack of a criminal record does not indicate they pose a limited threat," and that, "In fact, based upon their association with TdA," an "association" for which the regime had offered no evidence whatsoever and that was one of the matters at issue,

"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."

Yowza. On 31 March, USA Today reported that

"Of the 50 people [so far] identified who have been deported to a prison in El Salvador, 44 have no criminal record in either the U.S. or Venezuela, according to Kate Wheatcroft, an immigrant rights activist with the New York-based nonprofit Together & Free."

Five who, before being renditioned, had sued over all of this, have no criminal record in either country and for several who had applied for asylum and were going through that process, "their asylum claims were based in part on having been targeted by TdA itself." The Miami Herald reported that one of the renditioned had already gone through the process and had been granted asylum in the U.S.! He--already a legally-protected asylee--was targeted and renditioned by the Trump gang because he had tattoos.[2]

The "source" for the claim that TdA uses identifying tattoos appears to be the corrupt, virulently anti-immigrant Greg Abbott regime in Texas. CNN reports that

"The Texas Department of Public Safety last year identified an assortment of tattoos connected to Tren de Aragua, many relatively common: stars on the shoulder, royal crowns, firearms, trains, dice, roses, tigers and jaguars. A photo collage of the tattoos even includes a Nike 'Jumpman' logo and Michael Jordan's number 23 jersey number as an identifier of gang membership."

Meanwhile, in the real world, Larratt-Smith and Polga-Hecimovich note that "the tattoos or dress codes ascribed to TdA members in the U.S. has little backing in other places where the gang has been known to operate." The Herald story notes that "experts have said that, unlike many other criminal gangs, TdA members don’t have specific, identifiable tattoos."

Perhaps most emblematic of the complete indifference of the Trump regime to who they were renditioning, eight of those shipped out were women. The Bukele regime refused to put them in a gulag designed for men--the foreign despot behaving, in this matter, more decently than the American one--and they were returned to the U.S. One of the women has since filed an affidavit in which she said, as Newsweek reported,

"Shortly after takeoff, she overheard two U.S. officials talking: 'There is an order saying we can't take off but we already have.'"

...establishing, if true, that officials were aware of the court order.[2] She also "says she witnessed federal agents urging men to confess gang membership under threat," trying to get them to sign papers saying they were Tren de Aragua.

In response to the court order barring the regime from carrying out the renditions, Leavitt offered what became the regime's standard response, attacking the constitutional order itself. She asserted that the court's actions "had no legal basis" and denied that "a single judge in a single city"--that is, the representative of a co-equal branch of government operating as it was legally constituted--can issue such orders.

"Moreover, as the Supreme Court has repeatedly made clear, federal courts generally have no jurisdiction over the President's conduct of foreign affairs, his authorities under the Alien Enemies Act, and his core Article II powers to remove foreign alien terrorists from U.S. soil and repel a declared invasion."

...except, of course, this wasn't a matter of "foreign affairs," Trump has no "authorities under the Alien Enemies Act" and there is no "invasion," much less any "declared" one. The notion that Trump has these same powers--granted by congress in the Act only in the extreme circumstance of wartime--as part of his "core Article II powers" is a fallback "argument," one that essentially acknowledges that the invocation of the Act is, despite all the heat used to pitch it, frivolous and will only withstand scrutiny if the courts choose to completely ignore the law and its history. At the same time, the existence of the law renders ludicrous the "core Article II" assertion; if a president already had these extraordinary powers, there would be no need to either grant them to him or, as in the Act, limit their activation only to wartime; congress wouldn't even have the power to do the latter; that congress gave itself the power to activate the Act by declaring war means the powers the Act grants don't exist in the absence of the scheme established by the Act for activating them (and, in fact, all previous uses of the law--there have only been three in the entire scope of U.S. history--occurred during wars declared by congress). This secondary "argument" that Trump has these power as an inherent part of the presidency is, for obvious reasons, a particularly insidious one and, contradicting the first, it's being advanced with an eye toward giving the right-wing Supreme Court a pick-and-choose variety-menu of rationalizations for granting Trump these powers, something the regime hopes will happen.

White nationalist, demagogue and Trump deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller says that's what they hope will happen. Apparently lost in a particularly thick haze, Miller called the judge's order, not his own boss's actions, an assault on democracy itself. Interviewed by Kasie Hunt on CNN, Miller asserted,

"The President of the United States and his administration reserve all rights under the constitution to conduct national security operations in defense of the United States. The Alien Enemies Act, which was passed into law by the founding generation of this country, men like John Adams, was written explicitly to give the president the authority to repel an alien invasion of the United States. That is not something that a district court judge has any authority whatsoever to interfere with, to enjoin, to restrict or to restrain in any way. You can read the law yourself. There's no one clause in that law that makes it subject to judicial review, let alone district court review."[emphases his]

Nor, of course, does there need to be; judicial interpretation has been a fundamental feature of the American system since its founding era--the same era that produced the Alien Enemies Act. Miller insisted Trump was exercising "his core Article II powers as commander-in-chief," but the president is commander-in-chief of the armed forces; while Miller's comments are no doubt pleasing to those elements of Trump's base whose extremities stiffen at the thought of military force wielded in a holy mission against brown undermen, Trump's position in the military hierarchy is only relevant in a law-enforcement matter like this in that it's an example of the dictatorial "this is war" imagery Trump and his underlings are invoking. Miller insisted that "the president and the president alone makes the decision of what triggers" the Act--a claim belied by the plain text of the Act itself--and that his decision isn't subject to judicial review at all. Further, he rhetorically asked, "does a district-court judge have the right to direct or enjoin troop movements overseas?" A direct equation of Trump's control over domestic affairs in the U.S. to his control over the military. And, from a legal perspective, rancid rubbish. Steve Vladeck of the University of Texas School of Law points out that there was robust judicial review of presidential decisions made under the Act in all of the previous invocations of it--in the War of 1812, World War I and World War II.[3]

Miller also repeated the loony conspiracy theory outlined by Trump in his proclamation that Tren de Aragua--a gang made up of criminals imprisoned by the Venezuelan government--operated at the command of the Venezuelan government and that this justified Trump's invocation of the Act. "It is documented [in Trump's proclamation] that the TdA was sent by the Venezuelan government."

In reality, the U.S. intelligence community has, as the New York Times reports,

"concluded that the gang, Tren de Aragua, was not directed by Venezuela's government or committing crimes in the United States on its orders... Mr. Trump’s key factual assertions contradicted the earlier intelligence assessment, the officials [with which the Times spoke] said. It concluded that the gang was not acting at the direction of the Maduro administration and that the two are instead hostile to each other, citing incidents in which Venezuelan security forces exchanged gunfire with gang members... The assessment, according to one official, also portrayed the gang as lacking the resources and being too disorganized--with little in the way of any centralized command-and-control--to be able to carry out any government orders... The assessment, this official also said, asserts that when the State Department designated the gang as a foreign terrorist organization last month at Mr. Trump’s direction, a minister in the Maduro administration publicly praised the action."

The Times story also notes that

Mr. Trump's proclamation cited scant evidence for his core finding that Tren de Aragua as an organization has been committing crimes to destabilize the United States 'at the direction, clandestine or otherwise, of the Maduro regime in Venezuela.'

"Its most concrete detail was that the gang had expanded from 2012 to 2017, when Tareck El Aissami served as governor of the region of Aragua, and in 2017 Mr. Maduro appointed him as vice president. But the proclamation omitted that Mr. Aissami is no longer part of the Maduro administration, which is prosecuting him on corruption charges."

Another detail that may just be relevant here is the fact that the Maduro regime raided the prison TdA had taken over and turned into its headquarters for most of the gang's existence and razed it to the ground. Nearly 2 years ago.

Meanwhile, Trump's corrupt Attorney General Pam Bondi[4] attacked the judge who issued the order,

"saying that he 'supported Tren de Aragua terrorists over the safety of Americans.' She added that the DOJ would be 'undeterred' in its work with the White House and the Department of Homeland Security to 'stop this invasion.'"

Trump's "border czar" Tom Homan offered perhaps the most succinct summation of the administration's attitude, telling Fox viewers,

"I'm proud to be part of this administration. We're not stoppin'. I don't care what the judges think. I don't care what the left thinks. We're comin'."

Trump was his usual reserved self:

No corruption scandals have ever touched James Boasberg, the judge in question, who was such a controversial, radical rabble-rouser that he'd gotten his first judicial appointment from a Republican (George Bush Jr.), his next (to his present post) by a Democrat (Obama)[5] and, even in this polarized political environment, was confirmed by the U.S. Senate by a vote of 96-0. While stonewalling Boasberg and flatly refusing to cooperate with the court, Trump has denounced those who have vandalized Tesla properties--a company owned by Elon Musk, Trump's head of the "Department of Government Efficiency"--as "sick terrorist thugs," Bondi condemned what she called a "wave of domestic terrorism against Tesla properties," and Trump suggested his regime would send the vandals (the "terrorists") to the same El Salvadoran prison. A small glimpse of where we're heading.

Trump's call for impeachment drew a rebuke from right-wing Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who issued a statement:

"For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose."

