As President Donald Trump’s war on immigrants escalates, hundreds of Venezuelans were deported to be incarcerated in El Salvador on March 15. The Trump administration alleged, without providing evidence, that they were gang members.
That day, Trump had issued a proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act “Regarding the Invasion of The United States by Tren De Aragua”—referring to a Venezuela-based gang involved in drug trafficking and other activities, and recently designated a “Foreign Terrorist Organization” by the administration.
Also on March 15, the ACLU and other parties sued to block the invocation of the 1798 Act, which had not occurred since World War II when it was notoriously used to justify the detention of thousands of Japanese Americans, among others. Federal Judge James Boasberg immediately issued an order to halt deportation flights to third countries under the Act. But the Trump administration ignored it, later claiming at a March 17 hearing that the order didn’t apply because the planes were already in international airspace when it was issued.
On March 18, Trump called for the judge’s impeachment, earning a rare rebuke from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. Though adminstration officials continue to make legal arguments, the situation sparks consitutional fears over what little recourse the courts will have if the president simply ignores them. “We are going to make this country safe again … We are not stopping. I don’t care what the judges think. I don’t care what the Left thinks,” said Trump’s “border czar,” Tom Homan.
Amy Torres noted that ICE has often operated outside of and in violation of the law, even in cases where the courts have sought to restrain it, since its creation.
While the recent events are unprecedented, Amy Torres, executive director of the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice, noted that ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement) has often operated outside of and in violation of the law, even in cases where the courts have sought to restrain it, since its creation in 2003.
She recounted the story of a man named Hector García Mendoza, who was detained during the COVID-19 pandemic and became a whistleblower, sharing information about health conditions in New Jersey detention facilities. At the time, the state had the nation’s highest rates of COVID cases and deaths in its prisons and detention centers.
“ICE quickly moved to deport him, and despite the judge’s order halting that deportation, he was deported anyway,” Torres told Filter. “And sadly we have never heard from him since, we haven’t reestablished contact … The sad truth is, once someone is deported, it’s incredibly hard to find the resources and connections to advocate for them to return home.”
Torres emphasized that behind the headlines about the Venezuelans, ICE under Trump has been targeting people with no alleged connection to any gang, and who in some cases have legal permanent residence or US citizenship—like a Brown University surgeon deported for alleged support of Hezbollah; a German legal resident detained by ICE and hospitalized after his interrogation; and a US citizen who was one of 22 people detained by ICE in Chicago. Then there’s the case of Mahmoud Khalil, a legal resident who has been charged with no crime but targeted for his involvement in the Columbia University Palestine protests, detained by ICE and flown from New York to Louisiana.
“This agency was created in a post-9/11 nationalist fervor. Every directive has some kind of political motivation, and every person arrested and detained is a political prisoner.”
Torres frames it as a severe escalation of a pre-existing pattern of ICE being used as a political tool.
“This agency was created in a post-9/11 nationalist fervor,” she said. “Every directive they have had has some kind of political motivation, and every person arrested and detained by them is a political prisoner. We know the Trump administration has made an enemy out of immigrant communities, not just in this last campaign but stretching all the way back to claiming President Obama was not a US citizen.”
With Trump’s impeachment threat against Judge Boasberg, “We’re seeing a return to old habits, with this escalated political threat that anyone who dares stand up to the administration could face some personal or professional attack,” Torres commented.
Congress is unlikely to be an obstacle for Trump and ICE any time soon. On March 14, Senate Democrats voted with Republicans to pass a spending bill and avoid a government shutdown. The bill, later signed by Trump, increases funding for ICE. It gives Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress another six months to plan their next legislative priorities, with no imminent high-stakes fight requiring Democratic votes.
“The question becomes, if you can’t fight them through the legal strategy and they disobey it outright, what becomes the political strategy?” Torres said. “What we’ve seen thus far from Senate Democrats is they’re not willing to pick up a political strategy. In spite of everything ICE has done since Inauguration day—since 2016, since 2001—Congress handed them a blank check to continue what they do, which is unlawfully detain and deport people.”
Over 250 people were deported on the recent El Salvador flights, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio boasted. El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, had inked an agreement with Trump in February to accept and incarcerate people deported from the US. The agreement even extends to legal US residents and citizens. After their arrival, the Venezuelans were immediately taken to the supermax “Terrorism Confinement Center” (Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT) in Tecoluca.
“It is dystopian, yet it reinforces this narrative that the punishment wouldn’t be so severe if these people weren’t actually dangerous.”
A video released by Bukele’s government showed them being thrust into the facility chained and handcuffed, their shaved heads shoved downwards. They were given white uniforms and rubber shoes before being forced into the holding cells.
CECOT opened in 2023. It’s a physical testament to President Bukele’s aggressive crackdown on gangs and drug trafficking in El Salvador. The country now has the world’s highest incarceration rate. As the nation’s largest jail, CECOT comprises eight blocks surrounded by electrified fences, reinforced concrete walls and 19 guard towers. It has been described as a “black hole of human rights,” where people are crammed into bunks in roasting temperatures, and permitted just half an hour of excercise in a corridor each day.
“It is dystopian, yet it reinforces this narrative that the punishment wouldn’t be so severe if these people weren’t actually dangerous,” Torres said of the public display of CECOT’s inhumane conditions, including tours for foreign journalists. “This performance of the punishment is part of the criminalization of the people we see swept up into this prison. Like many other [black-site] jails all around the world, there are rampant abuses inside we both know about and will never know about, and may never see justice for.”
“It used to be detention in the US and deportation back to your country of origin,” she noted; “we’re now seeing indefinite detention in a third country with no relief in sight. That’s a really worrying and dangerous turn.”
Photograph by Defense Visual Information Distribution Service via NARA/Public Domain
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