Kilmar Ábrego García

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      Denied, detained, deported: the people targeted in Trump’s immigration crackdown

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      Donald Trump retook the White House vowing to stage “the largest deportation operation in American history”. As previewed, the administration set about further militarizing the US-Mexico border and targeting people requesting asylum and refugees while conducting raids and deportations in undocumented communities, detaining and deporting immigrants and spreading fear.Critics are outraged, if not surprised. But few expected the new legal chapter that unfolded next: a multipronged crackdown on certain people seen as opponents of the US president’s ideological agenda. This extraordinary assault has come in the context of wider attacks on higher education, the courts and the constitution.Here are some of the most high-profile individual cases that have captured the world’s attention so far because of their extreme and legally dubious nature, mostly involving documented people targeted by the Trump administration in the course of its swift and unlawful power grab.Students and academics hunted and ‘disappeared’In recent weeks, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) teams suddenly began arresting and detaining foreign-born students and academics on visas or green cards. In most cases the government has cited their roles in pro-Palestinian campus protests over Israel’s war in Gaza following the 7 October 2023 attack. Claims that they “support Hamas” are invoked as justification for wanting to deport them, even though they have not been charged with any crimes. Those taken include:Mahmoud KhalilA recent graduate student of Columbia University in New York, Mahmoud Khalil, 30, is a Palestinian green-card holder who was a leader during protests last year. He was arrested without due process in front of his pregnant wife and has been in a detention center in Louisiana since mid-March, denied release to attend the birth. He told an immigration judge that he and hundreds of other detainees were being denied rights the court itself had claimed to prioritize: “Due process and fundamental fairness.”View image in fullscreenThe government is using obscure immigration law to make extraordinary claims in cases like Khalil’s that it can summarily detain and deport people for constitutionally protected free speech if they are deemed adverse to US foreign policy. A far-right group has claimed credit for flagging his and others’ names for scrutiny by the authorities.Rümeysa ÖztürkView image in fullscreenUS immigration officials encircled and grabbed the Tufts University PhD student near Boston and bustled her into an unmarked car, shown in onlooker video. Öztürk, a Fulbright scholar and Turkish national on a visa, had co-written an op-ed in the student newspaper, criticizing Tufts’ response to Israel’s military assault on Gaza and Palestinians. She was rushed into detention in Louisiana in apparent defiance of a court order. Öztürk, 30, says she has been neglected and abused there in “unsafe and inhumane conditions”.Mohsen MahdawiView image in fullscreenMahdawi, a Palestinian green-card holder and student at Columbia University, was apprehended by Ice in Colchester, Vermont, on 14 April, as first reported by the Intercept.He was prominent in the protests at Columbia last year. During his apprehension he was put into an unmarked car outside a federal office where he was attending an interview to become a naturalized US citizen. The administration’s arcane justification is that his activism could “potentially undermine” the Middle East peace process, citing a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). He is detained in Vermont. Democratic lawmakers have visited Khalil, Öztürk and Mahdawi but failed to secure their release.Yunseo ChungView image in fullscreenAnother Columbia student, Chung, 21, sued the administration for trying to deport her, and has gone into hiding. She is a pro-Palestinian campaigner and was arrested by the New York police in March while protesting, as first reported by the New York Times. She said a government official told her lawyer they wanted to remove her from the country and her residency status was being revoked. Chung was born in South Korea and has been in the US since she was seven.Alireza DoroudiView image in fullscreenThe Democrats on campus group at the University of Alabama said of the arrest of Doroudi, 32, an Iranian studying mechanical engineering: “Donald Trump, Tom Homan [Trump’s “border czar”], and Ice have struck a cold, vicious dagger through the heart of UA’s international community.”He was taken to the same Louisiana federal detention center as Khalil. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has said he was a threat to national security, without providing details, and the state department had revoked his visa, while an immigration judge refused to release him.Badar Khan SuriView image in fullscreenMore than 370 alumni of Washington DC-based Georgetown University joined 65 current students there in signing on to a letter opposing immigration authorities’ detention of Dr Badar Khan Suri, a senior postdoctoral fellow at the institution’s Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU).The authorities revoked his student visa, alleging the Indian citizen’s father-in-law was an adviser to Hamas officials more than a decade ago – and claiming he was “deportable” because of his posts on social media in support of Palestine. He was taken to Louisiana and then detention in Texas and was given court dates in May.View image in fullscreenKseniia PetrovaThe Harvard Medical School research scientist was stopped at Boston’s Logan airport by US authorities on