But MAGA-aligned congressclown Brandon Gill (R-TX) immediately introduced a resolution to impeach Boasberg. It laughably misstates both the facts and the law (Gill isn't a lawyer and isn't very bright either) and provides no grounds for any impeachment for its asserted high crimes and misdemeanors and instead of just being laughed out of the room, it immediately drew 22 co-sponsors. This is becoming a regular spectacle in congress: as the courts have widely resisted Trump's illegal actions, Republican congressclowns have tried to advance impeachment against multiple judges. House Speaker Mike Johnson characterized these courts' efforts to uphold the law, as they were constituted to do, as "abuses," introduced legislation to bar district courts from issuing such injunctions,and threatened to weaponize congress' power in the face of court actions he dislikes:

"we can eliminate an entire district court. We have power over funding, over the courts and all these other things. But desperate times call for desperate measures, and Congress is going to act."

Trump won the election with over 50% of  voters casting their ballot against him--even if there even was such a thing as a mandate for the reactionary dictatorship he's trying to impose, this definitely ain't it--but as his numbers sink even further, Johnson fumed, "it violates separation of powers when a judge thinks that they can enjoin something that a president is doing, that the American people voted for"--a novel principle for Johnson who, like the other congressional Republicans, certainly never offered it when courts enjoined Joe Biden's actions. Trump and the rest of MAGA, in fact, praised and raved about the same kind of court-orders they now denounce as "tyrannical" when said orders were issued against the Biden administration.[6] Johnson's appeal to democracy is particularly rich--he, himself, worked to overturn the results of the 2020 election when the candidate he favored lost. That would be the candidate, now president, Johnson is backing here--the one who, himself, tried to overthrow that election and is also crowing out of his other beak about his allegedly great democratic mandate.

Documenting that kind of hypocrisy is easy but while it unquestionably illustrates the character of the players here and provides context, it's also trite, this writer finds it tiresome and it risks trivializing a matter that, just now, is of the absolute utmost importance. One can take the time to go through every part of this, as I have here, show how Trump's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act is baseless, how he's falsely said he can activate it at will and that it gives him legal superpowers it has never given any president and all the rest but the truth--one at which all this effort is getting--is that Trump doesn't care about the law. He doesn't care about the constitution. He's just a dictator doing dictatorial things and his citation of law is strictly frivolous--utilitarian window-dressing. If he thought he could mangle the annual presidential Thanksgiving Day proclamation into a legalistic pretext for and useful propaganda to sell what he wants to do here, he'd be using it. Just as before, it's the fascism, stupid.

This is gangster government, Americans. Do you really want to live under a state where what I've described here can happen? Where a president can just concoct a stream of lies then use them to assert tyrannical powers he doesn't have, ignore the law, ignore the constitution, violate both at will, declare people to be non-citizens at will, arbitrarily label them as criminals or terrorists or heinous monsters, kidnap them and rendition them to permanent slavery under a foreign despotism without having to prove or even provide any evidence of any of that, then insists that it's all beyond the scope of any legitimate review of any kind by the other duly-constituted formerly co-equal branches of government? A dictatorship where those other branches may even essentially commit suicide by agreeing to go along with and facilitate the dictator's murder of the constitutional order? Whatever you may think America's problems are, the most powerful nation in the history of the world being converted into this kind of dictatorship is a much bigger problem, a much bigger threat to you, me and to the entire world. This is not the way to anything better. But if things are allowed to be this way, they will become this way. That's the nature of this particular species of "government," each outrage against liberty becoming a precedent for further encroachment. Now, Americans, I don't, for a moment, believe that's what most of you want but that's what's upon us, and if you don't want it, you need to do something, before it's too late. Sound off, speak up, speak out while you still can. Because if this continues down the path it has, the days when you'll still be able will be numbered.

--j.

---

[1] That same Herald article covered the story of a professional soccer player who

"took part in peaceful demonstrations against the Nicolas Maduro regime [in Venezuela] in 2024. He was detained, tortured with electric shock shock and suffocation. When he was released he fled to the U.S. seeking protection."

" Despite having no criminal record in Venezuela, no links to gangs and no history of violence," he, too, was kidnapped by the Trump gang and sent to El Salvador.

[2] The Trump gang have denied they violated the court order, claiming the order came too late, when the planes had already departed. The judge had ordered any planes that had taken off to return first verbally then as part of a written order. Trump's underlings have been playing a game in public of insisting the planes were already gone before the written order was issued, and Trump Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt suggested the verbal order didn't have the same legal authority of a written one--strictly Uranian. The regime retained custody of those being renditioned

[3] Vladeck also points out that Trump's "argument" for invoking the Act, "is nonsense."

"Whatever else might be said about TdA, it is not a 'foreign nation or government,' and there is no 'foreign nation or government' that is currently undertaking an 'invasion or predatory incursion' against the United States. DOJ tries to split the difference by suggesting that TdA is acting at the direction of the 'Maduro regime,' but it never actually makes the argument that would have to follow to make the statute even arguably applicable--that the Venezuelan government is responsible for the 'invasion or predatory incursion.' The Alien Enemy Act is specific on this point, and TdA just doesn’t fit the bill."

[4] While Attorney General of Florida, Bondi faced complaints by Floridians defrauded by Trump as part of his "Trump University" scam. When running for reelection, Bondi solicited campaign contributions from Trump. He gave her a $25,000 "donation"--a bribe--then her office announced they'd be taking no legal action on those complaints. When Trump's original choice for Attorney General, an apparent sex-offender, blew up, he chose Bondi for the job.

[5] Boasberg is a federal judge, currently the chief judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, not, as Trump told Fox, some "local judge."

[6] And to be clear, such injunctions are issued against every presidential administration. They all overstep at times--that's the nature of power. That Trump has drawn more of them than others reflects only his insistence on trying to run a gangster government and the judicial branch's resistance--so far--to this.

*          *          *

UPDATE (9 April, 2025) - CBS News managed to acquire government documents with the names of the Venezuelans renditioned to El Salvador. The network's 60 MINUTES went to work on it, trying to track their criminal history in the U.S. and abroad. The Trump regime had repeatedly insisted that these were "the worst of the worst" and claimed that they had solid "intelligence" info to back this, but it turned out only 12 of the renditioned had ever been accused of serious/violent crimes like kidnapping, rape and murder. Overall, 22% had been accused of some crime somewhere but they were almost entirely minor offenses like trespassing or shoplifting. 60 MINUTES couldn't tell if 3% had any criminal record. But the bulk of the renditioned--75% of them--appear to have no criminal history at all.[1]

On 1 April, Reuters looked into 50 of those who were renditioned and found that half of them had entered and were present in the U.S. legally. Further,

"Twenty-seven of the Venezuelans whose cases Reuters reviewed were never ordered deported. They have upcoming immigration court hearings to make their asylum and other claims to stay in the United States, according to immigration court records, even though they are now in El Salvador."

Ten of them "were arrested when they appeared for routine immigration check-ins" with ICE. Others were "detained going about their daily lives," kidnapped right off the street. "They were barbers, tattoo artists, construction workers, delivery drivers and factory workers."

This is tucked away in the Reuters story but, reflecting what everyone else in the know has so far said about TdA, seems of utmost importance to all of this:

"Known primarily for human trafficking and extortion in Latin America, Tren de Aragua does not have a significant presence in the U.S., according to Rebecca Hanson, an expert on Venezuelan gangs and assistant professor at the University of Florida."

The Trump regime have also stated in court that one of those renditioned, a man named Kilmar Abrego Garcia, actually held a protected status that legally prevented the government from sending him to El Salvador and was sent by mistake. That would make him the 2nd legally-protected asylee so far to be identified as among the renditioned. Abrego Garcia has lived in the U.S. for 14 years, having fled El Salvador, where a criminal gang was threatening to kill him. He was granted his protected status in 2019. He lives a seemingly quiet life in Maryland with his wife, who is an American, and their 3 children. He checks in with ICE on a regular basis and has never been charged with any crime. The regime claims Abrego Garcia was shipped out as a consequence of an "administrative error," which doesn't sound much better than the truth--that Trump and his ghouls simply don't care which brown people they're gulag-ing. The regime also insists the courts can't order it to bring Abrego Garcia back to the U.S..

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, who has ordered the regime to engineer Abrego Garcia's return, was not pleased. The regime claimed, she wrote, that Abrego Garcia is a member of MS-13 "without any evidence," and "as Defendants acknowledge, they had no legal authority to arrest him, no justification to detain him, and no grounds to send him to El Salvador--let alone deliver him into one of the most dangerous prisons in the Western Hemisphere," where the harm that could come to him "shocks the conscience." His protected status meant they were "legally prohibited" from sending him there.

For his candor with the court on these points, Erez Reuveni, Trump's deputy director for the Office of Immigration Litigation who had been handling the case for the regime, was placed on administrative leave.

On X, Jon Favreau of Pod Save America asked J.D. Vance, Marco Rubio and Elon Musk for comment they had on this story. Vance's response was outrageous.

But unlike Vance, Favreau had read the filing in question and was able, through noting more than quoting it, to document the fact that every substantive claim in that post was a direct, deliberate lie.

Trump Press Secretary Leavitt was singing a version of the same tune, the tale growing much taller.

"The administration maintains the position that this individual, who was deported to El Salvador and will not be returning to our country, was a member of the brutal and vicious MS-13 gang. That is fact #1. Fact #2, we also have credible evidence proving that this individual was involved in human trafficking, and fact #3, this individual was a member, actually a leader of the brutal MS-13 gang, which this president has designated as a foreign terrorist organization."

