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      Trump is abandoning democracy and freedom. That creates an opening for Europe – and Britain | Jonathan Freedland

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      Thanks to Donald Trump, a vacancy is opening up in the international jobs market. For decades, if not centuries, and always imperfectly, the US offered itself to the world as the guarantor of democracy and the land of the free. Now that it’s pivoting away from that job description, there’s an opportunity for someone else to step in.The evidence that the US is moving, even galloping, away from basic notions of democracy and freedom is piling up. Just because the changes have happened so fast doesn’t make them any less fundamental. We now have a US administration that blithely ignores court rulings, whose officials say out loud “I don’t care what the judges think”. In a matter of weeks, it has become an open question whether the US remains a society governed by the rule of law.In the name of defeating “woke” and diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, even historic efforts to advance civil rights are disdained or banished into the memory hole: this week it emerged that an army webpage celebrating Harry Truman’s 1948 order to integrate the military had disappeared, along with several others honouring distinguished Black soldiers. When asked about it, the press secretary at the Pentagon said: “DEI is dead at the defense department.” As for the Department of Education, this week Trump moved to abolish it altogether.But if the US is being upended by the Trump hurricane, so is everywhere else in its path, including those places that once looked to the US with admiration. We can all see the coercion of Ukraine into accepting a supposed peace that will require it to surrender its territory to Vladimir Putin and its minerals to Trump. Less visible is the way in which the scything of the US federal government by Trump and Elon Musk is aiding Putin’s assault on Ukraine’s most vulnerable people – its children.Among the US projects cut is a state department initiative to collect evidence of Russian war crimes, including the abduction of more than 20,000 Ukrainian children, many of them sent to Russia for forced adoption. Now there are fears that that information, which might have helped find the children and eventually reunite them with their parents, has been lost, destroyed by the Musk chainsaw. Captain America thought he was a superhero; turns out he’s the villain’s accomplice.Now it is those contemptuous of democracy who look to the US for inspiration. This week, Benjamin Netanyahu broke a ceasefire he had agreed with Hamas, resuming devastating airstrikes on Gaza, killing hundreds of Palestinians, in part because he doubtless presumed Trump would give him no grief. But he also sacked the independent-minded head of Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, the Shin Bet, the latest move in his ongoing attempt to remove every legal or constitutional constraint on his power. If that reminds you of someone, there’s good reason. “In America and in Israel, when a strong rightwing leader wins an election, the leftist Deep State weaponizes the justice system to thwart the people’s will,” Netanyahu tweeted on Wednesday. “They won’t win in either place! We stand strong together.” Trump’s authoritarian power grab is providing cover for others to do the same.This new role for the US, as a beacon of anti-democracy, is having some unintended consequences. Canada was on course to elect a Conservative government; now, by way of a backlash, the Liberals under Mark Carney look set to ride an anti-Trump wave to victory. However it operates, Trumpism is becoming a key determinant of politics the world over.Perhaps especially in Britain. For most of the last century, the US has been Britain’s foremost ally. Put more baldly, London has all but relied on Washington for its own defence. Britain’s military and intelligence systems are intricately integrated with those of the US; its nuclear capability is not operationally independent. These last two months, it has become obvious that that is no longer sustainable: Britain cannot rely on a US that behaves more like an enemy than a friend.That, in turn, creates a new political fact – we are in an age of rearmament – that will be the organising principle of Rachel Reeves’s spring statement next week. It will require either deep cuts or new taxes. Trump has scrambled Britain’s finances.By itself, that represents a monumental change. But it won’t end there. Almost everything we do will need to be rethought. Much of that is cause for alarm – how can Nato function when its mightiest member has become an adversary? – but it also creates opportunities for Britain, if we are only willing to seize them.Take, as just one example, Trump’s war on science. The US has long been the world leader in almost every field of research. But Trump and Musk are slashing or closing one research hub after another, whether at the National Institutes of Health or the Environmental Protection Agency, which could lay off thousands of talented scientists. The administration is threatening academic freedom, forcing US universities to bendto Trumpism or lose funding. This week, a French scientist travelling to the US for a conference was denied entry because, according to the French government, his “phone contained exchanges with colleagues and friends in which he expressed a personal opinion on the Trump administration’s research policy”. You read that right: the man was subjected to a random check at the airport, US officials went through his laptop and phone, found private messages speaking ill of the president and sent him back home.This is an opening for Britain, which should be promoting itself as a haven for free, unhindered scientific inquiry. The EU has already spotted the chance, and is devising a plan to lure US scholars. But the UK has the advantage of the English language; it should be first in line. Some see the opportunity, but sadly the UK government is not among them: petitioned to reduce upfront visa costs for overseas scientists, which is an average of 17 times higher than for comparable countries, ministers this week said no.But science is only one area where Britain could be taking up the slack. Trump is silencing the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe: the BBC should be given the relatively modest funds required to step in and do the job instead, thereby boosting British soft power at a stroke.The first step is understanding that the world has changed and that the old shibboleths no longer apply. It’s absurd that Britain, home to Europe’s biggest arms industry, is, thanks to Brexit, shut out of the new €150bn (£125bn) EU defence procurement fund, the latest example of how standing apart from its neighbours amounts to reckless folly in the Trump era.What the moment calls for is great boldness. It means Keir Starmer having the courage to tell the country that everything has changed and that we will have to change, too. Yes, that will involve painful sacrifices to pay for rearmament, and the breaking of political taboos, including listening to the majority of Britons who tell pollsters it’s time we rejoined the EU.It adds up to a vision of a Europe that includes Britain, stepping into the space the US is vacating, guaranteeing and promoting free speech and democratic accountability at the very moment the US is abandoning those ideals. Trump has blasted the door open. All we have to do is walk through it.