her way back from France in February, over what appeared to be an irregularity in customs paperwork related to frog embryo samples. She was told her visa was being revoked and she was being deported to her native Russia.When Petrova, 30, said she feared political persecution there because she had criticized the invasion of Ukraine, she was taken away and also ended up in an overcrowded detention facility in Louisiana. Her colleagues say her expertise is “irreplaceable” and Petrova said foreign scientists like her “enrich” America.Student visas revoked, then restored amid chaosMore than 1,400 international students from at least 200 colleges across the US had their “legal status changed” by the state department, including the revoking of visas, in what the specialist publication Inside Higher Education called “an explosion of visa terminations”.Amid scant information and rising panic, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, lambasted protesters and campus activists as “lunatics”. Some were cited for pro-Palestinian views, others concluded they must have been targeted because of minor crimes or offenses, such as a speeding ticket. Some could find no explanation. Then in the face of multiple court challenges, the administration in late April reversed course and restored legal statuses that had been rescinded en masse, but said it was developing a new policy. Uncertainty prevails.The legal rollercoaster came too late for this high-profile case:Felipe Zapata VelásquezView image in fullscreenThe family of the University of Florida student Felipe Zapata Velásquez, 27, said he was “undergoing a physical and emotional recovery process” in his native Colombia after police arrested him in Gainesville in March for traffic offenses and turned him over to Ice. He agreed to be deported, to avoid lengthy detention and legal battles. The Democratic congressman Maxwell Frost accused authorities of “kidnapping” Velásquez.Removed by (admitted) mistakeKilmar Ábrego GarcíaView image in fullscreenThe Salvadorian man was removed to El Salvador by mistake, which the Trump administration admitted. But it is essentially defying a US supreme court order to “facilitate” his return to his home and family in Maryland. Ábrego García was undocumented but had protected status against being deported to El Salvador. He was flown there anyway, without a hearing, to a brutal mega-prison, then later transferred to another facility. The administration accuses him of being a violent gangster and has abandoned him, infuriating a federal judge repeatedly and prompting warnings of a constitutional crisis.He has not been charged with any crimes but was swept up with hundreds of Venezuelans deported there. He has begged to speak to his wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, who insists he is not a criminal. The sheet metalworkers union chief, Michael Coleman, described Ábrego García as an “apprentice working hard to pursue the American dream” and said he was not a gang member. Trump said he was eyeing Salvadorian prisons for US citizens.Deported to a third country, without due processThe US deported more than 230 Venezuelan men to the mega-prison in El Salvador without so much as a hearing in mid-March despite an infuriated federal judge trying to halt the flights, then blocking others. Donald Trump took extraordinary action to avoid due process by invoking the 1798 Alien Enemies Act (AEA), a law meant only to be used in wartime, prompting court challenges led by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). John Roberts, the US chief justice, rebuked the president when he threatened the judge. The justices, by a majority, did not stop Trump from using the AEA but the bench unanimously reaffirmed the right to due process and said individuals must be able to bring habeas corpus challenges.Most of the men are reportedly not violent criminals or members of violent gangs, as the Trump administration asserts, according to a New York Times investigation.Many appear to have been accused of being members of the transnational Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua partly on the basis of their tattoos, with their families speaking out, including:Andry José Hernández RomeroView image in fullscreenHernández, a 31-year-old makeup artist and hairdresser, entered California last year to attend an asylum appointment, telling the authorities he was under threat in Venezuela as a gay man. But he was detained and accused of being in Tren de Aragua because of his tattoos, then suddenly deported under Trump, deemed a “security threat”.Jerce Reyes Barriosskip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe former professional footballer, 36, has been accused of gang membership by the DHS, seemingly because of his tattoos, including one of a crown sitting atop a soccer ball with a rosary and the word “dios”.“He chose this tattoo because it is similar to the logo for his favourite soccer team, Real Madrid,” his lawyer, Linette Tobin, said, adding that her client fled Venezuela after protesting against the government and being tortured.Francisco Javier García CasiqueView image in fullscreenRelatives were shocked when they spotted Francisco Javier García Casique, 24, in a propaganda video from El Salvador showing scores of Venezuelan prisoners being frog-marched off planes and into custody there. He is a barber in his home town of Maracay and is completely innocent of gang involvement, the family said, adding that Francisco and his brother Sebastián have matching tattoos quoting the Bible.Migrants seeking asylum removed to PanamaA US military plane took off from California in February carrying more than 100 immigrants from countries as far flung as Afghanistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, China, Sri Lanka, Turkey