immigration
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Just days after Maryland Senator Dick Van Hollen was able to confirm that wrongfully deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia was still alive and well in a Salvadorian prison, we’re learning that his wife and children in New Jersey had to be moved to a safe house after the Trump administration publicly revealed their home address.
According to Raw Story, Jennifer Vasquez Sura and her children had to be swiftly moved out of their home and into an undisclosed location after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and White House Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, took to X and posted an old order of protection that Sura filed against Garcia in 2021. In an obvious attempt by this administration to further smear Garcia’s character to “justify” his deportation and their refusal to facilitate his return, the Trump administration just made Sura’s life that much more difficult by doxxing her address and putting a target on her home for MAGA to harass (as they’re known to do).
Per Raw Story:
“I don’t feel safe when the government posts my address, the house where my family lives, for everyone to see, especially when this case has gone viral and people have all sorts of opinions,” said Vasquez Sura. “So, this is definitely a bit terrifying. I’m scared for my kids.”
A DHS spokesperson did not respond Monday to a request for a comment about not redacting the family’s address, according to the newspaper’s lengthy story about Vasquez Sura—who shares a 5-year-old nonverbal, autistic son with Abrego Garcia and has a 9-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter from a previous relationship that was abusive.
On Wednesday, The New Republic published a short article highlighting the safe house detail and noting that “the government has not commented on the decision to leave the family’s address in the document it posted online,” sparking a fresh wave of outrage over the Trump administration endangering the family.
As with everything else that this administration does, it’s all about the cruelty.
Fortunately, Jennifer Vasquez Sura and her family have been moved to a safe house, but we just hope that the Trump administration doesn’t learn its whereabouts because knowing them they’ll just “leak” where that place happens to be too.
What do y’all think about this latest development in the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case? Let us know in the comments section below.
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After weeks of the Trump administration refusing court orders to facilitate the return of the wrongly deported, Kilmar Abrego Garcia to an infamous prison in El Salvador, many began to speculate that Garcia might’ve actually lost his life. Even Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele refused requests to let the man return home to his family.
Now, we finally have proof of life as Democratic Senator, Chris Van Hollen, of Maryland traveled to El Salvador to visit Garcia at the CECOT prison. After initially receiving the runaround the first day he arrived, prison officials finally let Van Hollen sit face-to-face with his Maryland constituent, Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
According to Newsweek, Van Hollen was finally able to meet with Garcia at the prison known for housing thousands of MS-13 and MS-18 gang members, and in the process, laid to rest any notion that Garcia had somehow lost his life in the process of being deported and wrongfully incarcerated at CECOT. Though Salvadorian officials are still denying any requests to let Garcia return to America (as the U.S. Supreme Court instructed the Trump administration to make happen), Van Hollen was at least able to confirm that Garcia is alive and well at the current moment. Unfortunately for Garcia, the Trump administration is fighting tooth and nail to keep Garcia in El Salvador regardless of the Supreme Court’s 9-0 ruling. And they don’t seem to be backing down anytime soon, if ever.
Per Newsweek:
In an order on Thursday, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the Trump administration’s plea for an emergency stay in Abrego Garcia’s case requesting that the White House should no longer be required to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return.
Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, an appointee of GOP icon former President Ronald Reagan, ripped the administration in the order, saying in part, “It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter. But in this case, it is not hard at all. The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done.”
“This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty thatAmericans far removed from courthouses still hold dear,” Wilkinson wrote.
With the Trump administration paying Bukele $6 million a year to house hundreds of deported immigrants and asking Bukele to build five more prisons for future deportations of migrants AND American citizens who Trump deems as “criminals,” this saga is only getting started. Politicians, Americans, and Garcia’s family are demanding that the defiant Trump administration follow court orders and bring Garcia back home. They won’t.
Knowing that the public perception behind this deportation of Garcia is a horrible look for Trump’s agenda, his spokespeople and administrative officials continue to lie and label Garcia a “terrorist” and member of MS-13 even though neither the U.S. nor El Salvador can provide any evidence of such allegations in a court of law. While most people see right through the lies, MAGA supporters on social media continue to push the false narrative to justify Garcia’s detention at CECOT to further muddy the waters and paint Garcia as a “bad hombre.”
American fascism in 2025.
What do y’all think about this situation? Let us know in the comments section below.
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On Monday evening (April 7), the Supreme Court sided with President Donald Trump, granting an emergency request by the administration and overturning a lower court ruling, which had stopped deportation flights conducted under the Alien Enemies Act. The ruling came after a 5-4 decision, which saw Justice Amy Comey Barrett side with Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Elena Kagan in dissent.