      On 30 April, join Jonathan Freedland, Kim Darroch, Devika Bhat and Leslie Vinjamuri as they discuss Trump’s presidency on his 100th day in office, live at Conway Hall London, and live streamed globally. You can book tickets here

      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist More

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      Judge demands answers from White House on deportation flights to El Salvador

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      A federal judge instructed the Trump administration on Thursday to explain why its failure to turn around flights carrying deportees to El Salvador did not violate his court order in a growing showdown between the judicial and executive branches.James Boasberg, the US district judge, demanded answers after flights carrying Venezuelan immigrants alleged by the Trump administration to be gang members landed in El Salvador after the judge temporarily blocked deportations conducted under an 18th-century wartime law. Boasberg had directed the administration to return planes that were already in the air to the US when he ordered the halt.Boasberg had given the administration until noon Thursday to either provide more details about the flights or make a claim that they must be withheld because they would harm “state secrets”. The administration resisted the judge’s request, calling it an “unnecessary judicial fishing” expedition.In a written order, Boasberg called Trump officials’ latest response “woefully insufficient”. The judge said the administration “again evaded its obligations” by merely repeating “the same general information about the flights”. He ordered the administration to “show cause” as to why it didn’t follow his court order to turn around the planes, increasing the prospect that he may consider holding administration officials in contempt of court.The justice department has said the judge’s verbal directions did not count, that only his written order needed to be followed and that it couldn’t apply to flights that had already left the US. A DoJ spokesperson said Thursday that it “continues to believe that the court’s superfluous questioning of sensitive national security information is inappropriate judicial overreach”.A US Immigration and Customs Enforcement official told the judge Thursday the administration needed more time to decide whether it would invoke the state secrets privilege in an effort to block the information’s release.Boasberg then ordered Trump officials to submit a sworn declaration by Friday by a person “with direct involvement in the Cabinet-level discussions” about the state secrets privilege and to tell the court by next Tuesday whether the administration will invoke it.In a deepening conflict between the judicial and executive branches, the US president and many of his allies have called for impeaching Boasberg, who was nominated to the federal bench by Barack Obama. In a rare statement earlier this week, John Roberts, the supreme court chief justice, rejected such calls, saying “impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump on Thursday urged the supreme court to limit federal judges’ ability to issue orders blocking the actions of his administration nationwide, writing on social media: “STOP NATIONWIDE INJUNCTIONS NOW, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.” More

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      ‘Deported because of his tattoos’: has the US targeted Venezuelans for their body art?