and Pakistan, dumping them in Panama. They were shackled and deported to a third country without due process because their countries of origin refuse to accept them back from the US. Shocking scenes unfolded of the people locked in a hotel in Panama City, signaling and writing on the windows pleading for help.The people, including children, were then moved and held at a facility deep in the dense jungle that separates Panama from Colombia. They were later reportedly freed and were seeking asylum from other countries, their futures uncertain. One of those deported from the US was:Artemis GhasemzadehView image in fullscreenGhasemzadeh, 27, a migrant from Iran, wrote “Help us” in lipstick on a window of the hotel in Panama City, as a desperate way of alerting New York Times reporters on the street to her and fellow detainees’ plight. She had thought that, especially as a convert from Islam to Christianity who faces danger in Iran as a result, that she would be offered freedom in the US, she told the newspaper while still in custody. She is possibly still in Panama trying to get a foothold.Americans questioned and threatenedAmir MakledView image in fullscreenMakled, a Detroit-born attorney, was questioned at the airport on returning from vacation. He was flagged to a terrorism response team, kept behind and pressured to hand over his phone, then give up some of its contents. The Lebanese American represents a pro-Palestinian student protester who was arrested at the University of Michigan. Experts said the incident was evidence of a weakening of fourth amendment constitutional protections at the border against “unreasonable search and seizure”.Nicole MicheroniView image in fullscreenThis Massachusetts immigration lawyer, a US-born American citizen, spoke out after receiving an email from the Trump administration telling her “it is time for you to leave the United States”. She said it was “probably, hopefully, sent to me in error. But it’s a little concerning these are going out to US citizens.” She told NBC she thought it was a scare tactic.Adam PeñaThis San Diego-based US citizen now carries his American passport and birth certificate everywhere with him and thinks he was sent one of the “time for you to leave” letters in error but because he represents clients in Ice detention locally. “I do believe this email was sent intentionally to immigration advocates around the country to instill fear and intimidation,” he told NBC news.Americans removedChildren who are seven, four and two and are US citizens were removed from the US in late April when their mothers were deported to Honduras. DHS said the two women chose to take their children with them but one of their lawyers told the Guardian that they were denied any opportunity to coordinate the care and custody of their children before being put on deportation flights from Louisiana. A federal judge said it was “illegal and unconstitutional” to thus remove a US citizen “with no meaningful process”.Visitors detainedJasmine Mooney, CanadaView image in fullscreenCanadian Jasmine Mooney was shackled and ended up in Ice detention in the US for two weeks over an alleged work visa irregularity while on one of her frequent visits to California. She spoke out about the harsh conditions and the information black hole and how outraged she was that so many other detainees she met, who helped her, are stranded without access to the kind of resources that ultimately got her out.Rebecca Burke, UKView image in fullscreenThe British graphic artist was stopped at the border when she headed from Seattle to Canada as a backpacker and, because of a visa mix-up, she became one of 32,809 people to be arrested by Ice during the first 50 days of Trump’s presidency. Almost three weeks of grueling detention conditions later, she smuggled out her poignant drawings of fellow detainees when she was released.Jessica Brösche, GermanyThe German tourist and tattoo artist, 29, from Berlin was detained by US immigration authorities and deported back to Germany after spending more than six weeks in US detention, including what she described as eight days in solitary confinement. Her family compared her ordeal to “a horror film”.Fabian Schmidt, GermanyView image in fullscreenThe 34-year-old German national and US green-card holder was apprehended and allegedly “violently interrogated” by US border officials as he was returning to New Hampshire from a trip to Luxembourg. His family said he was held for hours at Boston’s Logan airport, stripped naked and put in a cold shower, then later deprived of food and medicine, and collapsed. His case is being investigated and as of mid-April he was in Ice detention in Rhode Island.Sent back‘Jonathan’A man with a US work visa provided his anonymous account to the Guardian of being denied entry into the US after a trip to his native Australia to scatter his sister’s ashes. He was pulled aside on arrival in Houston, Texas, and accused, variously, of selling drugs and having improper paperwork. After being detained for over a day he was put on a flight back to Australia even though he has worked on the US east coast for five years, where he lived with his girlfriend.Denied entry – for criticizing Trump?Alvin Gibbs, Marc Carrey and Stefan Häublein of band UK SubsView image in fullscreenMembers of the punk rock band UK Subs said they were denied entry and detained in the US on their way to play a gig in Los Angeles, after being questioned about visas. Bassist Alvin Gibbs said: “I can’t help but wonder whether my frequent, and less than flattering, public comments regarding their president [Trump] and his administration played a role.” He and the two band mates were kept in harsh conditions for 24 hours then deported back to the UK.French scientistA French scientist, who has not been publicly named, was denied entry to the US after immigration officers at an airport searched his phone and found messages in which he had expressed criticism of the Trump administration, according to a French government minister. The researcher was on his way to a conference in Texas.“Freedom of opinion, free research, and academic freedom are values ​​that we will continue to proudly uphold,” Philippe Baptiste, France’s minister of higher education and research, told Le Monde. More

