Deportation and Defiance
Trump's Merciless Deportations and Brazen Defiance of the Courts
Donald Trump is currently following through with his campaign promise to deport those here in the United States illegally. According to data, in February, his first full month in office, President Trump deported around 11,000 migrants. It’s important to note that President Biden deported his fair share of migrants as well. In February of 2024, he deported 12,000 migrants, one thousand more than Trump did last month. It’s not so much the deportations themselves that are so troubling. It’s the way in which Trump’s carrying out the deportations, and who he’s deporting, that’s most alarming.
10-Year-Old Girl with Brain Cancer Deported
In possibly the most heartless deportation, a girl traveling to Houston for brain cancer treatment was deported along with the family members traveling with her. The girl's parents are Mexican nationals who have been living in the United States for about 10 years. Despite her parents' status, the girl was born in the United States and is thus, a U.S. citizen. According to NBC News, the parents and four of their U.S. born children were deported on February 4.
“The family was driving from their home in the Rio Grande Valley to Houston for a checkup for their 10-year-old daughter, who last year was diagnosed with brain cancer and had a tumor removed. The family had made similar trips in the past, using letters from doctors to get past interior ICE checkpoints located near the U.S./Mexico border.”
In February, however, they were told the letters were no longer sufficient. The parents, who have no criminal history other than crossing the border illegally were given two choices: the parents could return to Mexico and the children would remain in the U.S. government’s custody, or all could return to Mexico. Rather than split up, the entire family chose to return to Mexico, effectively separating their daughter from the team of doctors treating her cancer.
Planned Deportation of Pro-Palestinian Protester
After deporting a child with cancer, Trump’s Administration shifted its attention to a legal permanent resident of the U.S. whose only apparent crime appears to be the expression of his First Amendment rights. The Trump Administration is preparing to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a pro-Palestinian protester who played a prominent role in organizing pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University during the spring of 2024.
Trump has repeatedly referred to protests in support of Palestine as pro-Hamas and anti-American, and has said that protesters should be deported. In response to Khalil’s arrest, he said “it’s the first of many to come.” To justify the arrest the Department of Homeland Security pointed to a provision in immigration law that allows the deportation of someone who “would have serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”
Following his arrest, Khalil’s lawyers issued the following statement:
“What happened to Mahmoud Khalil is nothing short of extraordinary and shocking and outrageous,” Kassem said at a news conference after the hearing. “Every day that Mahmoud spends in detention in Louisiana is a day too long.”
In an article by Jeffery Salkin at religionnews.com, he says:
"Whatever else you think of Mahmoud’s ideas, words and actions, he deserved due process. To spirit someone away in the middle of the night, torn from his pregnant wife? Something is wrong here. This is what happened in Argentina during the “Dirty War” of the late 1970s to early 1980s. America was not supposed to be Argentina, though some would greet that prospect gleefully.”
Khalil’s arrest and potential deportation is disturbing not only because the right to peaceful protest is guaranteed in our Constitution, but because Trump didn’t delineate between American and non-American citizens. He only referred to the protests as un-American, leaving the door open for him to potentially deport American citizens protesting in support of Palestine. And if he did that, where would he send them? A Salvadorian prison? I’ll get to that.
“Hurtful” and “Despicable”
According to Chicago attorneys with the National Immigrant Justice Center and the ACLU of Illinois, the Trump Administration has violated immigration laws and the Constitution at least 22 times since ICE began its immigration crackdown following Trump’s inauguration in January. On January 31, a Chicago man was arrested in Berwyn, IL after exiting a pizza parlor. Julio Noriega was unexpectedly and quickly overtaken by ICE agents, arrested and handcuffed. He then spent most of the night in a processing center. According to the Sun Times, Noriega was never questioned about his citizenship and was finally released after agents looked at his ID. In response to his arrest and detainment, Noriega said, “I was born in Chicago, Illinois, and am a United States citizen.”
On January 26, in nearby Lyons, IL, Abel Orozco-Ortega was arrested outside his home when ICE agents, looking for his 20-year-old son, asked to see his ID. According to his son Eduardo, “There were about six to eight agents that just ran up to us, they had guns and everything. They wanted to intimidate us. They were shouting out in an aggressive manner. I see my dad’s truck parked down the block, and in front of it was a vehicle with tinted windows. I heard the screams of, ‘I can’t breathe. I got asthma. Call a lawyer.’”
After producing a “Temporary Visitors” driver’s license, agents put Orozco-Ortega back into his vehicle and “purportedly created an administrative warrant while Orozco-Ortega was handcuffed.” It’s important to note that the arrest was made prior to the issuance of a warrant. Police can’t arrest someone without a warrant unless a crime is being committed in their presence, or they have probable cause to believe a crime has been committed. In Orozco-Cortez's case, neither criterion had been met. The arrest was caught on camera by his son, who confirmed that a warrant had not been issued.