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      Like many Venezuelans of his generation, Franco José Caraballo Tiapa is a man of many tattoos.There is one of a rose, one of a lion, and another – on the left side of the 26-year-old’s neck – of a razor blade that represents his work as a barber.Two other tattoos pay tribute to Caraballo’s eldest daughter, Shalome: a pocket watch featuring the time of her birth and some black lettering on his chest that spells out the four-year-old’s name.“He’s just a normal kid … he likes tattoos – that’s it,” said Martin Rosenow, a Florida-based attorney who represents the Venezuelan asylum seeker – one of scores shipped to El Salvador by the Trump administration last weekend as part of his hard-line immigration crackdown.View image in fullscreenCaraballo’s fondness for body art may have been his undoing. For when the father of two was detained by US immigration officials in Dallas last month, they appear to have taken those tattoos as proof that he was a member of Venezuela’s most notorious gang, Tren de Aragua.An official Department of Homeland Security document issued in early February and reviewed by the Guardian states: “[The] subject [Caraballo] has been identified as a Member/Active of Tren de Aragua” although it does not explain how agents reached that conclusion. The same document notes that Caraballo – who it calls a “Deportable/Excludable Alien” – has several tattoos and no known criminal history “at this time”.Rosenow rejected the idea that the images inked on to his client’s skin indicated gang membership. “It’s specious – there’s no basis [for this conclusion],” he said. “Experts in Venezuela who study the gang have all stated that there are no tattoos that associate gang members. It’s not like the Central American MS-13 gang where tattoos are relevant in their organization.”“Tren de Agua has no [specific] tattoos,” Rosenow continued. “If you see pictures [of actual Tren de Aragua members arrested in the US], they’re shirtless and many of them don’t even have tattoos.“I’m nauseated by it all. I’m distressed for these individuals. I’m sad for what this means. As an American, for me it’s disgraceful that we would violate human rights so flagrantly on an international level.”Caraballo, who hails from the Venezuelan state of Bolívar and entered the US over its southern border in October 2023, is one of several Venezuelans whom immigration officials appear to have identified as gang members based on little more than their nationality and their tattoos.Daniel Alberto Lozano CamargoDaniel Alberto Lozano Camargo, a 20-year-old asylum seeker from Maracaibo in western Venezuela, lived in Houston, Texas where he washed cars for a living, advertising his services on Facebook.His partner, a US citizen called Leslie Aranda, said he was arrested last November after being contacted by a supposed client. She has not heard from him since last Friday, when Donald Trump invoked sweeping wartime powers called the Alien Enemies Act to deport people considered a threat, such as members of Tren de Aragua, which was last month designated a foreign terrorist organization.Like other Venezuelans now detained and at risk of deportation, Lozano has several tattoos, said Aranda, 25. He has the name of his partner’s daughter, Danessy, on one arm. A rose. The name of his niece, Eurimar, with a crown over the letter E. Praying hands on his neck. His father’s name, Adalberto, and his initials. Lozano also has the date of his anniversary with Aranda: 19 January 2023. Another tattoo reads “King of Myself.”“I know his father’s name is significant to him because he died when Daniel was young. And I also know he didn’t really like the rose tattoo because a friend who was practising did it. Daniel loves art and tattoos – that’s why he has them,” Aranda said.Lozano’s mother, Daniela, who is also in the US, said: “They violated his human rights – it’s an injustice. He doesn’t belong to any gang.”Neri José Alvarado BorgesThe sister of Neri José Alvarado Borges, another Venezuelan deported to El Salvador, said the 24-year-old also had tattoos that relatives suspect may have led to him being ​wrongly identified as a criminal.​One says “Family”, another says “Brothers” and a third, on his left thigh, features the name of his younger brother, Neryelson, who is autistic, and the rainbow-colored​ infinity symbol of the autism acceptance movement.“None of these tattoos has anything at all to do with the Tren de Aragua,” said his sister, Lisbengerth Montilla, 20. “But for them [immigration authorities] anyone with a tattoo is connected to Tren de Aragua.”Montilla said her brother was no gangster. In fact, he was a psychology​ student who had been forced to abandon his studies and migrate to the US nine months ago because of Venezuela’s economic collapse.After trekking through the perilous Darién Gap jungle and entering the US, Alvarado, who has no criminal history, built a life in Dallas where he worked in a bakery.“Many of us have come here because of the situation back in our country,” said Montilla, who also lives in the US. “There were times when we didn’t even have food to eat or have the money to buy anything. Many people fled because of the dictatorship in Venezuela, seeking a better future.