In the decision, the Court wrote that the lawyers representing migrants who were deported to El Salvador should’ve filed their lawsuit in Texas, rather than Washington, D.C. The Trump administration used the Alien Enemies Act, first enacted in 1798, to deport over 100 Venezuelans it claimed were members of Tren de Aragua, a notorious street gang in that country. They argued that the powers of the act, which allows the president to detain or deport citizens of enemy nations, was applicable in this case. Federal Judge James E. Boasberg directed the administration to stop the deportation flights, particularly as the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia came to light. Garcia, a Maryland man and legal resident since 2019, was among those deported on March 15.The Supreme Court’s opinion also called for all future potential cases for deportation go through due process in court: “AEA detainees must receive notice after the date of this order that they are subject to removal under the Act. The notice must be afforded within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs.”Trump crowed about the decision on his Truth Social media platform, writing: “The Supreme Court has upheld the Rule of Law in our Nation by allowing a President, whoever that may be, to be able to secure our Borders, and protect our families and our Country, itself. A GREAT DAY FOR JUSTICE IN AMERICA!” His glee was in contrast to the grave concern expressed by Justice Sotomayor, who wrote that “The Government’s conduct in this litigation poses an extraordinary threat to the rule of law. We, as a Nation and a court of law, should be better than this.” Justice Brown Jackson compared the case to the infamous Korematsu v. United States decision, which allowed for Japanese-Americans to be herded into internment camps during World War II. “But make no mistake: We are just as wrong now as we have been in the past, with similarly devastating consequences,” she wrote in the dissent.
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As promised, the Trump administration is making the deportations of immigrants their main priority, and though they stated they would only deport the criminals and lawbreaking non-citizens living in the United States, they’ve accidentally detained and deported law abiding migrants who’ve done nothing wrong other than being a shade too dark for MAGA’s comfort.
According to Raw Story, the Trump administration recently admitted that they “accidentally” deported Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia of Beltsville, Maryland, to El Salvador’s infamous super prison, Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, after he was granted protection status in the United States in 2019, because a judge found it “likely than not that he would be persecuted by gangs in El Salvador.” Still, Garcia was rounded up by Ice earlier last month and on March 15, he was placed on one of the deportation flights to El Salvador even though he was to remain in the United States. It wasn’t until his wife recognized him in a photo, which featured prisoners being shaven and shackled at the prison in El Salvador that his family realized what had happened.
After his initial arrest, ICE called his wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, and instructed her to pick up their her 5-year old son, A.A.V. within 10 minutes and even threatened that the child would be handed over to Child Protective Services if she didn’t show up. As time went by, his wife didn’t know what happened to Garcia until she saw him locked up in El Salvador and decided to get a lawyer for the situation.
Once the family lawyered up and took the Trump administration to court over the matter, ICE admitted in a court filing that the deportation of Garcia was an “administrative error” as Garcia was once considered a member of the infamous MS-13. While the Trump administration did own up to their mistake, they are saying there is no way for them to retrieve Garcia from Salvadorian authorities as it is now out of their hands.
Still, the Trump administration is defending their decision to deport Garcia as he was once a high-ranking member of what is considered the most dangerous gang in the world.
Per Raw Story:
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt Tuesday said that Abrego Garcia was a leader of the MS-13 gang, despite his deportation being “a clerical error.”
“The administration maintains the position that this individual who was deported to El Salvador and will not be returning to our country was a member of the brutal and vicious MS-13 gang,” she said.
She said the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has evidence of his gang activity that she has seen and she also alleged that Abrego Garcia was involved in human trafficking.
If anyone knows anything about MS-13 it’s that when a member walks away from the gang in pursuit of an honest life, that usually means his or her death; the gang doesn’t take too lightly to quitters. That would explain why Garcia was granted protection in the U.S. out of fear of retaliation if he was to return to El Salvador.
With a wife (who is a U.S. citizen) and a 5-year-old son with whom he had built a life with, Garcia seemed well on his way to redemption until Donald Trump once again unleashed ICE on the Black and Brown immigrant community. Now that he’s gotten swooped up in the deportations, it’s anyone’s guess if he’ll ever find his way back to Baltimore, Maryland, where his family anxiously awaits.
On the bright side, officials for the White House are confident that Garcia will be okay locked up with other gang members who might feel a way about him walking away from the life.
“While there may be allegations of abuses in other Salvadoran prisons—very few in relation to the large number of detainees—there is no clear showing that Abrego Garcia himself is likely to be tortured or killed in CECOT,” according to DOJ.
Pray for that man, b.
What do y’all think about Trump accidentally deporting a man who was living in the U.S. under protected status and not attempting to get him back? Let us know in the comments section below.
