Trump Is Escalating His Assaults On Civil Liberties, Testing Limits With Immigrants
The Trump Admin admitted they mistakenly sent Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador's mega-prison. They're defying the Supreme Court's order anyway. Now, Trump says he wants to send citizens there, too.
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There are moments you read about in history where injustice is rampant, dissent is punished, and authoritarianism is rising, and you think to yourself, What would I have done during this time? Would I have spoken up?
This is one of those moments.
After spending his first months in office gutting the federal government, surrounding himself with loyalists, and pursuing the far-right Project 2025 agenda, President Trump is now weaponizing that government in increasingly depraved ways.
President Trump is escalating his assaults on civil liberties and signaling the ways he wants to take things a step further.
The Trump Administration has been detaining and revoking visas from students who have expressed pro-Palestinian views. President Trump has signed an executive order calling for the Justice Department to investigate former administration officials who criticized him - Miles Taylor and Chris Krebs. Trump has been threatening the funding of universities and schools he feels hold ideologies he opposes, and calling for cable networks he disagrees with to lose their broadcast licenses.
One of the worst areas of authoritarian overreach came into focus this week. As we know, the Trump Administration sent immigrants with no criminal records to a Salvadoran mega-prison, called CECOT (Terrorism Confinement Center), known for inhumane conditions and accusations of torture. They did this with literally no due process.
According to a recent 60 Minutes investigation, 75% of the 238 immigrants that the Trump Administration sent to this Salvadoran prison have no criminal record. This fact runs contrary to false claims from the Trump Administration that they were sending violent criminal gang members to CECOT.
60 Minutes found that, “Among them: a makeup artist, a soccer player, and a food delivery driver, being held in a place so harsh that El Salvador's justice minister once said the only way out is in a coffin.” We’re also learning of a 19-year-old with no criminal record named Merwil Gutiérrez who was taken to CECOT.
One particular case has become the focal point for the fight over these unjust deportations and the Trump Administration’s test of the limits of executive power as they defy a Supreme Court order.
Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia was a father of three living in Maryland. Abrego Garcia entered the United States illegally in 2011 when he was 16 years old, fleeing gang violence in El Salvador. He went on to find work, get married to a U.S. citizen, have children, and settle in Maryland. In 2019, an immigration judge issued a “withholding from removal” order that declared he could not be deported back to El Salvador due to the threats of gang violence. So, henceforth, Abrego Garcia was here legally.
On March 12, 2025, the Trump Administration arrested and sent Abrego Garcia to CECOT without due process, falsely stating he was confirmed to be a member of MS-13. Abrego Garcia’s family sued for his return, and the Trump Administration conceded in a court filing that he was removed by mistake “because of an administrative error.” Department of Justice attorney Erez Reuveni explicitly said that “he should not have been sent to El Salvador.”
Maryland District Federal Judge Paula Xinis ruled that his removal was “an illegal act” and that Abrego Garcia should be returned. The Trump Administration appealed to the Supreme Court, which then issued a unanimous 9-0 ruling ordering the Trump Administration to “facilitate” the return of Abrego Garcia.
The Trump Administration’s argument has been that they do not have jurisdiction in El Salvador, and they’ve since begun to defame Abrego Garcia. Trump Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller has been lying about Abrego Garcia and twisting the meaning of the Supreme Court’s ruling. Miller is now claiming that Abrego Garcia “was not mistakenly sent to El Salvador” and claimed that the Supreme Court actually ruled in their favor.
Miller and other administration officials are claiming the word “facilitate” simply means they would accept the return of Abrego Garcia, but it’s up to El Salvador to return him. Miller also said that the DOJ attorney, Erez Reuveni, who admitted the mistake, has been put on leave.
This Orwellian spin continued in the Oval Office on Monday in a bilateral meeting that every American should pay attention to.
During El Salvador President Nayib Bukele's Oval Office visit, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked directly, “Can President Bukele weigh in on this? Do you plan to return him?”