​“Not all of those people [deported to El Salvador] are criminals – and not all Venezuelans are bad people. We are from a decent, hard-working and upstanding family. We’ve never had problems with anybody.”Luis Carlos José Marcano SilvaView image in fullscreenLuis Carlos José Marcano Silva, a 26-year-old barber from the Venezuelan island of Margarita, was detained at an immigration hearing in Miami last month. His tattoos also seemingly played a role in his detention and deportation to El Salvador.One, on Marcano’s belly, shows the face of Jesus of Nazareth. Another, on his arm, shows an infinity symbol while a third features the name of his daughter, Adelys. His chest is emblazoned with the image of a crown.“[At the hearing] all they kept telling him was that he belonged to the Tren de Aragua gang. When his wife contacted the lawyer, they said it was probably because of his tattoos,” said Marcano’s mother, Adelys del Valle Silva Ortega, denying that her son has any links to the crime group or even a criminal record.“I feel frustrated, desperate. I imagine they are not treating him well. I’ve already seen videos of that prison,” Silva said of the notorious Salvadoran “anti-terrorism” jail where her son is now thought to be incarcerated. “I think of him every moment, praying to the Virgin of the Valley [a Venezuelan patron saint] to protect him.”Jerce Reyes BarriosThe lawyer for a fifth Venezuelan man deported to El Salvador, a former professional footballer called Jerce Reyes Barrios, 36, has also claimed his tattoos played a role in sealing his fate.Reyes’s tattoos include one of a crown sitting atop a soccer ball with a rosary and the word “Dios” (God). In a sworn declaration, his California-based attorney, Linette Tobin, said the Department of Homeland Security had alleged this tattoo was proof of gang membership.“In reality, he chose this tattoo because it is similar to the logo for his favourite soccer team, Real Madrid,” Tobin said in her statement on Wednesday.Tobin rejected the idea that her client was a gang member and said he had fled Venezuela in early 2024 after being detained at an anti-government demonstration by security forces. Reyes was subsequently “taken to a clandestine building where he was tortured” with electric shocks and suffocation.Tobin said US immigration officials had reviewed her client’s social media posts and found one in which he made “a hand gesture that they allege is proof of gang membership”.“In fact, the gesture is a common one that means I Love You in sign language and is commonly used as a rock’n’roll symbol,” Tobin said.Francisco Javier García CasiqueSebastián García Casique, the brother of a sixth Venezuelan deported to El Salvador, said his sibling, Francisco Javier García Casique, also had tattoos, including of a rose, a compass and a phrase reading: “God chooses his toughest battles for his best warriors.”A fourth tattoo says: “Vivir el momento” (Live in the Moment). A fifth says in English: “Family”.In September 2021 García posted an Instagram video of a tattoo of a timepiece being inked on to his right arm by an artist in Peru, where he then lived. “My tattoo in tribute to my two grandmas who I love and miss a lot,” García wrote.Anyelo Sarabia GonzálezIn a sworn declaration, the sister of Anyelo Sarabia González, Solanyer Michell Sarabia González, said her 19-year-old brother had been detained by immigration agents at the start of this year in Dallas and that those agents had asked “about a tattoo that is visible on his hand” showing a rose with money as its petals.“He had that tattoo done … because he thought it looked cool,” González’s sister said, adding that she believed her brother had been sent to El Salvador “under the false pretence that he was a member of Tren de Aragua”.“The tattoo has no meaning or connection to any gang,” said González, 25. Two other tattoos on her brother’s body – of the phrases “strength and courage” and “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” – were also not gang-related, she said.Franco José Caraballo TiapaRosenow also saw no indication that his client – who he said had sought asylum on the basis of political persecution after taking part in opposition protests – was involved in the Venezuelan gang. He said Caraballo’s “cheesy” and romantic Instagram posts indicated he was not “a vicious gang member”.A Venezuelan criminal background check issued earlier this month indicates Caraballo has no criminal record there. Francisco Javier García Casique’s family has also published evidence that he had no criminal record back home.The White House has described the Venezuelans deported to El Salvador as “heinous monsters” and terrorists but has yet to release detailed information about their identities, let alone their alleged crimes.On Thursday afternoon CBS News published an internal government list of the 238 Venezuelan deportees, which included the names of all of the men in this story.On Monday, a senior official from immigration and customs enforcement, Robert Serna, admitted that “many” of those removed from the US under the Alien Enemy Act did not have criminal records in the US, but he nevertheless said they were Tren de Aragua members.The fact that those people did not have a criminal record “is because they have only been in the country for a short period of time”, Serna said. More

