How to Verify Gang Status for Deportation Purposes without Due Process
If they have a tattoo that the examining officer thinks might be hinky
PETER ON THE WRITERS’ HANGOUT PODCAST!
If you listen to Immigration Tsar, Tom Homan or to Donald Trump, administration authorities have carefully vetted and objectively determined that those being deported to Salvadoran prisons are “clearly” criminal gang members, even if they have no recorded criminal convictions. And if you believe that, there’s a bridge in Brooklyn I am happy to sell you cheap. For innocents with prominent tattoos, that is more than enough to warrant these harsh prisons, even if those tattoos aren’t gang related.
Yet, as CNN (3/25) reports, the Trump administration wants courts to be severely limited in ferreting the truth… since truth is in reality Trump’s number one enemy: “Top Justice Department officials told a federal judge on Monday [3/24] that the Trump administration is invoking the state secrets privilege to avoid giving him information about deportation flights from earlier this month that are at the center of a legal dispute over whether the government flouted his judicial commands.
“‘The Court has all of the facts it needs to address the compliance issues before it,’ Attorney General Pam Bondi and other top DOJ officials wrote in a filing to US District Judge James Boasberg. ‘Further intrusions on the Executive Branch would present dangerous and wholly unwarranted separation-of-powers harms with respect to diplomatic and national security concerns that the Court lacks competence to address.’… ‘The information sought by the Court is subject to the state secrets privilege because disclosure would pose reasonable danger to national security and foreign affairs,’ the officials wrote in the 10-page filing.” There is no such privilege when it comes to judicial review, and courts can keep national security interests from public release.
So, let’s examine the truth, particularly about the innocent young man pictured above with a non-gang-related tattoo: “Families say deportees’ only crime was having tattoos… They’re among hundreds of Venezuelans the U.S. sent to El Salvador… Nolberto Rafael Aguilar Rodríguez got his tattoo of cards and dice to cover a scar from a childhood accident, his sister says. The U.S. called it a gang symbol… [Another is] a former professional soccer player who, according to his lawyer, fled Venezuela after being tortured by the country’s authoritarian government.
“[Aguilar], also from Venezuela, is a onetime shoe salesman and social media influencer who documented his journey from South America on TikTok… Both were apparently among thousands of political asylum aspirants who entered the United States from Mexico legally via an immigration process scrapped by the Trump administration… Both were detained, one in California, and deported. Now they are imprisoned in El Salvador, according to their families, who have been left in the dark about their fates in a penal system widely condemned for human rights abuses.
“‘This has been a torture for us, an injustice,’ said Antonia Cristina Barrios de Reyes, mother of Jerce Egbunik Reyes Barrios, 36, the former professional goalkeeper. ‘My son is not a criminal.’… The social media influencer … Aguilar Rodríguez, 32… initially fled to Colombia, Venezuela’s western neighbor, out of desperation, said his sister, Jennifer Aguilar… ‘We’re campesinos, we come from the fields,’ she said. ‘We left Venezuela because we were starving.’
“Reyes Barrios and Aguilar were among 261 people — the vast majority Venezuelans — expelled to El Salvador this month after the Trump administration alleged that most were affiliated with the Venezuela-based Tren de Aragua gang, which President Trump has declared a terrorist group… The evidence of gang membership cited by the government is typically flimsy to nonexistent, defense lawyers allege, and largely based on tattoos and social media postings… Experts say the administration’s outsourcing of detained migrants to a nation with an infamously repressive prison system has no precedent.” Patrick J. McDonnell, Kate Linthicum, Mery Mogollon and Nelson Rauda writing for the March 24th Los Angeles Times. Had there been a constitutionally mandated due process hearing, these egregious errors would never have happened.
Our faith in the intelligence of the ICE deportation staff was doubly shaken when a bona fide MS-13 gang member, ready to provide federal investigators with detailed information about his gang and its connections in El Salvador, was deported to that Salvadoran prison. “As part of the deportation flights of alleged terrorists at the center of a legal and political storm, the US quietly dropped charges against a key alleged MS-13 leader and returned him to the pro-Trump leader of El Salvador.
“César Humberto López-Larios, an alleged top leader of the MS-13 gang who US investigators believe has information that could implicate top Salvadoran government officials in possibly corrupt deals with the violent gang, was deported on one of the controversial flights, according to current and former US officials and court documents.” CNN, March 24th. Sorry, I forgot, Trump routinely hands out “corruption exemptions” when it suits his interests. Salvadoran President Bukele is certainly grateful.
It does get worse, as attorneys for the government admitted that a Salvadoran man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, legally in the United States, had been deported accidentally. Court filings on March 31st stated: “Although ICE was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador, Abrego Garcia was removed to El Salvador because of an administrative error.” Trump lawyers said the court has no ability to bring Abrego Garcia back now that he is in Salvadoran custody… a fierce reason why due process must be applied before deportation. The fed’s excuse is no excuse at all.
I’m Peter Dekom, and it is little wonder that the United States is rapidly achieving the global hatred and decimated creditability levels once reserved for the Taliban, North Korea and Vladimir Putin.
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