President Bukele smugly answered while President Trump smirked. “I hope you’re not suggesting that I smuggle a terrorist into the United States?” Bukele said. “How can I return him to the United States? Of course, I'm not going to do it. The question is preposterous… I don’t have the power to return him to the United States.”
As I’ve clearly demonstrated in this article, Abrego Garcia is not a terrorist. He has no criminal record in the U.S. or in El Salvador. But that hasn’t stopped Bukele and the Trump Administration from lying about him.
Attorney General Pam Bondi, Stephen Miller, Vice President J.D. Vance, and the rest of the Trump Administration have pivoted away from admitting they made a mistake and are now returning to calling Abrego Garcia a member of MS-13. Bondi repeated this lie again on Fox News on Monday night, and J.D. Vance perpetuated it on Twitter this morning, posting:
“The entire American media and left wing industrial complex has decided the most important issue today is that the Trump admin deported an MS-13 gang member (and illegal alien)”
This claim that Abrego Garcia is a gang member or a terrorist is asinine.
In her ruling calling for his return, Maryland District Federal Judge Paula Xinis noted that the allegations that Abrego Garcia is affiliated with MS-13 are baseless. Xinis wrote in her order, “The ‘evidence’ against Abrego Garcia consisted of nothing more than his Chicago Bulls hat and hoodie, and a vague, uncorroborated allegation from a confidential informant claiming he belonged to MS-13’s ‘Western’ clique in New York — a place he has never lived.”
The Trump Administration keeps lying and calling Abrego Garcia a gang member without credible evidence because they want to shift the narrative from the truth: They’re defying a Supreme Court order to facilitate the return of a man with no criminal record, whom they admit they mistakenly sent to a foreign gulag.
And even if you argue that the Supreme Court intended a narrower meaning of the word “facilitate,” the Trump Administration would still be in defiance of this ruling. The Trump Administration is doing absolutely nothing to try to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return. In fact, they’re doing the exact opposite, actively undermining the facilitation of his return with disinformation and no visible action toward compliance.
Rather than own the mistake they’ve already admitted to, the Trump Administration is resorting to defiance, disinformation, and dehumanization.
What Trump is doing to innocent immigrants like Abrego Garcia is bad enough. Now, he’s openly talking about how he wants to do the same to U.S. citizens.
In that same Oval Office press gaggle, with Bukele by his side, President Trump once again discussed his desire to send U.S. citizens to the same Salvadoran prison he sent Abrego Garcia:
"I'd like to go a step further. I said to Pam [Bondi], I don't know what the laws are, we always have to obey the laws, but we also have homegrown criminals that push people into subways ... I'd like to include them in the group of people to get them out of the country."
In other footage that seemingly caught Trump speaking to Bukele on a hot mic, Trump said, “Home-growns are next. The home-growns. You gotta build about five more places. It's not big enough." Trump Administration officials burst out in laughter.
When asked directly if Trump meant U.S. citizens, Trump confirmed he would like to send U.S. citizen criminals to El Salvador.
In my appearance on John Fugelsang’s SiriusXM show last week, we discussed how Trump is targeting immigrants, and Fugelsang told me he felt they were doing some “beta testing.” I think that’s exactly right.
In many ways, these actions feel like beta tests—trial balloons to see what the public and the courts will tolerate before scaling up the crackdown to include citizens. The courts need to more forcefully shut this down before it goes any further. Anything short is enabling him.
This whole episode also further highlights how unrelentingly depraved the Trump Administration is. They had an opportunity to show even a sliver of human decency and pressure, or even ask, El Salvador to return the innocent man they admitted was mistakenly deported. Instead, they doubled down and said they also want to do this to U.S. citizens.
Those of us with the privilege of U.S. citizenship need to speak out, and journalists need to keep these stories in the news. Not only because basic decency and empathy for the injustice others face should compel us to action. But also because, as history tells us, authoritarians never stop with their first targets.
I appreciate your succinct wrap up of the horror, Ahmed. We must all speak out about this insanity. Definitely taking to the streets again on Saturday the 19th.