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      What to know about the El Salvador mega-prison where Trump sent deported Venezuelans

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      The US has sent hundreds of mostly Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador to be held without trial in a controversial mega-prison known for its harsh conditions. The facility has drawn praise from hardline law-and-order politicians at home and abroad and ire from human rights organizations.Here’s what we know about the mega-prison called Cecot, an acronym for Terrorism Confinement Centre in Spanish.What is the Cecot prison?In February 2023, El Salvador opened what it claims is Latin America’s biggest prison with capacity for 40,000 inmates. The 23-hectare prison is isolated in a rural region 70 km east of capital San Salvador.Bukele in November said the prison cost $115m to develop and equip.This prison is part of Bukele’s highly popular hardline security policy which has resulted in a sharp drop in homicides.Calling himself the world’s “coolest dictator,” Bukele, 43, declared a state of emergency in March 2022 that remains in effect and has entailed the arrest of more than 84,000 people.This includes alleged members of El Salvador’s Mara Salvatrucha gan, also known as MS-13, and its rival, Barrio 18.Government reports put the prison population at 14,500 inmates in August 2024, but a government spokesperson said in March 2025 that the statistic was outdated. A current figure was not disclosed security reasons, the spokesperson said.View image in fullscreenWhy are migrants held at the prison?During a visit from the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, in February, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele offered to incarcerate criminals deported from the US in the mega-prison.The Trump administration deported 261 people to El Salvador on 15 March. For 137 of them, the US government justified the move under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, saying the men were members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua but providing few details about their cases.A US official said in a court filing that “many” of those 137 has no US convictions but still posed a serious threat.Those people along with 101 additional Venezuelans were sent to Cecot for a one-year term that can be renewed, Bukele said. The US government paid El Salvador about $6m to receive the deportees, the White House said.The remaining 23 deportees were Salvadoran gang members, the White House said.What is it like in the prison?Images taken inside the facility often show prisoners packed tightly together with their heads shaved and wearing only shorts.The prison has no outdoor recreational space and no family visits are allowed.View image in fullscreenA report from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in September 2024 expressed concerns about overcrowding in the Cecot, citing a study that found inmates had an average 0.60 square metres (6.45 square feet) of space, below international standards.Civil society organisations and advocates have reported over 6,000alleged human rights violations in the country since the state of emergency was declared in 2022, including arbitrary detentions, torture and 366 deaths in state custody. The government denies the allegations.Why is the prison controversial?Cecot has attracted global attention, both positive and negative. Argentine security minister Patricia Bullrich praised the facility in a June 2024 social media post that said: “This is the way. Tough on criminals.”A US Republican party delegation from the House of Representatives, led by then-Representative Matt Gaetz, visited the prison a month later.YouTube personalities have had millions of views for their prison visit videos that highlighted harsh conditions in the prison.Many human rights organisations have criticised El Salvador’s prisons and especially Cecot. Groups have reported alleged human rights violations like torture, inmate deaths and mass trials.Bukele said in August that “gang members will spend their entire lives in prison.” Justice minister Gustavo Villatoro vowed in 2023 that officials “will make sure none of those who enter the Cecot ever leave on foot.”View image in fullscreen More

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      Trump administration briefing: deportation heartbreak for Venezuelan family; Fed cuts economic forecast