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      in US Politics

      The uniting theme of Trump’s presidency? Ineptitude | Robert Reich

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      Some Democrats fear they’re playing into Donald Trump’s hands by fighting his mass deportations rather than focusing on his failures on bread-and-butter issues like the cost of living.But it’s not either-or. The theme that unites Trump’s inept handling of deportations, his trampling on human and civil rights, his rejection of the rule of law, his dictatorial centralization of power, and his utterly inept handling of the economy is the ineptness itself.In his first term, not only did his advisers and cabinet officials put guardrails around his crazier tendencies, but they also provided his first administration a degree of stability and focus. Now, it’s mayhem.A sampling from recent weeks:1. The Pete Hegseth disaster. The defense secretary didn’t just mistakenly share the military’s plans with the editor of the Atlantic; we now know he shared them with a second Signal group, including his wife, brother and personal lawyer.He’s a walking disaster. John Ullyot, who resigned last week as Pentagon spokesperson, penned an op-ed in Politico that began: “It’s been a month of total chaos at the Pentagon.” Last Friday, Hegseth fired three of his senior staffers. His chief of staff is leaving. As Ullyot wrote, it’s “very likely” that “even bigger bombshell stories” will come soon. The defense department “is in disarray under Hegseth’s leadership”.It’s not just the defense department. Much of the federal government is in disarray.2. The Harvard debacle. A Trump official is now claiming that a letter full of demands about university policy sent to Harvard on 11 April was “unauthorized”. What does this even mean?As Harvard pointed out, the letter “was signed by three federal officials, placed on official letterhead, was sent from the email inbox of a senior federal official and was sent on April 11 as promised. Recipients of such correspondence from the US government – even when it contains sweeping demands that are astonishing in their overreach – do not question its authenticity or seriousness.”Even though it was “unauthorized”, the Trump regime is standing by the letter, which has now prompted Harvard to sue.3. The tariff travesty. No sooner had Trump imposed “retaliatory” tariffs on almost all of the US’s trading partners – based on a formula that has made no sense to anyone – than the US stock and bond markets began crashing.To stop the selloff, Trump declared a 90-day pause on the retaliatory tariffs but raised his tariffs on China to 145% – causing markets to plummet once again.Presumably to stem the impending economic crisis, he declared an exemption to the China tariffs for smartphones and computer equipment. By doing so, Trump essentially admitted what he had before denied: that importers and consumers bear the cost of tariffs.Now, Trump is saying that even his China tariffs aren’t really real. Following warnings from Walmart, Target and Home Depot that the tariffs would spike prices, Trump termed the tariffs he imposed on China “very high” and promised they “will come down substantially. But it won’t be zero.”Markets soared on the news. But where in the world are we heading?4. The attack on the Fed chair fiasco. When Trump renewed his attacks on Jerome H Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve – calling him “a major loser” and demanding that the Fed cut interest rates – Trump unnerved already anxious investors who understand the importance of the Fed’s independence and feared that a politicized Fed wouldn’t be able to credibly fight inflation.Then, in another about-face, Trump said on Wednesday he had “no intention” of firing Powell, which also helped lift markets.An economy needs predictability. Investors won’t invest, consumers won’t buy, and producers won’t produce if everything continues to change. But Trump doesn’t think ahead. He responds only to immediate threats and problems.Who’s profiting from all this tumult? Anyone with inside knowledge of what Trump is about to do: most likely, Trump and his family.5. The Kilmar Ábrego García calamity. After the Trump regime admitted an “administrative error” in sending Ábrego García to a brutal Salvadoran torture prison, in violation of a federal court order, Trump then virtually ignored a 9-0 supreme court order to facilitate his return.To the contrary, with cameras rolling in the Oval Office, Trump embraced Nayib Bukele – who governs El Salvador in a permanent state of emergency and has himself imprisoned 83,000 people in brutal dungeons, mostly without due process. Trump then speculated about using Bukele’s prisons for “homegrown” (ie, American-born) criminals or dissidents.Meanwhile, after the Trump regime deported another group of immigrants to the Salvadoran prison under a rarely invoked 18th-century wartime law, the supreme court blocked it from deporting any more people under the measure.6. Ice’s blunderbuss. Further illustrating the chaos of the Trump regime, immigration officials have been detaining US citizens. One American was held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) in Arizona for 10 days until his relatives produced papers proving his citizenship, because, according to his girlfriend’s aunt, Ice didn’t believe he was American.Last week, the Trump regime abruptly took action to restore the legal status of thousands of international students who had been told in recent weeks that their right to study in the United States had been rescinded, but officials reserved the right to terminate their legal status at any time. What?Freedom depends on the rule of law. The rule of law depends on predictability. Just like Trump’s wildly inconsistent economic policies, his policies on immigration are threatening everyone.7. Musk’s ‘Doge’ disaster. Musk’s claims of government savings have been shown to be ludicrously exaggerated.