On 7 April, Tricia McLaughlin, Trump's assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, was interviewed on NPR and the tale grew larger still:

"An immigration judge reviewed evidence and determined he actually is a verified member of MS-13. There's also intelligence reports that he's involved in human trafficking. So I think the bottom line for the American people and for those who are listening today is that this individual in question, who's an MS-13 gang member, he should be behind bars, whether it be in El Salvador or in a U.S. detention facility. He should not be on the streets of America. And to remind listeners, MS-13 is a gang that murders, rapes, traffics drugs. They maim for sport. These are individuals we do not want in our country, especially those who are here illegally.... [T]here's been multiple immigration judges who have reviewed evidence that he's an MS-13 member and confirmed doing so, including the DOJ's immigration appeals. They affirmed his dangerousness and dismissed his appeal."

Even taking into account the hilariously lawyerly wording--she says multiple judges reviewed evidence on this, never saying what they decided about it--None. Of. This. Is. True.[2] To quote Judge Xinis, "no evidence before the Court connects Abrego Garcia to MS-13 or any other criminal organization." Appearing on FOX NEWS SUNDAY on 6 April, Trump's Attorney General Pam Bondi didn't have any evidence for the regime's claim; she just said, "we have to rely on what ICE says [about Abrego Garcia]. We have to rely on what Homeland Security says."

The Trump regime appealed Xinis' order. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts showed his usual concern for justice by issuing an administrative stay on the order to return Abrego Garcia,  leaving the fellow to rot in the torture dungeon while legal action on the case proceeds.

The Trump gang, meanwhile, appealed Judge Boasman's temporary restraining order. TROs aren't really supposed to be appealable but the courts have read them as part of a narrow sliver of TROs that are. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, by a 2-1 ruling, let the TRO remain in place. Two of the judges, Karen Henderson and Patricia Millett, offered thorough, carefully-argued concurrences. Henderson addressed how the regime was misrepresenting the relevant history and case-law. Millett detailed how the regime's "arguments" in the case constantly contradict one another, displaying transparently bad faith.

The contrarian, Trump-appointed Justin Walker, wanted to vacate the TRO, and central to his dissent was some sorcerous Orwellian sophistry regarding venue. To get a TRO, one must show, among other things, that one is likely to succeed in the underlying case on its merits. Walker embraced the idea that the plaintiffs' case is likely to fail on the merits because the proper venue for a habeas corpus action is the venue in which the confined are being held, which was, just before the plaintiffs were renditioned, Texas, whereas they filed suit in the District Court in D.C. While he's correct on that point of law, there's a huge problem with his conclusion: the plaintiffs weren't petitioning for a writ of habeas corpus. As Judge Henderson wrote,

"Plaintiffs initially... sought various forms of relief, including a writ of habeas corpus. But they quickly abandoned their habeas claims and no longer contest their confinement..."

Simple, right? But Walker goes on to insist that the plaintiffs, despite not making any habeas claim, are making a habeas claim, then insists that because they're making a habeas claim--the one they aren't making--and because such a claim rightfully belongs in the Southern District of Texas, the government is likely to succeed on the merits of the underlying case.

It's a little more involved than that but that's the gist of his "argument" on this, that plaintiffs are trying to pull a fast one by trying to make a habeas claim while not calling it a habeas claim. Millett's concurrence ripped this to shreds, showing that the plaintiff's case, which don't include a habeas claim, had none of the character of a habeas claim either.

Given perhaps insufficient attention here, given this bizarre venue argument, is the fact that the Trump regime was moving the prisoners around the U.S. before renditioning them, almost certainly to deliberately prevent them from filing legal challenges to the regime's actions--to keep the enterprise entirely outside the bounds of the constitutional order, right down to carrying out the renditions after Judge Boasberg had ordered them not to do so. The regime has continued to refuse to obey or cooperate in any meaningful way with that court, which attacking and being openly contemptuous of it at every turn. With Trump in office, we're left indulging Trump's games in courts, rather than seeing him prosecuted for kidnapping and human trafficking.

In the course of these articles, I've been warning that, given the current composition of the government, it's unlikely that the institutions of the liberal democracy will defend the liberal democracy, that they're likely to commit the suicide that is backing Trump's efforts to make of himself a dictator. That would be the worst possible outcome, because it would close most doors to correcting the Trumptatorship from within the system. The Supreme Court, whose current majority has been the handmaiden of authoritarian government, took up the Boasberg TRO and ruled, 5-4, to throw it out. In a decision that was barely 3 pages and change, the court basically embraced Walker's "reasoning," holding that "challenges to removal under the AEA must be brought in habeas."

Reviewing that decision, one is astonished to read, "the detainees' rights against summary removal... are not currently in dispute, as "the Government [now] expressly agrees that 'TdA members subject to removal under the Alien Enemies Act get judicial review.'" No comment on the fact that the regime was, in this, offering a complete reversal of its prior position--a reversal, in fact, of exactly what it did in the very case under consideration. "[T]he detainees are entitled to notice and opportunity to be heard 'appropriate to the nature of the case.'" Except, of course, they weren't given that. The court rules that

"AEA detainees must receive notice after the date of this order that they are subject to removal under the Act. The notice must be afforded within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs."

And what to do about those who, before that order, were permanently exiled to a foreign gulag with no semblance of due process? The court offers nothing. An indifferent shrug. The court unanimously holds that those pursued under the Alien Enemies Act have to be given due process--something, all experience dictates, the regime will continue to resist providing--but leaves in limbo those who have already been renditioned, passively conceding that what was done to them was fundamentally illegal and unconstitutional but not only failing to offer any relief but seemingly cutting off their means of relief.

In a dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor doesn't much like that passivity. She noted that, since everyone agrees that due process is necessary and that it wasn't afforded, "the Court’s decision to intervene in this litigation is as inexplicable as it is dangerous." She points out that the court's "reasoning" on habeas is "novel," that it's out of step with the court's long-established understanding of habeas corpus and that the majority has reached its conclusion on this "without oral argument or the benefit of percolation in the lower courts, and with just a few days of deliberation based on barebones briefing." She outlined the abjectly lawless behavior of the regime at every stage of this and points out that

"The implication of the Government's position is that not only noncitizens but also United States citizens could be taken off the streets, forced onto planes, and confined to foreign prisons with no opportunity for redress if judicial review is denied unlawfully before removal. History is no stranger to such lawless regimes, but this Nation's system of laws is designed to prevent, not enable, their rise."

And objects to the fact that "this Court exercises its equitable discretion to intervene [in this matter] without accounting for the Government noncompliance that has permeated this litigation to date," some of which she covers.

"The Government's conduct in this litigation poses an extraordinary threat to the rule of law. That a majority of this Court now rewards the Government for its behavior with discretionary equitable relief is indefensible. We, as a Nation and a court of law, should be better than this."

Trump, meanwhile, continues to float the idea of sending American citizens to rot in the same Salvadoran dungeon.

---

[1] 60 MINUTES spotlighted the case of a man named Andrys, covered in some of the articles I cited in my original piece--a gay makeup stylist who appears to have been targeted because of innocuous tattoos. Tricia McLaughlin, one of Trump's Homeland Security ghouls, claimed "this man's own social media indicates he is a member of Tren de Aragua." 60 MINUTES combed through a decade of his social media; nothing in it even suggested any association with TdA.

[2] In the same interview, McLaughlin also claimed that "in every single case" in which these people are accused of being Tren de Aragua, "there is due process."

"When you're looking at members of MS-13 and Tren de Aragua and other terrorist organizations that were designated as terrorist organizations under president Trump and the Trump administration, due process does look different because you're under terrorist authority. So it's going to be more law enforcement sensitive, but I can guarantee, and our DOJ guarantees, due process to these individuals."

So pay no attention to the fact that there was demonstrably no due process whatsoever, to the point that the regime didn't even make any case at any hearing that those renditioned were even foreigners. It's all in your head! Or something.

*          *          *

UPDATE (10 April, 2025) - Bloomberg News has published some companion reporting to that offered by 60 MINUTES (see yesterday's update) by examining how many of those renditoned to El Salvador had criminal records specifically in the U.S. (60 MINUTES included criminal histories in other nations). Of 238, Bloomberg

"found five men charged with or convicted of felony assault or firearms violations. Three men were charged with misdemeanors including harassment and petty theft. Two others were charged with human smuggling. For the rest of the men, there was no available information showing they committed any crime other than traffic or immigration violations in the U.S."

Overall, about 90% of those renditioned had no criminal history in the U.S.

*          *          *

UPDATE (11 April, 2025) - On 7 April, Supreme Court Justice John Roberts issued an administrative stay on the lower-court order to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the U.S.. The full court has now weighed in and, remarkably, has decided--unanimously--that the order can stand. The court's order, the ruling states,

"properly requires the Government to 'facilitate' Abrego Garcia's release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador. The intended scope of the term 'effectuate' in the District Court’s order is, however, unclear, and may exceed the District Court's authority. The District Court should clarify its directive, with due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs. For its part, the Government should be prepared to share what it can concerning the steps it has taken and the prospect of further steps."

...which all seems rather obvious but presents some rather significant potential problems if the Trump regime simply decides to do nothing, then claim it tried but couldn't orchestrate the man's return.

It's left to Sonia Sotomayor, in a strongly-worded concurrence to express the outrage that should have come with this action:

"To this day, the Government has cited no basis in law for Abrego Garcia's warrantless arrest, his removal to El Salvador, or his confinement in a Salvadoran prison. Nor could it. The Government remains bound by an Immigration Judge’s 2019 order expressly prohibiting Abrego Garcia's removal to El Salvador because he faced a 'clear probability of future persecution' there and 'demonstrated that [El Salvador's] authorities were and would be unable or unwilling to protect him.'... The Government has not challenged the validity of that order.