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A Columbia University student who filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration was granted a temporary restraining order against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials who were out to arrest and deport her. U.S. District Court Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald issued the order Tuesday (March 25) preventing the officials from taking Yunseo Chung into custody. “Nothing in the record has indicated in any way that she is a danger,” Buchwald said from the bench. Chung is the latest student activist who participated in pro-Palestinian protests targeted by the administration after the high-profile arrest of Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Kahlil.A Department of Homeland Security official alleged that Chung “engaged in concerning conduct,” citing Chung’s arrest after a sit-in protest (which they claim was “pro-Hamas”) at a library at Barnard College, a sister school to Columbia. The 21-year-old received a ticket for “obstruction of governmental administration,” according to her lawsuit filed with CUNY Law School’s CLEAR (Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility) clinic. But ICE officials would show up at her parents’ home on March 9, and the following day Chung’s lawyer was informed that her lawful legal permanent status (Chung came to the U.S. from South Korea at the age of 7) was being revoked. ICE agents also searched for Chung at two residences including her dormitory.
The government, through the office of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, is arguing that Chung’s presence in the country is preventing their foreign policy goal of fighting antisemitism. Judge Buchwald swatted down their reasoning, stating that they had to “provide sufficient advance notice” to Chung and her legal team. The judge also barred attempts to transfer Chung out of the Southern District of New York by ICE as they did with Kahlil by transferring him from a facility in Newark, New Jersey, to Louisiana. “No trips to Louisiana here,” she remarked.
“After the constant dread in the back of my mind over the past few weeks, this decision feels like a million pounds off of my chest. I feel like I could fly,” Chung said in a statement to the New York Times after the ruling, adding her gratitude to her lawyers, students, and professors at Columbia who “have given me strength at every turn.” One of her lawyers, CUNY Law Professor Ramzi Kassem, confirmed that Chung is still completing coursework to finish her junior year.
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We’re only two months into Donald Trump’s second presidency and already it seems like the honeymoon phase for MAGA voters is coming to a painful end, as many of Cheeto Jesus’ cult followers are beginning to regret letting their personal prejudices and grievances influence their choice at the ballot box.
According to Raw Story, many Trump supporters have taken to X (formerly Twitter) to express their regret over their vote for Donald Trump, as the leopard has begun to eat their faces. But Hispanic Trump supporters, in particular, are learning that his deportation policies also extend to them, as they too are now in the crosshairs of ICE.
Last Wednesday (March 5), Jensy Machado found out the hard way that the color of his skin was reason enough for ICE agents to harass him at gunpoint as they assumed that he was an illegal immigrant. Though the man is actually neutralized and living in the United States legally, ICE agents didn’t give him the opportunity to prove that his status in America was kosher before putting him into handcuffs.
Per Raw Story:
“They just got out of the car with the guns in their hands and say, ‘Turn off the car, give me the keys, open the window,’ you know,” Machado said. “Everything was really fast.”
Machado, who showed WRC reporters documentation showing his legal status, said the agents were seeking a man for a deportation order who had given his home address, and Machado said he didn’t know anyone by that man’s name and offered to show his REAL ID-compliant Virginia driver’s license.
“They didn’t ask me for any ID,” Machado said. “I was telling the officer, if I can give him ID, but he said just keep my hands up, not moving. After that, he told me to get out of the car and put the handcuffs on me, and then he went to me and [asked] how did I get into this country and if I was waiting for a court date or if I have any case, and I told him I was an American citizen, and he looked at his other partner like, you know, smiling, like saying, can you believe this guy? Because he asked the other guy, ‘Do you believe him?’”
Luckily for Machado, he was let go after agents finally looked at his drivers license, but the incident left him pondering whether he made the right choice in voting for someone who’s main policies are aimed at making life harder for Brown and Black people living in America.
“I voted for Trump last election but, because I thought it was going to be the things, you know, like … just go against criminals, not every Hispanic-looking, like – that they will assume that we are all illegals,” Machado said, according to Raw Story. “That’s what they’re doing now, they’re just following Hispanic people.”
Many Trump voters are in the “find out” stage after they done “f*cked around,” and they’re not liking it one bit. We on the other hand are low-key enjoying the rude awakening they’re experiencing. Just sayin’.
What do y’all think about this situation? Let us know in the comments section below.
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President Donald Trump has announced plans to send tens of thousands of “criminal illegal aliens” to the Guantánamo Bay prison camp, further demonizing other immigrants.