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      Donald Trump’s White House has described the Venezuelan migrants deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador as “heinous monsters” and terrorists who “rape, maim and murder for sport”.But relatives of Francisco Javier García Casique, a 24-year-old from the city of Maracay, say he was a hairdresser, not a crook.“He has never been in prison, he is innocent, and he has always supported us with his work as a barber,” his younger brother, Sebastián García Casique, said from their family home in Venezuela.Here are the main stories from Wednesday:Families of deported Venezuelans rebuke Trump claimsIn recent days, a succession of Venezuelan families have gone public to demand the release of their loved ones: young working men whose main “crimes” appear to have been their nationality and having tattoos that US immigration authorities deemed a sign of affiliation to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.Experts in South American organized crime reject the idea that tattoos are a meaningful indicator of gang membership in Venezuela.Read the full storyTrump and Zelenskyy have ‘frank’ but ‘very good’ phone callDonald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy had a “very good telephone call” on Wednesday, according to Trump, in the first conversation between the US president and his Ukrainian counterpart since their disastrous showdown in the White House three weeks ago.Zelenskyy described the call as “positive, very substantive and frank”, and said he had signed up to a partial ceasefire that Trump agreed with Vladimir Putin a day earlier. The White House said Trump had promised to help with a Ukrainian request to source more air defence batteries for Kyiv.Read the full storyUS economic growth forecast cutOfficials at the US Federal Reserve cut their US economic growth forecasts and raised their projections for price growth as they kept interest rates on hold amid sweeping tariffs. Central bank policymakers expect inflation to increase by an average rate of 2.7% this year and US gross domestic product (GDP) to rise by 1.7% this year, down from an estimate of 2.1%.Read the full storyWhite House calls deportation judge a ‘Democrat activist’The White House on Wednesday labeled the federal judge challenging the Trump administration on whether it defied his court order to halt flights deporting migrants “a Democrat activist”.The press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, singled out federal judge James Boasberg, over his handling of the case of Venezuelans deported to El Salvador.Read the full storyMahmoud Khalil case to move to New JerseyA New York federal judge has denied the Trump administration’s bid to dismiss the legal challenge brought by Mahmoud Khalil, the recent Columbia graduate and Palestinian activist who was detained by immigration enforcement agents earlier this month, and has ordered the case transferred to New Jersey.Read the full storyFrench scientist denied US entry over Trump viewsA French scientist was denied entry to the US this month after immigration officers at an airport searched his phone and found messages in which he had expressed criticism of the Trump administration, France’s research minister said.Read the full story Fired trade watchdog chief raises concern over Trump billionaire tiesA day after his abrupt firing by Donald Trump from the Federal Trade Commission, Alvaro Bedoya raised questions about the US president’s relations with some of the country’s richest men.The ousted Democratic commissioner told a congressional hearing it was an “interesting coincidence” that his final public statement in the post had blasted Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder.Read the full storyMusk echoes rightwing social security conspiracy theoriesElon Musk is claiming, without evidence, that Democrats have been using fraud in entitlements like social security and Medicare to attract immigrants and boost their voting ranks – language that also echoes racist rightwing conspiracy theories.Read the full storyJudge orders two trans prisoners back to women’s facilitiesA judge on Wednesday ordered the federal Bureau of Prisons (BoP) to transfer two incarcerated transgender women back to federal women’s prisons after they had been sent to men’s facilities after Donald Trump’s executive order that truncated transgender protections.Read the full storyConservative ex-judge says Trump waging war on US rule of lawDonald Trump has “declared war on the rule of law in America” and is pitching the country into a constitutional crisis, a prominent former conservative federal judge J Michael Luttig has said.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      The University of California has imposed a hiring freeze in response to Trump cuts.

      The Trump administration has paused $175m in federal funding to the University of Pennsylvania over its inclusion of transgender athletes in women’s college sports.

      The justice department removed 11 guidelines for US businesses on compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), including some that deal with Covid-19 and masking and accessibility.

      The US Institute of Peace has sued the Trump administration to block a Doge takeover.

      A top teachers union has sued the US Department of Education after it stopped processing applications for affordable repayment plans on student loans.

      US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents have detained an undocumented woman who is a prominent immigration advocate in Colorado. Jeanette Vizguerra, 53, was reportedly taken into custody by Ice on Monday outside a Target store in the Denver area where she worked, according to her legal representatives, friends and family members. More

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      ‘He is innocent’: family of deported Venezuelan rebukes Trump claims

