This is a type of ICE "ruse," and is a tactic the agency has deployed for decades.
In 2015, ICE went to my former client's house posing as cops and convinced his 16-year-old US citizen niece to call him home from work with a fake story (the "identity theft ruse" explained below), then arrested him.
At issue, is not a shutdown “deal.” If Democratic senators cave now, they are bending the knee to Republicans in exchange for less than nothing.
Chuck Schumer is proving, yet again, that he’s ill-equipped for this critical moment.
I truly don’t know how you look at the past week and THEN decide THIS is an appropriate — let alone the right — response.
What happened during the LA raid just this week is shameful. No one-year-old, regardless of immigration status, should have to see their parent be taken by masked and heavily armed agents, only to then be snatched away under the guise of "public safety." This isn't about safety. It's about control.
Either Noem is shamelessly lying, giving Orwell a run for his money, or…the head of DHS has no clue what’s happening in the very department she’s supposed to be leading. My money is on doublethink.
Last month, Kristi Noem said, on camera, that “no American citizens have been arrested or detained.”
Odd—since earlier that same month ProPublica tallied more than 170 incidents in which a US citizen was arrested or temporarily detained.
In exchange for getting to house migrants in El Salvador's notorious prison, the Trump administration agreed to give up top MS-13 cooperators, "a key step in hindering an ongoing U.S. investigation" into the Salvadoran government's relationship with the gang.
www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...
Don’t look away. This is what Libya’s migrant detention facilities look like. This is what Trump is doing.
Amnesty International called Libya’s migrant detention centers a “hellscape,” where beatings and sexual violence are rampant and there are many reports of trafficking and even slavery.
Miriam Jordan By Miriam Jordan Miriam Jordan is a national immigration correspondent. April 22, 2025, 5:04 a.m. ET In late January, Ricardo Prada Vásquez, a Venezuelan immigrant working in a delivery job in Detroit, picked up an order at a McDonald’s. He was heading to the address when he erroneously turned onto the Ambassador Bridge, which leads to Canada. It is a common mistake even for those who live in the Michigan border city. But for Mr. Prada, 32, it proved fateful. The U.S. authorities took Mr. Prada into custody when he attempted to re-enter the country; he was put in detention and ordered deported. On March 15, he told a friend in Chicago that he was among a number of detainees housed in Texas who expected to be repatriated to Venezuela. That evening, the Trump administration flew three planes carrying Venezuelan migrants from the Texas facility to El Salvador, where they have been ever since, locked up in a maximum-security prison and denied contact with the outside world. But Mr. Prada has not been heard from or seen. He is not on the list of 238 people who were deported to El Salvador that day. He does not appear in the photos and videos released by the authorities of shackled men with shaved heads.
NEW from @nytimes.com: A bone-chilling account. A Venezuelan man detained alongside the 238 sent to El Salvador on March 15 seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth. His name isn't among the names of those sent to CECOT that day and no one spotted him among those men. He's just... gone.
Ah, yes, why waste our time on things like verifiable facts, when we have geniuses in the White House working tirelessly to develop innovative, foolproof methods for deciding who to send to a Salvadoran torture prison?
Over on The Hellsite, JD Vance has now functionally called for an end to due process for migrants. His argument is riddled with deceptions, bad faith, and embarrassingly awful logic. I think it needs a real response, so here's what I put up over there.
First, his 20 million number is fiction. 1/
“If it’s legal”?!
Please point me to ANY legal basis that even suggests it could be legal to “deport” a US citizen.
The man pictured in the below post is Andry, who came to a port of entry seeking asylum. A foolish CBP officer threw him into ICE detention last year because of his “mom” and “dad” tattoos with little crowns over them.
That was bad enough. Then Trump sold him to El Salvador.
BRING THEM BACK.
Important (and urgent) points that everyone, but especially our reps, should know.
And we cannot ignore what looking the other way means for our right to be protected from arbitrary arrests and detention without a fair opportunity to be heard. What about this Administration’s actions thus far inspire confidence in their unsupported claims about gang membership? (9/10)
We cannot ignore the impact this will have on Mr. Abrego Garcia, his US citizen 5-year-old son, and his US citizen wife. There’s a real possibility that Mr. Abrego Garcia’s son will never see his dad again. (8/10)
Let’s assume this was an “error”—next step is to try to fix this mistake and bring him back, right? Wrong, says the government. In fact, they’re not only refusing to bring him back voluntarily but have argued that the district court can’t order them to do so. (7/10)
The government’s OWN lawyers admitted that DHS was aware of Mr. Abrego Garcia’s protection BEFORE he was deported. Despite that, they simultaneously maintain that his removal was “an administrative error,” “an oversight,” and “was carried out in good faith.” Oof--try making sense of that. (6/10)
Instead, while Mr. Abrego Garcia’s protection from removal was still in effect, ICE arrested him, transferred him to a staging area for flights to El Salvador, added his name to the flight manifest, and deported him to a Salvadoran prison. (5/10)
Importantly, when ICE decides that someone granted withholding should be deported, the law requires them to request to reopen proceedings. ICE didn’t do that—why? My wild guess—no evidence. (4/10)
We must ask ourselves, should the government be allowed to claim, without proof, that someone they don’t like is a gang member, and then be able to deport them to a prison known for torturous conditions and abuse, without due process? What’s to stop them from doing the same to any one of us? (10/10)
Although withholding doesn’t provide a path to “green” card status, it DOES provide protection from removal. When the judge granted relief, ICE could have appealed but chose not to. (3/10)
Mr. Abrego Garcia was granted withholding of removal in 2019 because an immigration judge determined that he would more likely than not be persecuted on account of a protected ground if returned to El Salvador. (2/10)
Although Mr. Abrego Garcia is one of many people unlawfully removed to El Salvador’s torture prison, his case is illustrative and worth highlighting. 🧵 (1/10)
This was always the plan—there is no “administrative error” here.
If Courts don’t stop these blatant due process and immigration law violations now, when?
www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...
From an operational security perspective, this is the highest level of fuckup imaginable. These people cannot keep America safe.
You CANNOT make this up. Yet another example of Trump’s “best people” demonstrating that they are extremely unqualified and don’t know what they’re doing.
www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...
If an ICE agent doesn’t like your tattoo of a soccer ball with a crown atop it, you may quickly find yourself en route to a Salvadoran mega prison. You say you’re not a gang member? You’re a US citizen? Homan says they don’t have to prove you’re a TdA member, and you don’t get to prove you’re not.
If an ICE agent doesn’t like your tattoo of a soccer ball with a crown atop it, you may quickly find yourself en route to a Salvadoran mega prison. You say you’re not a gang member? You’re a US citizen? Homan says they don’t have to prove you’re a TdA member, and you don’t get to prove you’re not.