There have been more than 100 arrests in the Chicago area since January. According to Diana Rashid, an attorney with the National Immigrant Justice Center’s detention project. Several of those detained have been deported to Mexico without any legal counsel. Illinois Senator, Dick Durbin, as well as immigrant advocates, have called the manner in which arrests and deportations have been made, “hurtful” and “despicable.”
Trump Administration Defies Court Order
Never in our country’s history has a sitting president openly defied a federal court order. That all changed this past Saturday when the Trump Administration essentially told U.S. District Judge, James Boasberg, to pound sand after he ruled that the administration couldn’t use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to justify imminent deportation flights to El Salvador. The act has only been used three times in our country’s history and only during times of war: War of 1812, World War 1, and World War 2.
The migrants being deported were alleged by the Trump administration to be members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang. However, reports suggest that many of the migrants were detained and deported because of...tattoos. According to the American Immigration Council, “The men sent to do hard labor in a Salvadoran prison with no due process include: A tattoo artist seeking asylum who entered legally, a teen who got a tattoo in Dallas because he thought it looked cool, and a 26-year-old whose tattoos his wife says are unrelated to a gang.”
While the three planes carrying the deportees were in the air, the judge ordered that if any planes were still in the air, they were to turn around and return at once. “You shall inform your clients of this immediately, and that any plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States,” Judge Boasberg ordered. This is when Trump and his administration brazenly defied the judge’s order and saw through with the deportation of over 200 migrants to El Salvador. According to The New York Times, none of the planes had touched down in El Salvador when the judge issued his order. In fact, one of the planes hadn’t even left the U.S. In a Monday court hearing, Justice Department lawyer, Abhishek Kambli justified the administration’s decision to defy the order, claiming that because the judge’s order was verbal and not in writing, it was incomplete.
As expected, the response to Trump’s open defiance ranged from praise from the MAGA base to outrage from those with more reasonable intellects. Conservative and former federal judge, J Michael Luttig, warned of a looming Constitutional crisis and said that Trump has “declared war on the rule of law in America.” He went on to say, “In the past few weeks the president himself has led a full-frontal assault on the constitution, the rule of law, the federal judiciary, the American justice system, and the nation’s legal profession. When the president of the United States wages a war on the rule of law and the federal judiciary, America is in a constitutional crisis. The constitutional role of the president is to faithfully execute the laws. Needless to say, the president is doing anything but that at the moment.”
Deported Migrants Sent to Notorious Salvadorian Mega-Prison
The 200+ migrants deported on Saturday, in defiance of a federal court order, were sent to one of El Salvador’s most notorious mega-prisons, the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT. CECOT is an enormous prison consisting of eight pavilions that can house 40,000 inmates. Inmates are not allowed to receive visitors or go outdoors, and there is no effort towards rehabilitation. Furthermore, El Salvador’s justice minister has made it clear that inmates will never return to their communities.
While El Salvador and CECOT go to extreme measures to keep what goes on inside the prison from the public, international rights groups and investigative journalists have been able to piece together a horrifying picture of life within the prison. “Incarcerated Salvadorans are packed into grossly overcrowded cells, beaten regularly by prison personnel, and denied medicines even when they are available. Inmates are frequently subjected to punishments including food deprivation and electric shocks. Indeed, a U.S. State Department’s 2023 country report on El Salvador noted the ‘harsh and life-threatening prison conditions.’”
Trump Calls for the Impeachment of District Judge Boasberg (Because, of course.)
Shortly after the judge’s order, Trump took to his social media platform, Truth Social, and called for the impeachment of Judge Boasberg. "This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges' I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!" In his rant, Trump also referred to the judge as a "Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama."
This sparked a rare and strongly worded rebuke from Supreme Court Justice, John Roberts. "For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision." The American Bar Association quickly backed up Roberts’ statement saying, “The American Bar association stands firmly with Chief Justice John Roberts’ statement...For more than 200 years, our legal system has afforded individuals the right to disagree with judicial decisions and to appeal them if they are the aggrieved party.”
In just its first two months, the Trump administration has deported a 10-year-old girl with brain cancer, separating her from critical and life-saving medical care. They have arrested and detained a U.S. citizen based soley on the color of his skin and are currently looking to deport a legal permanent resident for exercising his right to protest. And if all that wasn’t enough, Trump and his administration have “declared war on the rule of law in America” by deporting over 200 migrants, in defiance of a federal court order.
During the 2024 campaign cycle, I, along with countless others, warned of the dangers a second Trump presidency would pose. We were called hyperbolic. We were told Project 2025 was a hoax, or “Trump said he isn’t gonna do Project 2025.” His more passionate supporters went as far as to declare that, “TRUMP IS THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN SAVE OUR COUNTY!!”
Well, we told you so. Trump has yet to “save the country” and he’s currently doing everything he said he would.
From the gutting of the federal government and the tanking of the economy to the disregard for due process and merciless mass deportations…it was all in writing. Project 2025 is, and always was going to be, the playbook for Trump’s second administration.