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      Donald Trump’s White House has described the Venezuelan migrants deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador as “heinous monsters” and terrorists who “rape, maim and murder for sport”.But relatives of Francisco Javier García Casique, a 24-year-old from the city of Maracay, say he was a hairdresser, not a crook.“He has never been in prison, he is innocent, and he has always supported us with his work as a barber,” his younger brother, Sebastián García Casique, said from their family home in Venezuela.Less than a week ago, the García brothers were preparing to be reunited, with Francisco telling relatives he expected to be deported from a US immigration detention facility to his South American homeland after being arrested by immigration officials on 2 March.The flight was scheduled for last Friday. A family gathering was planned in Maracay. On Sunday those plans were shattered when El Salvador’s authoritarian president, Nayib Bukele, published a cinematographic propaganda video on social media showing scores of Venezuelan prisoners being frog-marched off planes and into custody in his country’s “terrorism confinement centre”.“It’s him,” a shell-shocked Sebastián told their mother after spotting his sibling among those shackled men.“I never in my life thought I would see my brother like that – handcuffed, his head shaved, in a prison for murderers, where they put rapists and kidnappers. It is very painful because he is innocent,” he said of his brother, who travelled to the US in late 2023 chasing a better future.Lindsay Toczylowski, a California-based immigration lawyer, was another person who found herself scouring Bukele’s sensationalist video for any sign of her client, another Venezuelan migrant she feared had also been unjustly dispatched to El Salvador after seeking shelter from political persecution in the US.“I felt sick … absolute shock,” Toczylowski said of the moment she saw those pictures in which detainees are shown being forced to their knees to have their heads shaved by masked security forces with batons and guns.“It really is such an escalation … and to see it paraded and celebrated by the White House and by Bukele was just an absolutely shocking escalation of human rights abuses against migrants,” said the lawyer who works for the Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef) group.García and Toczylowski’s client – an LGBTQ+ asylum seeker she declined to name out of fears for his safety – appear not to be the only Venezuelans deported to El Salvador despite having no criminal history in their home country or the US. More than 260 people were deported to the Central American country last weekend, 137 of them under 227-year-old wartime powers invoked by the US president called the Alien Enemies Act.In recent days, a succession of Venezuelan families have gone public to demand the release of their loved-ones: young working men whose main “crimes” appear to have been their nationality and having tattoos that US immigration authorities deemed a sign of affiliation to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. Experts in South American organized crime reject the idea that tattoos are a meaningful indicator of gang membership in Venezuela.García’s tattoos include one – inspired by a verse from the Book of Isaiah and inked onto his skin during a stint living in Peru – that reads: “God gives His toughest battles to his strongest warriors”. His brother, Sebastián, has the same tattoo.In a video plea posted on social media, Mercedes Yamarte, the mother of another migrant sent to El Salvador, Mervin Yamarte, described her 29-year-old son as “a good, hardworking boy” who had never been involved in crime. But Yamarte, who entered the US in 2023 and had lived in Dallas, also has tattoos – one with the name of his daughter, another paying tribute to his mum – which were seemingly interpreted as an indication of gang membership by US authorities.“Everyone close to him knows he has a big heart and NOTHING TO DO WITH TREN DE ARAGUA,” his brother, Francis Varela, wrote on social media. “My brother went in search of the American dream,” Varela added. “A dream that has now become a nightmare for us all.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionToczylowski’s client also has tattoos which she said immigration enforcement officials used to allege he was a Tren de Aragua member. “[But] they are not gang tattoos and he has no gang membership affiliation at all,” the lawyer insisted.García’s shock incarceration in El Salvador ended a six-year quest to build a better life for himself and his family, which the Venezuelan Zoomer documented on Instagram.After leaving his economically shattered country, in 2019, García migrated to Callao, a seaside city near Peru’s capital Lima, hoping to make enough money to help his family survive back home. “I miss you Venezuela,” he posted the following year, between photos and videos that highlighted his love for hairdressing, football and his numerous tattoos.In late 2023 García, like many Venezuelan migrants, decided to relocate to the US to escape the post-pandemic economic crisis in Peru. An Instagram photo shows him posing outside a train station in the Mexican state of Jalisco as he heads to the southern border. The post is accompanied by a song by the Mexican singer Peso Pluma called Nueva Vida” (New Life) which captured his aspirations.Two months later, another image shows him cutting hair at a Marvel-themed salon in Longview, Texas named after the Incredible Hulk. “May it be everything we dreamed of,” García wrote of his fresh start beside an emoji of the Stars and Stripes flag. Last weekend that dream came to an abrupt and unexpected end in Bukele’s mega prison near San Salvador.Immigration advocates have voiced outrage at the plight of men such as García and the lack of due process in their cases.“It’s enraging because they clearly don’t have any affiliation with Tren de Aragua at all,” said Adam Isacson, a migration expert from the Washington Office on Latin America thinktank.Isacson said that in the past such migrants tended to face detention in a “miserable [detention] centre here in the United States” or were “shipped back” home. “It did not mean that you were sent to some medieval jail of an authoritarian leader in another country. So we’re in brand new ground here,” Isacson warned, adding that while it was possible some of those deported to El Salvador were hardened criminals, many appeared to be innocent.Sebastián García Casique insisted that was the case of his older brother who their mother had raised to be an “honest and good” person. He urged Trump to review his brother’s case and free him.“I believe this is an injustice,” said García, 21. “Maybe one or two [of the prisoners] have criminal records, and if they did something, punish them for it … But the innocent should be sent to Venezuela … What is he doing in El Salvador if he committed no crime there? … Why don’t they say what crimes they are accused of?” More