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRemember the claim that taxpayers funded $50m in condoms in Gaza? This was supposed to be the first big “gotcha” from the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), but as we know now, it was a lie. The US government buys condoms for about 5 cents apiece, which means $50m would buy 1bn condoms or roughly 467 for every resident of Gaza. Besides, according to a federal 2024 report, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) didn’t provide or fund any condoms in the entire Middle East in the 2021, 2022 or 2023 fiscal years.Then there have been the frantic callbacks of fired federal workers, such as up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration who work on sensitive jobs such as reassembling warheads. Four days after Doge fired them, the agency’s acting director rescinded the firings and asked them back. Similar callbacks have occurred throughout the government.Trump and Musk are threatening the safety and security of Americans – for almost no real savings.8. Measles mayhem. As measles breaks out across the country, sickening hundreds and killing at least two children so far, Trump’s secretary for health and human services, Robert F Kennedy Jr, continues to claim that the measles vaccine “causes deaths every year … and all the illnesses that measles itself causes, encephalitis and blindness, et cetera”.In fact, the measles vaccine is safe, and its risks are lower than the risks of complications from measles. Most people who get the measles vaccine have no serious problems from it, the CDC says. There have been no documented deaths from the vaccine in healthy, non-immunocompromised people, according to the Infectious Diseases Society of America.Kennedy also says: “We’re always going to have measles, no matter what happens, as the [measles] vaccine wanes very quickly.” In fact, the measles vaccine is highly protective and lasts a lifetime for most people. Two doses of the vaccine are 97% effective against the virus, according to the CDC and medical experts worldwide. The US saw 3m to 4m cases a year before the vaccine. Today it’s typically fewer than 200.9. Student debt snafu. After a five-year pause on penalizing borrowers for not making student loan payments, the Trump regime is about to require households to resume payments. This could cause credit scores to plunge and slow the economy.Many of the households required to resume paying on their student loans are also struggling with credit card debt at near-record interest rates and high-rate mortgages they thought they would be able to refinance at a lower rate but haven’t. Instead of increasing education department staffing to handle a work surge and clarifying the often shifting rules of its many repayment programs, the Trump regime has done the opposite and cut staff.10. Who’s in charge? In the span of a single week, the IRS had three different leaders. Three days after Gary Shapley was named acting commissioner, it was announced that the deputy treasury secretary, Michael Faulkender, would replace Shapley. That was the same day, not incidentally, that the IRS cut access to the agency for Doge’s top representative.What happened? The treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, told Trump that Musk had evaded him to install Shapley.Meanwhile, the Trump regime is cutting the IRS in half – starting with 6,700 layoffs and gutting the division that audits people with excessive wealth. These are the people meant to keep billionaires accountable. Without them, the federal government will not take in billions of dollars owed.At the same time, the trade adviser Peter Navarro has entered into a public spat with Musk, accusing him of not being a “car manufacturer” but a “car assembler” because Tesla relies on parts from around the world. This prompted Musk to call Navarro a “moron” and “dumber than a sack of bricks” in a post on X, later posting that he wanted to “apologize to bricks”.The state department has been torn apart by the firing of Peter Marocco, the official who was dismantling USAID, by Marco Rubio, the secretary of state. Career officials charged that Marocco, a Maga loyalist, was destroying the agency; Trump’s Maga followers view Marocco’s firing as a sign that Rubio is part of the establishment they want to destroy.Worse yet, Trump has fired more than a half-dozen national security officials after meeting with the far-right agitator Lara Loomer, who was granted access to the Oval Office and gave Trump a list of officials she deemed disloyal.Bottom line: no one is in charge. Trump is holding court but has the attention span of a fruit fly. This is causing chaos across the federal government, as rival sycophants compete for his limited attention.Incompetence is everywhere. The regime can’t keep military secrets. It can’t maintain financial stability. It can’t protect children from measles. It cannot protect America.While we need to continue to resist Trump’s authoritarianism, we also need to highlight his utter inability to govern America.

      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More