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The Atlantic / Adam Serwer: Trump's Salvadoran Gulag
The Atlantic / Adam Serwer - Trump’s Salvadoran Gulag (Gift link)
To be deported, one does not need to be a drug dealer or a terrorist; apparently, having tattoos and being Venezuelan is enough.
By Adam Serwer
April 2, 2025, 11:53 AM ET
One thing that could be said about many—and possibly all—of the more than 100 men removed from the United States by the Trump administration under the archaic Alien Enemies Act of 1798 is that Donald Trump has been convicted of more crimes than they have.
Trump, after all, was convicted of 34 felony counts by a jury of his peers in New York City for faking business records in order to cover up his hush-money payment to the adult-film actor Stormy Daniels in 2016. His administration has acknowledged in court that many of the men deported to a gulag in El Salvador “do not have criminal records in the United States.” Many appear to not have criminal records elsewhere either.
During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump and his advisers loudly declared that they would engage in a “mass deportation” of undocumented criminals. Many Americans heard criminals and seem to have assumed that innocent people would not be targeted. But the reality of Trump’s immigration project is that a “criminal” is anyone the administration wants to deport, regardless of whether they have committed a crime. There’s been no earnest attempt to prove that these people did anything wrong; no deference to the Fifth Amendment, which guarantees that no “person” can be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Its protections are supposed to restrain the government and do not solely apply to citizens. Even so, immigration law is extraordinarily deferential to the federal government when it comes to these kinds of deportations—so deferential that if the Trump administration had solid evidence of gang involvement, deporting these men through a more routine process could have been straightforward.
ICE rounded these men up in early March, and then put them on a plane to the Central American nation, alleging that they were members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang. The men were then imprisoned in El Salvador’s Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, a prison infamous for reported human-rights violations including, allegedly, torture. The ACLU and Democracy Forward filed a challenge on behalf of five of the men shortly after they were apprehended, and managed to secure a judicial order preventing them from being removed from the United States, which the Trump administration seems to have defied.
So far, the Trump administration has provided only weak evidence that any of the men condemned to a foreign prison notorious for human-rights violations was guilty of anything. The administration’s defense of its actions, according to the declaration made by an ICE official, Robert Cerna, is that “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.” In other words, the lack of evidence against these men is just further proof that they’re guilty.
/snip
To be deported, one does not need to be a drug dealer or a terrorist; apparently, having tattoos and being Venezuelan is enough.
By Adam Serwer
April 2, 2025, 11:53 AM ET
One thing that could be said about many—and possibly all—of the more than 100 men removed from the United States by the Trump administration under the archaic Alien Enemies Act of 1798 is that Donald Trump has been convicted of more crimes than they have.
Trump, after all, was convicted of 34 felony counts by a jury of his peers in New York City for faking business records in order to cover up his hush-money payment to the adult-film actor Stormy Daniels in 2016. His administration has acknowledged in court that many of the men deported to a gulag in El Salvador “do not have criminal records in the United States.” Many appear to not have criminal records elsewhere either.
During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump and his advisers loudly declared that they would engage in a “mass deportation” of undocumented criminals. Many Americans heard criminals and seem to have assumed that innocent people would not be targeted. But the reality of Trump’s immigration project is that a “criminal” is anyone the administration wants to deport, regardless of whether they have committed a crime. There’s been no earnest attempt to prove that these people did anything wrong; no deference to the Fifth Amendment, which guarantees that no “person” can be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Its protections are supposed to restrain the government and do not solely apply to citizens. Even so, immigration law is extraordinarily deferential to the federal government when it comes to these kinds of deportations—so deferential that if the Trump administration had solid evidence of gang involvement, deporting these men through a more routine process could have been straightforward.
ICE rounded these men up in early March, and then put them on a plane to the Central American nation, alleging that they were members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang. The men were then imprisoned in El Salvador’s Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, a prison infamous for reported human-rights violations including, allegedly, torture. The ACLU and Democracy Forward filed a challenge on behalf of five of the men shortly after they were apprehended, and managed to secure a judicial order preventing them from being removed from the United States, which the Trump administration seems to have defied.
So far, the Trump administration has provided only weak evidence that any of the men condemned to a foreign prison notorious for human-rights violations was guilty of anything. The administration’s defense of its actions, according to the declaration made by an ICE official, Robert Cerna, is that “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.” In other words, the lack of evidence against these men is just further proof that they’re guilty.
/snip