"Instead of hastening to correct its egregious error, the Government dismissed it as an 'oversight'... The Government now requests an order from this Court permitting it to leave Abrego Garcia, a husband and father without a criminal record, in a Salvadoran prison for no reason recognized by the law. The only argument the Government offers in support of its request, that United States courts cannot grant relief once a deportee crosses the border, is plainly wrong... The Government’s argument, moreover, implies that it could deport and incarcerate any person, including U. S. citizens, without legal consequence, so long as it does so before a court can intervene... That view refutes itself.

"Because every factor governing requests for equitable relief manifestly weighs against the Government,... I would have declined to intervene in this litigation and denied the application in full."

Unfortunately, only 2 other justices joined her in this.

The rule of law has taken such a beating in the last 4 months, one is tempted just to take the win (and, given what's happened so far, marvel at it) but it remains to be seen how much of a win it is.

*          *          *

UPDATE (17 April, 2025) - On 14 April, Stephen Miller spoke with reporters outside the White House, and appeared on Fox News, issuing an extraordinary--even by Miller/Trump regime standards--stream of lies about the matter of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. He's repeating the same nonsense in both appearances but WH Miller presents as a cold dimwitted sociopath who says the most ludicrous and idiotic things imaginable but with an entirely straight face and even tone, whereas Fox Miller is a wildly extemporizing demagogue having a complete meltdown.

WH Miller began by claiming Abrego Garcia "was issued a final order of removal from this country." Fox Miller said that "in 2019, he was ordered deported. He has a final removal order from the United States! These are things that no one disputes." A final order of removal is an instrument issued by an immigration court; Abrego Garcia was never ordered deported, not in 2019, not ever. The immigration judge found he was subject to being removed but not to El Salvador. Before being kidnapped by the Trump regime, Abrego Garcia had been present in the U.S. under ICE supervision for years, working via a permit provided by the Dept. of Homeland Security and had been granted, by the courts, that legally protected status.

The Trump regime has told the courts that Abrego Garcia was sent to El Salvador in error. WH Miller said of this,

"This whole entire conversation has been wrong from the beginning, because no one was mistakenly deported anywhere. That's a big fact that all of your--most of you--have gotten wrong. No one was mistakenly sent anywhere. The only mistake that was made is a lawyer put an incorrect line in a filing and has since been relieved of duty."

Fox Miller:

"He was NOT MISTAKENLY SENT to El Salvador... A DOJ lawyer who has since been relieved of duty, a saboteur, a Democrat, put into a filing, incorrectly, that this was a mistaken removal. It was not. This was the right person sent to the right place."

The "DOJ lawyer" in question, Erez Reuveni, has worked at DOJ for nearly 15 years under presidents of both parties, including throughout the entirety of Trump's first term, and was Trump's deputy director for the Office of Immigration Litigation when he said Abrego Garcia was sent to El Salvador by mistake, which he did in direct questioning by the judge, not just some "incorrect line in a filing." To Miller's conspiracy, CNN notes that on at least 3 other occasions, Trump regime officials have told the courts Abrego Garcia was sent to El Salvador by mistake. While Abrego Garcia was renditioned much more as a consequence of the Trump gang's complete indifference to which brown people of which they were disposing, "administrative error" has been the regime's official position when standing before the courts. If taken at face value, Miller's insistence that it wasn't a mistake is nothing more than a confession of a criminal act; Abrego Garcia held a status granted him by the courts that legally barred the Trump regime from sending him to El Salvador.

Miller has an "answer" to that too. In a look at how high the Trump regime has gotten on its own supply, WH Miller claimed, "Because [Abrego Garcia] is a member of a foreign terrorist organization, withholding orders don't apply to FTOs, for obvious reasons." The designation of the MS-13 gang as a foreign terrorist organization--something that, lacking any political program, it is not--was entirely arbitrary, something Trump just decreed in a dispatch from his own orifice. Even if he's allowed to excrete such dispatches, that's what it is. The Trump regime has failed to produce any evidence that Abrego Garcia has ever had any connection whatsoever to MS-13, much less prove he "is a member."[1] Their position, then, as stated by Miller, is that Trump can simply make up some shit, make up some other shit and that cumulative made-up shit then completely overrides constitutional protections and wide swathes of the body of laws put in place by the duly-elected government and makes it perfectly ok to rendition a man to permanent residence in a torture-dungeon run by a foreign dictator without a trial or so much as a hearing.

Miller asserted that the regime's loss on this before the Supreme Court was actually a win. "To be very clear about this, the Supreme Court... overturned the district court order and they said very clearly that the district court--it was actually an unanimous ruling--overreached in that ruling." Fox Miller went really wild on this one:

"We won the Supreme Court case--clearly, 9-zero. A district court judge said, unconscionably, that the president and his administration have to go into El Salvador and extradite one of their citizens, an El Salvadorian citizen, so that would be kidnapping, that we have to kidnap an El Salvadorian citizen against the will of his government and fly him back to America, which would be an unimaginable act, an invasion of El Salvador sovereignty, so we appealed to the Supreme Court and it said clearly 'no district court can compel the president to exercise his Article II foreign powers in any way whatsoever.' DOJ called me after that Supreme Court ruling. They said 'this is amazing. We won this case, 9-zero. We are in excellent standing here,' so this has been portrayed wrong for 72 hours in the media. They said the most a court could ever compel you to do would be to facilitate return, which would basically mean if El Salvador voluntarily sends him back, we wouldn't block him at the airport. We would put him back into ICE detention and then he would deported either back to El Salvador or somewhere else. The Supreme Court said that is the most the government could be expected to do, so we won the case handily. The misreporting on this has been atrocious." [all emphases Miller's]

One will struggle in vain to find in either the district court order or the very brief Supreme Court order anything resembling what Miller describes here. The unanimous court majority said that the district court "properly requires the Government to 'facilitate' Abrego Garcia's release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador," while objecting to the district court's use of the word "effectuate" on the grounds that it was unclear and could imply overstepping by the court.

---

[1] On 16 April, Trump's Attorney General Pam Bondi took to X to write, "We are releasing additional information on Kilmar Abrego Garcia," but it was really just a few documents related to Abrego Garcia's already-well-covered brush with the courts back in 2019. The only "evidence" in them of any gang connection amounted to, as anyone following the story has already heard, his wearing a Chicago Bulls hat and hoodie, which is meaningless, and a claim by a single gang unit policeman in Prince George's County, Maryland that a single confidential informant had claimed Abrego Garcia was a member of a clique of MS-13 based in New York, a place Abrego Garcia has never lived--double hearsay, with neither person ever examined by any court. The cop who made this claim was fired only a few days later for misconduct in a different case. Two courts initially gave this perhaps far more deference than it deserved--a migrant in such circumstances and with a charge like that hanging over him finds himself in the Kafkaesque position of having to prove he isn't any danger to the community--and, for a time, held up bond for him on the basis of it but, after being adjudicated, the matter ended with the court releasing him and granting him protective status. He was turned down for full asylum, for which he'd applied, because of a technicality (he'd missed a deadline). The Trump administration had the option of appealing the decision; it declined to do so.

Released to smear Abrego Garcia and try to convince the public to ignore Trump's assault on due process, the documents just reinforced the fact that the regime's "case" against him is laughable and spotlights the extent to which those in the regime have been lying about him all along.

*          *          *

UPDATE (18 April, 2025) - CBS News' 60 MINUTES previously examined the criminal history of the Venezuelans renditioned to El Salvador and found that, despite regime claims that these were "the worst of the worst," the overwhelming majority had no apparent criminal history at all (See 9 April, 2025 update above). Now, the New York Times has, casting a wider net, examined the criminal history of all the men--over 230--who were dispatched to CECOT in those same flights. The Times "found little evidence of any criminal background--or any association with the [Tren de Aragua] gang--for most of the men."

Of those with criminal history, 32 "have faced serious accusations or convictions in the United States and abroad." The Times seems to be using a rather broad interpretation of "serious" here--crimes like theft and "harboring undocumented immigrants" are included under it--but most still seem to fit the bill, including one who was convicted of murder in Venezuela and one who "was accused in Chile of kidnapping, drugging and raping a woman during a four-day rage."

Another two-dozen men "had been accused or found guilty of lower-level offenses in the United States or elsewhere, including trespassing, speeding in a school zone and driving an improperly registered vehicle."

But for the others--76% of those renditioned--the Times "found no evidence of a criminal background, beyond offenses related to being unauthorized migrants."

While the Trump regime claimed that 137 of those renditioned were members of Tren de Aragua, the Times reports that "the prosecutors, law enforcement officials, court documents and media reports that The Times uncovered or spoke to in multiple countries suggested that only a few of the detainees might have had any connection to Tren de Aragua."

The Times report revisits the matter of how the regime is identifying people with Tren de Aragua.

"[A]n internal government document made public in court filings indicates how much weight is given to tattoos.

"The document, called the 'Alien Enemy Validation Guide,' instructs immigration officials to use a point system to identify members of Tren de Aragua. Eight points makes someone a 'validated' member of the group. Having tattoos associated with the gang is worth four points.

"Wearing clothing associated with the gang is worth another four.

"A second government document indicates that the administration considers a crown tattoo--much like the one worn by soccer star Lionel Messi--and the 'Jump Man' symbol, popularized by Michael Jordan, to be Tren de Aragua symbols.

"Clothing associated with the gang includes 'high-end urban street wear.'"

Everyone, it seems, is Tren de Aragua. Meanwhile all five of the Venezuelan experts on TdA consulted by the Times--"two police officials, two scholars and a journalist"--confirm what every other expert has said on this subject, "that while some transnational gangs use tattoos as indicators of membership, the Venezuelan group did not."