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      in US Politics

      I am a Palestinian political prisoner in Louisiana. I am being targeted for my activism | Mahmoud Khalil

      by

      My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner. I am writing to you from a detention facility in Louisiana where I wake to cold mornings and spend long days bearing witness to the quiet injustices under way against a great many people precluded from the protections of the law.Who has the right to have rights? It is certainly not the humans crowded into the cells here. It isn’t the Senegalese man I met who has been deprived of his liberty for a year, his legal situation in limbo and his family an ocean away. It isn’t the 21-year-old detainee I met who stepped foot in this country at age nine, only to be deported without so much as a hearing.Justice escapes the contours of this nation’s immigration facilities.On March 8, I was taken by DHS [the Department of Homeland Security] agents who refused to provide a warrant, and accosted my wife and me as we returned from dinner. By now, the footage of that night has been made public. Before I knew what was happening, agents handcuffed and forced me into an unmarked car. At that moment, my only concern was for Noor’s safety. I had no idea if she would be taken too, since the agents had threatened to arrest her for not leaving my side. DHS would not tell me anything for hours – I did not know the cause of my arrest or if I was facing immediate deportation. At 26 Federal Plaza, I slept on the cold floor. In the early morning hours, agents transported me to another facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey. There, I slept on the ground and was refused a blanket despite my request.My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza, which resumed in full force Monday night. With January’s ceasefire now broken, parents in Gaza are once again cradling too-small shrouds, and families are forced to weigh starvation and displacement against bombs. It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their complete freedom.I was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria to a family which has been displaced from their land since the 1948 Nakba. I spent my youth in proximity to yet distant from my homeland. But being Palestinian is an experience that transcends borders. I see in my circumstances similarities to Israel’s use of administrative detention – imprisonment without trial or charge – to strip Palestinians of their rights. I think of our friend Omar Khatib, who was incarcerated without charge or trial by Israel as he returned home from travel. I think of Gaza hospital director and pediatrician Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, who was taken captive by the Israeli military on December 27 and remains in an Israeli torture camp today. For Palestinians, imprisonment without due process is commonplace.I have always believed that my duty is not only to liberate myself from the oppressor, but also to liberate my oppressors from their hatred and fear. My unjust detention is indicative of the anti-Palestinian racism that both the Biden and Trump administrations have demonstrated over the past 16 months as the US has continued to supply Israel with weapons to kill Palestinians and prevented international intervention. For decades, anti-Palestinian racism has driven efforts to expand US laws and practices that are used to violently repress Palestinians, Arab Americans, and other communities. That is precisely why I am being targeted.While I await legal decisions that hold the futures of my wife and child in the balance, those who enabled my targeting remain comfortably at Columbia University. Presidents [Minouche] Shafik, [Katrina] Armstrong, and Dean [Keren] Yarhi-Milo laid the groundwork for the US government to target me by arbitrarily disciplining pro-Palestinian students and allowing viral doxing campaigns – based on racism and disinformation – to go unchecked.Columbia targeted me for my activism, creating a new authoritarian disciplinary office to bypass due process and silence students criticizing Israel. Columbia surrendered to federal pressure by disclosing student records to Congress and yielding to the Trump administration’s latest threats. My arrest, the expulsion or suspension of at least 22 Columbia students – some stripped of their BA degrees just weeks before graduation – and the expulsion of SWC [Student Workers of Columbia] President Grant Miner on the eve of contract negotiations, are clear examples.If anything, my detention is a testament to the strength of the student movement in shifting public opinion toward Palestinian liberation. Students have long been at the forefront of change – leading the charge against the Vietnam war, standing on the frontlines of the civil rights movement, and driving the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Today, too, even if the public has yet to fully grasp it, it is students who steer us toward truth and justice.The Trump administration is targeting me as part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent. Visa holders, green-card carriers, and citizens alike will all be targeted for their political beliefs. In the weeks ahead, students, advocates, and elected officials must unite to defend the right to protest for Palestine. At stake are not just our voices, but the fundamental civil liberties of all.Knowing fully that this moment transcends my individual circumstances, I hope nonetheless to be free to witness the birth of my first-born child.

      This statement was originally published here More