*          *          *

UPDATE (19 April, 2025) - The Supreme Court's awful decision to end the temporary restraining order on the Trump gang's use of the Alien Enemies Act came with the caveat that those whom the gang targeted for such treatment had to be given due process. Detained Venezuelans in New York and Texas immediately sued to contest use of the AEA against them, and in both cases, the judges issued temporary restraining orders against the Trump gang, pending further litigation.

Having been stripped of the underlying case on venue grounds, Judge James Boasberg in D.C. is left cleaning up the mess made by the Trump regime's open defiance of his earlier efforts to hear the case; he's now concluded that "probable cause exists to find the Government in criminal contempt," and is pursuing that:

"The Constitution does not tolerate willful disobedience of judicial orders--especially by officials of a coordinate branch who have sworn an oath to uphold it. To permit such officials to freely 'annul the judgments of the courts of the United States' would not just 'destroy the rights acquired under those judgments'; it would make 'a solemn mockery” of “the constitution itself.'"

That's from Boasberg's memorandum on the matter, which covers the timeline of events, detailing both the regime's efforts to sandbag the court long enough to, in wilful defiance of the court's order, spirit away those whom it had kidnapped and to stonewall the court in the aftermath.

Meanwhile, Judge Paula Xinis, handling the Kilmar Abrego Garcia matter, has ordered the Trump regime to provide her with daily updates on Abrego Garcia and what it is doing to secure his release, as she, now backed by the Supreme Court, has ordered. The regime's answer, so far, to that last one: Not a damn thing. The regime offers Xinis little information, doesn't answer most of her questions and makes a point of filing its non-responses after the deadlines she has set have already expired. Stephen Miller has attacked Xinis as a "Marxist judge" and has openly mocked her.

On 13 April, the Associated Press reported

"Abrego Garcia's lawyers also have asked Xinis to order the government, among other things, to produce documents and contracts that detail the U.S. agreement with El Salvador to house people deported from the U.S. or, in absence of such records, to require that government officials testify in court about the arrangement."

This could prove to be very important, because the Trump regime has asserted that it couldn't just order the return of Abrego Garcia, because he's now in the hands of a foreign sovereign, who would have to decide to release him. But El Salvador has never charged Abrego Garcia with anything; he's in CECOT solely because the Trump regime contracted with CECOT to house people there, reportedly paying $6 million/year for the service. That would make the arrangement much closer to that between the government and a contractor than to one between two sovereign nations. In either case, to be clear, Trump has but to say a word and Abrego Garcia would come out of the gulag. But the regime has shown it will enthusiastically exploit any ambiguity, so it should be made clear.

Writing in Slate, Felipe De La Hoz recently raised this issue.

"Lost in the shuffle is one more basic but key open question: Under what authority is the government having these people imprisoned at CECOT in the first place?

"I don’t mean that rhetorically, in the way of how we could allow our government to do this, but literally what is the statutory basis for the U.S. to ask this foreign government to warehouse migrants for us? To date, the Trump administration has not in any public forum released the specifics of whatever contract or agreement it actually has with El Salvador; it's reportedly for $6 million a year--which implies that this is intended as a long-haul detention--but beyond that, we don't know much. More importantly, the administration has not pointed to anything under the law that would actually underlie this agreement... [N]othing in the Alien Enemies Act or, as far as I can tell, anywhere in the U.S. code allows the government to contract with a foreign government to imprison people removed from U.S. soil."

On 15 April, the Baltimore Sun reported that the payments to CECOT are, themselves, likely a violation of federal law.

On Monday, Trump hosted a disgraceful White House event with Nayib Bukele, the gore-spattered "president" of El Salvador, who has made of himself a dictator. Beforehand, Trump, who has persistently teased the idea of shipping even American citizens to CECOT, was caught on tape telling Bukele "The homegrowns are next, the homegrowns. You've got to build about five more places [like CECOT]."

With many of Trump's regular ghouls present, the two dictators sat down together. Trump introduced Bukele as "a friend of mine," and said "he's done a fantastic job... I wanna just say hello to the people of El Salvador and say they have one hell of a president." Amnesty International provides a look at what that "hell of a president" has done (1 in 57 residents in El Salvador have been imprisoned by Bukele). Immediately after showering the dictator with praise, Trump attacked his own predecessor, Joe Biden. "What he did to our country is just unbelievable," a word that would certainly be an accurate characterization of the description of Biden's presidency offered by Trump. The contrast left no room for doubt about which kind of government he prefers. Another: Sitting with a dictator who, back home, parrots Trump's own rhetoric about "fake news" while actively suppressing journalism he doesn't like, Trump called CNN "fake news," and said "I think they hate our country."

Questions turned to Abrego Garcia. A sputtering Pam Bondi falsely claimed that in 2019, two courts "ruled that he was a member of MS-13" and said "the Supreme Court ruled... that if, as El Salvador wants to return him--this is international matters, foreign affairs--if they wanted to return him, we would facilitate it, meaning provide a plane." Stephen Miller repeated the entire litany of lies he'd been spewing the day before (see previous update). His reimagining of the courts' actions this time around:

"The Supreme Court said the district court order was unlawful and its main components were reversed 9-0, unanimously, stating clearly that neither the Secretary of State nor the president could be compelled by anybody to forcibly retrieve a citizen of El Salvador from El Salvador, who, again, is a member of MS-13, which... rapes little girls, murders women, murders children, is engaged in the most barbaric activities in the world... The ruling solely stated that if this individual, at El Salvador's sole discretion, was sent back to our country that we could deport him a second time. No version of this ends up legally with him ever living here."

Asked by journalists if he would release Abrego Garcia, Bukele said, "The question is preposterous. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? I don't have the power to return him to the United States." Asked if he would release him in El Salvador, that was a no as well. "We're not very fond of releasing terrorists into our country."

"They'd love to have the criminal, y'know, released into our country," Trump interjected. "They're sick. These are sick people."

Marco Rubio, Trump's Secretary of State, was present to rave

"The foreign policy of the United States is conducted by the president of the United States and not by a court, and no court in the United States has the right to conduct the foreign policy of the United States. It's that simple. End of story."

For anyone slow enough on the uptake to still question it, this removed any doubts about whether the regime was going to follow the courts' orders in this matter: it is not.

Judge Xinis has ordered expedited discovery into whether the government has failed to comply with the court's order to facilitate Abrego Garcia's release. In response, the Trump regime filed a petition for mandamus with the Fourth Circuit--basically a request that the higher court order Xinis to stop doing what she's doing.

The Fourth Circuit didn't even wait for the response; it moved unanimously to shoot down the regime's request, in a decision written by Reaganite conservative Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, who is now getting much praise for the eloquence of the brief order he authored. "We shall not micromanage the efforts of a fine district judge attempting to implement the Supreme Court's recent decision," he writes, and proceeds not only to reject the regime's request but it's behavior throughout all of this:

"It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter. But in this case, it is not hard at all. The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done.

"This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.

"The government asserts that Abrego Garcia is a terrorist and a member of MS-13. Perhaps, but perhaps not. Regardless, he is still entitled to due process. If the government is confident of its position, it should be assured that position will prevail in proceedings to terminate the withholding of removal order.... Moreover, the government has conceded that Abrego Garcia was wrongly or 'mistakenly' deported. Why then should it not make what was wrong, right?"

Embracing the regime's position on this--the actions the regime has already taken--"would reduce the rule of law to lawlessness and tarnish the very values for which Americans of diverse views and persuasions have always stood."

Wilkinson warns that

"The Executive possesses enormous powers to prosecute and to deport, but with powers come restraints. If today the Executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home? And what assurance shall there be that the Executive will not train its broad discretionary powers upon its political enemies?"

He points out that now, the governments of both the U.S. and El Salvador have both nonsensically disclaimed the power to do anything in this matter. "The result will be to leave matters generally and Abrego Garcia specifically in an interminable limbo without recourse to law of any sort."

While Wilkinson aims most of this criticism in the right direction, he speaks to the need for respect between the executive and judiciary, in a voice aimed at cooling the recent friction. That's the one part of his order that doesn't ring true, his effort to appeal to the better angels in the regime:

"The basic differences between the branches [of government] mandate a serious effort at mutual respect. The respect that courts must accord the Executive must be reciprocated by the Executive's respect for the courts. Too often today this has not been the case, as calls for impeachment of judges for decisions the Executive disfavors and exhortations to disregard court orders sadly illustrate... Now the branches come too close to grinding irrevocably against one another in a conflict that promises to diminish both. This is a losing proposition all around. The Judiciary will lose much from the constant intimations of its illegitimacy, to which by dent of custom and detachment we can only sparingly reply. The Executive will lose much from a public perception of its lawlessness and all of its attendant contagions. The Executive may succeed for a time in weakening the courts, but over time history will script the tragic gap between what was and all that might have been, and law in time will sign its epitaph. It is, as we have noted, all too possible to see in this case an incipient crisis, but it may present an opportunity as well. We yet cling to the hope that it is not naïve to believe our good brethren in the Executive Branch perceive the rule of law as vital to the American ethos. This case presents their unique chance to vindicate that value and to summon the best that is within us while there is still time."

"Naive" barely begins to cover that. One has to appreciate the court's effort here, but the sort of patriotism and respect for the system to which Wilkinson is appealing are things Trump and his ghouls had forsaken long ago. Their project is to end the American experiment in liberal democracy by any means necessary and impose a dictatorship. Everyone needs to be very clear on that.

On 16 April, Sebastian Gorka, Trump's Senior Director for Counterterrorism, appeared on Newsmax and suggested opposing Trump's despotic policies puts one in the criminal-enemy-of-America camp:

"The taxonomy of politics in America is dead. It's not left and right. It's not even Republican or Democrat. There's a line that divides us. Do you love America, or do you hate America? It's really quite that simple. And we have people who love America, like the president, like his cabinet, like the directors of his agencies, who want to protect Americans. And then there is the other side that is on the side of the cartel members, the side of the illegal aliens, on the side of the terrorists. And you have to ask yourself, are they technically aiding and abetting them? Because aiding and abetting criminals and terrorists is a crime in federal statute."

There are no better angels there.

*          *          *

UPDATE (20 April, 2025) - Sen. Chris Van Hollen went to El Salvador to see Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who, as a Maryland resident, is a Van Hollen constituent. On the trip, he met with Salvadoran Vice President Félix Ulloa, who told him, as the AP puts it, "his government could not return Abrego Garcia to the United States." Salvadoran officials tried to stage-managed the optics of the meeting with Abrego Garcia for purpose of mockery. They originally wanting to hold it by a swimming pool. When Van Hollen suggested a dining area, they came by and placed margaritas on the table, as if the two were having a high old time at some resort.

Both Trump and Bukele--birds of a feather--took to social media to mock Van Hollen. While the Trump regime is under court-order to facilitate Abrego Garcia's release, the official White House X account posted this:

The regime has been perturbed by the negative press it's getting in this matter. In a pattern familiar to those who have covered stories of police abuse, Trump's ghouls have been responding by trying to smear Abrego Garcia, rehashing the same handful of baseless charges against him again and again, trying to obscure the matter with more demagoguery about immigrant crime, etc. Press Secretary Leavitt fumed at the press for describing Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man and father, as a "Maryland man" and "Maryland father," and parroted Stephen Miller's bizarre fantasy version of what the Supreme Court has said:[1]

"Nothing will ever change the fact that Abrego Garcia will never be a Maryland father. He will never live in the United States of America again. And the United States Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the President of the United States and the Secretary of State could not be compelled to forcibly retrieve this citizen of El Salvador, who is currently locked up in a maximum security prison in his home country due to his MS-13 membership."

The regime released a court filing from 4 years ago in which Abrego Garcia's wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, requested a protective order against him for domestic violence. No order was ever issued because she never followed up. Vasquez Sura issued a statement on the situation:

"After surviving domestic violence in a previous relationship, I acted out of caution following a disagreement with Kilmar by seeking a civil protective order, in case things escalated. Things did not escalate, and I decided not to follow through with the civil court process. We were able to work through the situation privately as a family, including by going to counseling... Our marriage only grew stronger in the years that followed. No one is perfect, and no marriage is perfect... Kilmar has always been a loving partner and father, and I will continue to stand by him and demand justice for him."

Pam Bondi then went on Fox News to crow:

"Maryland is safer because [Abrego Garcia] is gone, and that woman that he is married to and that child he had with her, they are safer tonight because he is out of our country and sitting in El Salvador where he belongs."

Trump's Department of Homeland Security rehashed the claim that Abrego Garcia was involved in human trafficking. Wrote its own breathless headline, "DHS Releases Bombshell Investigative Report on Kilmar Abrego Garcia Suspected Human Trafficking Incident." A few years ago, a Tennessee highway patrolman pulled over Abrego Garcia for speeding. There was several people in the vehicle. The patrolman was suspicious of their claim that they were going to a construction job because he didn't see any luggage, said he suspected human trafficking. How seriously? He let them go with a warning to slow down--didn't even write a ticket. And that's all.

All of this apparently makes it ok to kidnap a man and ship him off to a foreign gulag in violation of the law and the constitution itself.

Van Hollen, to his own credit, has called the abduction of Abrego Garcia just that. The senator said Abrego Garcia has been moved from CECOT to another prison and, unsurprisingly, has been traumatized by the entire experience. "I asked the embassy here if they'd received any instructions from Washington to help facilitate his release," Van Hollen said. "The answer was no, they haven't."

Asked if he would request that Bukele release Abrego Garcia, Trump, who has never followed the advice of a lawyer in his life, said, "I must tell you, I have to refer again to the lawyers. I'll have to do what they ask me to do." Buck-passing, but also part of a weird recent pattern by Trump of acting as if he isn't running his own presidency.

---

[1] That bizarre fantasy now seems to be the regime's established talking-point on the subject, with Trump himself joining the chorus:

"As you know, the Supreme Court, after we get out the fake news from CNN and all of these other people, we won that case, 9 to nothing... It's interesting, because we won that decision, 9 to nothing at the Supreme Court, and, uh, if you listen to the news, you wouldn't know that."

About whether Abrego Garcia would be released, "Basically, that's really a decision that will be made by the government of El Salvador... [T]hat's a decision up to El Salvador."

*          *          *

UPDATE (20 April, 2025) - The Trump regime has been rapidly detaining/assembling alleged Venezuelans from around the U.S. at the Bluebonnet Detention Center in Anson, Texas in what appeared to be another imminent mass-rendition. Representing two of them, the ACLU went to a Fifth Circuit district court and asked that those in the district targeted by the regime via its legally meaningless invocation of the Alien Enemies Act be certified as a class and that the court grant a temporary restraining order preventing their removal from the U.S. until the case can be heard.[1]

In shooting down Judge Boasberg's earlier TRO, the Supreme Court held that

"AEA detainees must receive notice after the date of this order that they are subject to removal under the Act. The notice must be afforded within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs."

It appears the district court got played by the regime, which represented that it "presently" had no plans to rendition the plaintiffs. Not even that flimsy assurance was offered when it came to the proposed class but, to quote the court, "the Supreme Court's opinion" in that earlier matter, along with "the government's general representations about the procedures necessary in these cases," would "strongly suggest that the putative class is also not facing such an imminent threat" of being shipped out. So the court denied the TRO.

And before the ink had even dried on that decision, the regime was handing out notices--in English, to people who often speak or read the language poorly or not at all--saying they had been designated as Tren de Aragua and were going to be removed from the U.S.. Large numbers of new people were being moved to Bluebonnet. When word came that people were being loaded on to buses heading for the airport, plaintiff's lawyers filed emergency applications with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court, requesting intervention. The Court of Appeals quite obnoxiously turned them down;[2] a 7-2 majority of the Supreme Court ordered that no one in the putative class--not yet even an established class--be removed until the matter is litigated. The loaded buses were turned around just as they reached the airport.[3]

The Supremes did this at 1 a.m. on a holiday weekend and it was an extraordinary intervention, a major departure from regular procedure that acknowledges, via its very existence, that 7 of the court's justices no longer believe the regime's assertions can be trusted (they rushed release of the decision, not even waiting for the worthless Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas to write their dissent). One would like to think it was a sign that the court has wearied of the regime, that it was finally going to assert some authority and make some effort to clean up an intolerable mess it played no small role in creating via its extremely ill-advised, badly-handled intervention in the case of the original group that were unconstitutionally renditioned.[4] The regime was snowjobbing the courts to stall them from intervening long enough to carry out another illegal, unconstitutional mass-rendition, just as happened the first time, and had the Supremes failed to act, a new group of U.S. residents would now be locked in a Salvadoran dungeon from whence the Trump regime asserts they can never be retrieved.

The regime's response was, well, what do you expect? Cue the Twilight Zone theme:

"'We are confident we will ultimately prevail against the onslaught of meritless litigation brought by radical activists who care more about the rights of these terrorist aliens than those of the American people,' White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Saturday evening on X.

"White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, also writing Saturday on X, called the immigrants 'documented foreign terrorists who infiltrated the country at the direction of an adversarial regime.'"

And they're off.

---

[1] While the regime's vacuous invocation of the Alien Enemies Act relies on a baseless, crackpot conspiracy--made up by Trump and his ghouls solely for this purpose--that Tren de Aragua is "invading" the U.S. at the order of the Venezuelan government, both plaintiffs were persecuted in Venezuela for their opposition to the Maduro regime, came to the U.S. and have been going through the process of seeking asylum. Targeted because of tattoos.

[2] With buses to the airport already loading and 3 affidavits before them from lawyers who said their clients had already been given notice that they were being shipped out that day, the appeals panel harrumphed about how courts had latitude to set their own schedules and that the plaintiffs hadn't given enough time to the circuit court, who was going to offer a decision the next day.

Yeah, the Fifth Circuit is that bad.

[3] NBC News spoke to "Judy Maldonado Rall, wife of Eduardo Daboin Rall, who is being held at Bluebonnet and was among the detainees on the buses Friday." Eduardo, his wife and their child are legally present in the U.S. and have applied for protected status. Their next hearing is scheduled for 1 May, but--targeted because he has tattoos--he was about to be shipped to the gulag in El Salvador forever.

[4] Another possibility is that some justices are just trying to preserve the court's existence as a relevant institution. If they'd allowed Trump to get away with what he was attempting, they'd be faced with cleaning up a situation in which the Trump gang had lied to the courts, exploited loopholes the Supremes themselves had created, carried out an--again--illegal, unconstitutional rendition of who-knows-who and the courts would, among other things, be bound to pursue contempt charges against a regime that would refuse to cooperate in any way with either establishing a record of exactly what happened or enforcing the court's rulings.

*          *          *

UPDATE (30 April, 2025) - The Supreme Court intervened in the Texas case without even waiting for Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas to author their dissents; it took Alito nearly 24 hours to write one, and all he offered, in the end, was a few pounds of bullshit good for nothing but Exhibit #6,435,666 for why neither he nor Thomas should even be on the court. Professor Steve Vladeck of Georgetown University Law Center dismembers it, understatedly saying it "bespeaks a justice who was grasping for ways to justify not granting the relief the applicants sought," and showing that in trying to give Trump a win, it misstates not only the relevant law but repeatedly stakes out positions directly contrary to what Alito himself has taken in other cases. "Perhaps Alito's most egregious misrepresentation, however, was not legal, but factual," wrote Mark Joseph Stern, who covers the Supreme Court for Slate. He points out that Alito claimed "there was no need for emergency action" because the Trump regime's lawyers had told a federal judge that no deportations were to occur on Friday or Saturday. "That is false." Stern details how the government was, in reality, making wishy-washy comments to the courts on the matter while loading detainees, who, despite the Supreme Court's own holding, had been given no semblance of due process, on to buses in the middle of the night, heading to the airport for a rendition flight to El Salvador--information the lawyers for the detainees had already put before the court.

Lawyers for the ACLU, meanwhile, are pointing out that the Trump regime isn't complying with the Supreme Court's own directives regarding due process, giving detainees bare-bones notices that they face imminent expulsion written only in English, which many read only poorly or not at all, and giving them as little as 24 hours to contest the action (and no notice that they can contest it). The org urged the court to save everyone a lot of time and take up the farce that is the regime's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act.

Trump, faced with the inconvenience of the constitutional order getting in the way of the unconstitutional things he wants to do, reacted, as usual, by attacking and trying to undermine that order, taking to social media to whine that the court "seemingly doesn’t want me to send violent criminals and terrorists back to Venezuela, or any other Country, for that matter" --the "violent criminals and terrorists" who, in the real world, mostly have no criminal record whatsoever. He praised Alito's embarrassingly bad dissent, raved,

"If we don’t get these criminals out of our Country, we are not going to have a Country any longer. We cannot give everyone a trial, because to do so would take, without exaggeration, 200 years. We would need hundreds of thousands of trials for the hundreds of thousands of Illegals we are sending out of the Country. Such a thing is not possible to do."

...which both farcically misstates the on-the-ground facts and further illustrates the respect Trump holds for the constitution he's sworn to "preserve, protect and defend," which requires due process. In deportation cases, due process would typically involve little more than a few hearings in an immigration court where the judges work for the executive branch and the rules are absurdly skewed in the government's favor. Trump, however, wants to rendition people to foreign torture dungeons, which crosses many other portions of U.S. law and thus opens further legal avenues of appeal.

While the regime presents Tren de Aragua as a boogeyman, the gang, as covered in my original article above, appears to have virtually no real presence in the U.S.. Evidence continues to pile up that, having created and nurtured this phantom, the regime just randomly designates any Venezuelan they wish to remove as TdA. One of the petitioners in a Colorado lawsuit, for example, is a fellow from Venezuela who was arrested at a party at which, ICE claims, Tren de Aragua was present. The other petitioner fled Venezuela with his wife and children after TdA--the real TdA-- murdered his wife's father and uncle and, having also protested the Maduro regime, is pursuing asylum in the U.S.; he was arrested because a "person of interest" in a TdA-related investigation left an address that was under surveillance and approached he and some other fellows standing beside the street. Both have been accused, absent any real evidence, of being connected to Tren de Aragua. Both deny any connection with TdA. Neither have any criminal history.

ICE tried to short-circuit their lawsuit by going into court and randomly claiming it has determined that neither are subject to removal under the AEA Proclamation, but ICE refused to say they couldn't be so classified in the future. Judge Charlotte Sweeney of the Colorado District Court placed a temporary restraining order barring the regime from removing immigrants detained in that state via the Alien Enemies Act. Sweeney attempted to end the regime's games with the wording of the due process portion of the Supreme Court's directive on these cases, holding that

"[The regime] shall provide a twenty-one (21) day notice to individuals detained pursuant to the [Alien Enemies] Act and Proclamation. Such notice must state the government intends to remove individuals pursuant to the Act and Proclamation. It must also provide notice of a right to seek judicial review, and inform individuals they may consult an attorney regarding their detainment and the government’s intent to remove them. Such notice must be written in a language the individual understands."

The regime also argued--yet again--that whether the preconditions for Trump activating the AEA were satisfied is a political question that is unreviewable by the courts and--yet again--the court rejected this.

Another case that has gotten little attention so far but probably will in time is that of Edicson David Quintero Chacón. He came to the U.S. from Venezuela in 2024. His case went through an immigration court, which determined he could be deported but Venezuela wasn't accepting deportees at the time. Instead of just giving him a plane-ticket for home, the government locked him up. For eight months, despite the fact that a detainee in such circumstances isn't legally supposed to be held more than six. Held in a facility in Lumpkin, Georgia, he requested a writ of habeas corpus, saying he wasn't fighting to stay in the U.S. anymore and "just wanted to go home."

The court ordered the Trump regime to respond to his petition. Instead, the regime renditioned him to CECOT in El Salvador on the first batch of flights, dispatched there in violation of the constitution, wide swathes of U.S. law and a court order. He wasn't sent to CECOT under the pretended authority of the Alien Enemies Act; he was one of the people the regime claimed were sent as a result of ordinary immigration court proceedings. A man who has never been convicted or even charged with any crime in any county, condemned to spend the rest of his life in a foreign torture dungeon.

Quintero's lawyers have filed a revised habeas petition, asking that the Trump regime extricate him from CECOT and either send him to Venezuela or let him go there himself.

*          *          *

UPDATE (20 May, 2025) -  The Cato Institute has just released a new report examining how many among those renditoned to El Salvador were legally present in the U.S.. While the Trump regime has referred to them as "illegal aliens," Cato examined 90 cases in which the method of entered the U.S. was known and of those, 50 "came legally to the United States, with advanced US government permission, at an official border crossing point."

"These people came to the United States with advanced US government permission, were vetted and screened before arrival, violated no US immigration law, and the US government turned around and 'disappeared' them without due process to a foreign prison. It is paying the Salvadoran government to continue to keep them incarcerated... The US government did not inform their families, lawyers, or anyone else of their impending imprisonment at US government expense in a Salvadoran prison known for torture and other abuses that would be illegal inside the United States. Agents simply disappeared them without charge or trial or even acknowledgment, which is rightly considered a crime against humanity."

While the Trump regime has insisted that those renditioned were "criminal terrorists" and "confirmed" members of Tren de Aragua, Cato notes that "investigations by the New York Times, Bloomberg, and CBS News have all found that few of the imprisoned men have any criminal record." All of the legal immigrants Cato examined denied gang membership "and only two appear to have had a US criminal conviction of any kind, both for minor drug offenses."

"About two dozen of the legal immigrants were detained immediately at the port of entry where they were authorized to seek entry, so there is no possibility that they demonstrated any gang ties or committed any crimes inside the United States."

At least 42 of the the 50 "were labeled as gang members primarily based on their tattoos, which Venezuelan gangs do not use to identify members and are not reliable indicators of gang membership."

*          *          *

UPDATE (31 May, 2025) - ProPublica reports that the Trump regime knew that the vast majority of Venezuelans it condemned to CECOT in March "had not been convicted of crimes in the United States before it labeled them as terrorists and deported them, according to U.S. Department of Homeland Security data that has not been previously reported."

I'll go ahead and enter the standard objection here to the ubiquitous use by the press of the word "deported" to describe what was done in this matter. These men were not deported--that is, simply sent to a country other than the U.S.. They were renditioned to permanent imprisonment in a foreign torture dungeon. Calling that "deportation" seriously misleads the public, even when, as here, the press reports themselves accurately describe what was actually done. This distinction is absolutely crucial, given the regime's handling of this. ProPublica:

"President Donald Trump and his aides have branded the Venezuelans as “rapists,” “savages,” 'monsters' and 'the worst of the worst.' When multiple news organizations disputed those assertions with reporting that showed many of the deportees did not have criminal records, the administration doubled down. It said that its assessment of the deportees was based on a thorough vetting process that included looking at crimes committed both inside and outside the United States. But the government's own data, which was obtained by ProPublica, The Texas Tribune and a team of journalists from Venezuela, showed that officials knew that only 32 of the deportees had been convicted of U.S. crimes and that most were nonviolent offenses, such as retail theft or traffic violations."

ProPublica, the Tribune and a pair of Venezuelan media outlets also "obtained lists of alleged gang members that are kept by Venezuelan law enforcement officials and the international law enforcement agency Interpol." None of those renditioned to CECOT are on those lists.

*          *          *

UPDATE (1 June, 2025) - At  the end of April, U.S. District Judge David Briones in El Paso released a couple from Venezuela whom the Trump regime had kidnapped and accused of being Tren de Aragua. He issued a blistering ruling that indicts the regime's behavior in that case and, by extension, the regime's TdA accusations in all of these cases.

The couple, Julio Cesar Sanchez Puentes and Luddis Norelia Sanchez Garcia, came to the U.S. in 2022. They applied for and received Temporary Protective Status (TPS). By statute, those holding such status "shall not be detained by the Attorney General on the basis of the alien's immigration status in the United States," with limited exceptions. In February, the Trump regime decided to go after them for improper entry into the U.S., a misdemeanor, and arrested them in Washington D.C., where they live quietly with their children. They were released by U.S. Magistrate Judge G. Michael Harvey. When, only 9 days later, they were detained again, they filed a habeas petition. This time, Judge Leonie Brinkema ultimately ordered their release. They traveled to El Paso for a pretrial hearing on their improper entry case and were detained again, this time given notice--in English, which neither can read--that they had been designated alien enemies under Trump's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act.

And after repeatedly unlawfully detaining the couple in just a matter of weeks, what evidence did the regime provide to the courts that they were Tren de Aragua?

Nothing.

The regime asserted that after she was arrested in March, Sanchez Garcia admitted to being a member of TdA, said she'd previously been married to a member of TdA, that that relationship ended a decade ago and that her former husband had been killed by Venezuelan police for his TdA activities. Then, the Trump regime couldn't produce anyone who interviewed her and allegedly captured those statements! Instead, it basically rested its case on the declaration of an El Paso ICE Assistant Field Office Director named Ramirez, who asserted he'd seen law enforcement intelligence that asserted Sanchez Garcia was TdA. Couldn't provide any of that alleged intelligence, any real details about it, couldn't provide or even identify anyone who allegedly received this alleged information. Additionally, "of great concern to this court," wrote Briones, "is that Respondents [the Trump regime] contradict themselves throughout the entire record." The regime had, for example, alternately identified Sanchez Garcia of being a suspected low-level TdA operative, a low-level TdA operative (with the caveat removed), a "senior" TdA member and an "affiliate" of TdA.

The Trump regime, as Briones wrote,

"based the entirety of their case on multiple levels of hearsay, hidden within declarations of declarants who have no personal knowledge about the facts they are attesting to... Respondents ask this court to accept their claims, going off of nearly nothing, to substantiate their mammoth claims that Petitioner Sanchez Garcia is a 'senior member,' or perhaps just a 'member,' or maybe at the least an 'affiliate' of TdA. This court would not accept this evidence even in a case where only nominal damages were at stake, let alone what is at stake here."

Probably because he isn't considering the legitimacy of Trump's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, Briones calls no attention to part of the regime's case that was particularly amusing. Trump's invocation of the AEA is based on the bullshit conspiracy that TdA is invading the U.S. at the direction of the Maduro regime but one of the alleged "sources" cited by the regime (at 3rd, 4th or even more-hand) is identified as a former member of Maduro's national police in Venezuela who, when in that job, is said to have been part of a special unit detailed to combating TdA and who is said to have claimed Sanchez Garcia was a member of the gang.

The "case" against Sanchez Garcia's husband was even worse; the regime didn't even pretend to have any evidence of any TdA membership by him, beyond the fact that he "is married to, resides with, has children with, and entered the United States unlawfully with Sanchez Garcia, a known TdA member"! Briones writes, "this court takes clear offense to respondents wasting judicial resources to admit to the court it has no evidence, yet seek to have this court determine petitioner Sanchez Puentes is 'guilty by association'" with his own wife! If the regime wasn't possibly trying to rendition this guy to a foreign torture dungeon for the rest of his life, it would be hilarious.

The government's case, wrote Briones, "was replete with conclusions, declarations, and accusations, completely and wholly unsubstantiated by anything meaningful in the record." Briones ordered the couple released and enjoined the regime from again arresting them based on this nonsense. He further ordered that the regime shall not remove from the Western district of Texas any non-citizen in that district who is subject to Trump's AEA Proclamation and will provide 21 days notice to anyone in the district targeted under the AEA.

"Such notice must include the individual's right to seek judicial review, and inform individuals they may consult an attorney, at their own expense, regarding their detention and the Government's intent to remove them. Such notice must be given and written in a language the individual understands."

On 1 May, U.S. District Judge Fernandez Rodriguez ruled that the Trump regime's use of the Alien Enemies Act "exceeds the scope of the statute and is contrary to the plain, ordinary meaning of the statute's terms." He designated Venezuelans detained under the AEA and Trump's related proclamation in the Southern district of Texas as a class and permanently enjoined the Trump regime from removing them under the AEA. Judge Rodriguez also evaluates and rejects the regime's kingly--and baseleless--assertions that Trump's invocation of the AEA can't even be questioned by the judiciary. Still, it's a conservative ruling and problematic in some details[1] but it gets these larger issues correct.

On 6 May, Judge Alvin Hellerstein issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump regime from enforcing Trump's AEA proclamation in the Southern District of New York until the pending case there is resolved. Hellerstein rejected the regime's argument that its invocation of the AEA was unreviewable, and "since Respondents have not demonstrated the existence of a 'war,' 'invasion' or 'predatory incursion,' the AEA was not validly invoked by the Presidential Proclamation." He spotlights the laughably inadequate notices the regime gives to detainees--essentially a substance-free form-letter, written only in English and that doesn't alert the recipient that he can contest what's happening to him. An ICE official told the court that a detainee would be given 12 hours to assert any wish to file a habeas petition then could be removed; even if one files a petition, ICE asserted it may remove him anyway if "the habeas proceedings have not concluded within a reasonable time."[2]

A few hours after Hellerstein's injunction, Jude Charlotte Sweeney, who had earlier issued a temporary restraining order against the regime's use of the Alien Enemies Act against Venezuelans detained in her Colorado district (see 30 April update above), upgraded her TRO to a preliminary injunction. As usual, the regime had argued that the AEA, as it put it, "grants the President virtually unreviewable discretion" and yet again, the court rejected this.

"Respondents' arguments are threadbare costumes for their core contention: 'As for whether the Act's preconditions are satisfied, that is the President’s call alone; the federal courts do not have a role to play.' This sentence staggers. It is wrong as a matter of law and attempts to read an entire provision out of the Constitution. The Court declines Respondents’ invitation to engage in such a revisionist exercise."

There's no war or predatory incursion to justify the regime's invocation of the AEA and just as before, Sweeney rejects the regime's ridiculous efforts to redefine words in bizarre ways to justify its actions.

On 13 May, the regime finally found a mark. Judge Stephanie Haines in Pennsylvania became the first judge to back Trump's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act. That part of the ruling was disgraceful; Haines held that if one defers to all the dubious, often outright false assertions made by the regime and completely redefine words in a bizarre way, so that TdA's presence in the U.S. is a "predatory incursion," the use of the AEA is permissible. Haines did this even as, in the case before her, the regime pulled its usual shenanigans, showing--yet again--that nothing it says in these matters could be trusted.

The case before her was of a Venezuelan fellow with the initials A.S.R., who filed a habeas petition asserting he was in danger of being removed under the AEA, requesting that Trump's proclamation invoking the AEA be held to be invalid, requesting class certification of those in the district who are similarly situated and a temporary restraining order against the regime. The regime accused A.S.R. of being TdA based on his tattoos; he denies any association with the gang. He was involved in an ongoing immigration proceeding in which the government was trying, under the auspices of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), to obtain an order of removal against him. The court granted the TRO only to be told that after it had been requested, the regime had spirited A.S.R. away, out of the district and to the Bluebonnet Detention Center in Anson, Texas.

ICE went to court with a declaration from a field office official that to his knowledge, no one in the Pennsylvania district was subject to Trump's proclamation--a declaration dated after the regime had moved A.S.R. to Texas. The court went with that and ruled out certifying a class on those grounds. The regime represented both

1) that, prior to 16 April, it had reviewed A.S.R.'s case and concluded he wasn't subject to removal under the AEA, and thus he lacked standing to bring an anti-AEA case, and

2) that ICE, as of 2 or more weeks after that alleged review and conclusion, "had not yet determined" if A.S.R. is subject to removal under Trump's proclamation.

Under questioning, the regime refused to guarantee that A.S.R. would never be determined to be subject to the proclamation. While the regime asserted that A.S.R. was being processed under the INA it moved him to Texas, causing him to miss the immigration court hearing where the government's INA case against him would have been heard and putting him among those being collected for an AEA mass-deportation. Haines took this as "conclusive evidence" that the man was "'in custody' pursuant to the AEA." Such a conclusion--that after moving A.S.R. to dodge the legal action he'd followed, the regime was lying and trying to play the court--should have affected how much weight Haines gave the regime's say-so in the matter of invoking the AEA but didn't.

On the positive side, Haines did agree with every other court that the "due process" being doled out by the regime to those targeted via the AEA--only a few hours notice--was woefully inadequate and ordered that anyone so targeted be given at least 21 days notice to challenge the designation, agreeing with Judge Briones in Texas and Judge Sweeney in Colorado.

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[1] For example, the AEA requires that aliens targeted under it be given an opportunity to voluntarily leave, something the regime has offered no one it has targeted under the AEA's auspices. Rodriguez brushes this aside:

"When taken together, the statutory language provides that the President acting under the AEA need not offer voluntary departure to alien enemies who the Executive Branch has concluded are engaged in chargeable actual hostility. And in the present case, the Proclamation declares that the designated alien enemies, as members of TdA, have engaged in criminal conduct in the United States."

...which is rather problematic, as those who brought the suit deny being members of TdA, and most of those who were earlier renditioned to El Salvador and accused of TdA membership have no criminal history and no apparent connection to the gang. Two of the 3 petitioners in the case before Rodriguez fled Venezuela for fear of persecution there but the central assertion of Trump's invocation of the AEA was the crackpot conspiracy that TdA was carrying out a predatory incursion into the U.S. at the order of the Maduro regime. So they're fleeing persecution by Maduro at the order of Maduro to commit an "invasion" of the U.S., which will send them back to the country where they were persecuted?

Yeah.

[2] Hellerstein also notes that Trump's proclamation, ""in order to empower the Executive beyond the provisions of the AEA, subtly changes the clause 'shall be liable to be... removed' in the AEA, to 'shall be subject to immediate... removal,' in the Presidential Proclamation. This change is ultra vires."