President Donald Trump announced that his administration plans to deport criminal aliens to the Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba on Wednesday (Jan. 29) as he was signing the Laken Riley Act into law. “Some of them are so bad that we don’t even trust the countries to hold them because we don’t want them coming back, so we’re gonna send ’em out to Guantanamo,” he said to reporters gathered at the White House. “We have 30,000 beds in Guantánamo to detain the worst criminal aliens threatening the American people,” he added. The White House announced shortly afterward that Trump signed a presidential memorandum to that effect.
The Laken Riley Act is named after a nursing student from Georgia who was out for a run last February when she was attacked by a man named Jose Antonio Ibarra, who wound up killing her. Ibarra, a Venezuelan national, was found guilty in November of Riley’s murder and was sentenced to life in prison. The bill requires federal officials to detain any migrant charged with a crime such as assault or shoplifting. It also allows states’ attorney generals to sue the federal government for harm related to failures in immigration enforcement leading to the harm of people. The law received bipartisan support, with 46 Democrats in the House of Representatives and 12 in the Senate voting to pass the measure.
Newly-confirmed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth defended President Trump’s move in an interview on Fox News, calling Guantánamo Bay a “perfect spot” for those detainees. “We don’t want illegal criminals in the United States, not a minute longer than they have to be,” he said on Jesse Watters Primetime. “Move them off to Guantánamo Bay, where they can be safely maintained until they are deported to their final location, their country of origin.” The United States has leased land from Cuba for over a century, but the Cuban government has rejected the nominal payments sent out to it. Cuba’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, called the new move “an act of brutality.”
Politicians and immigration advocates worldwide have also blasted Trump’s memorandum. “Trump’s order [sends] a clear message … Migrants and asylum seekers are being cast as the new terrorist threat, deserving to be discarded in an island prison, removed from legal and social services and supporters,” Vincent Warren, executive director for the Center for Constitutional Rights, said in a statement.
Selena Gomez broke down in tears on Monday morning (Jan. 27) in an Instagram post in which she promised to do anything she can to help undocumented Mexican nationals in the midst of the new Trump administration’s nationwide crackdown on undocumented non-citizens.
According the People magazine, the Texas-born singer whose grandparents immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico without proper documentation posted a since-deleted Instagram Story in which she weeped alongside the caption, “I’m sorry” and a Mexican flag emoji. “All my people are getting attacked, the children,” Gomez added in the video that can be seen here. “I don’t understand. I’m so sorry, I wish I could do something but I can’t. I don’t know what to do. I’ll try everything, I promise.”
President Trump began his second administration last week by vowing to unleash a nationwide immigration crackdown. CNN reported that over the weekend nearly 1,000 people the administration deemed national security threats were arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers along with agents from a variety of federal agencies including the FBI, DEA and U.S. Marshals Service in Chicago, Atlanta, Puerto Rico, Colorado, Los Angeles, Austin, TX and elsewhere.
People said that in another since-deleted Instagram Story, Gomez wrote, “Apparently it’s not ok to show empathy for people.” According to reports, TV doctor Phil McGraw joined U.S. border czar Tom Homan in a highly choreographed raid in Chicago in which the daytime talk show host asked some detainees where they were from and whether they were legal citizens.
At press time a spokesperson for Gomez had not returned Billboard‘s request for further comment on the singer’s posts.
Gomez, 32, has been a strong advocate for the immigrant community before, including producing the 2019 Netflix series Living Undocumented, a doc that told the story of eight families who agreed to let film crews follow them as they faced potential deportation under the first Trump administration. At the time, Gomez slammed what she dubbed the Trump team’s cruel treatment of immigrant families, including its widely criticized separation of children from their families.
“I can’t even imagine what these kids being separated from their families are going through,” she said in February 2020. “It’s something that is going to traumatize them for the rest of their lives. And it just seems animalistic.” In October 2019, Gomez also penned a poignant essay for TIME magazine, in which she wrote about her aunt and grandparents crossing the border into the U.S. from Mexico.
“In 1992, I was born a U.S. citizen thanks to their bravery and sacrifice,” she wrote. “Over the past four decades, members of my family have worked hard to gain United States citizenship. Undocumented immigration is an issue I think about every day, and I never forget how blessed I am to have been born in this country thanks to my family and the grace of circumstance.”
The flurry of raids have mostly drawn praise from Trump’s MAGA followers and Republican lawmakers, while officials in some states have decried the actions. NBC reported that Newark, NJ leaders and immigrant rights activists complained that ICE agents entered the back of a business in the city and arrested three workers without proper documents, while also detaining and questioning employees who are U.S. citizens.
Among other tactics employed so far by the Trump camp as part of its immigration crackdown are the shutting down of the CBP One asylum app, the clearing of the way for immigration authorities to make arrests in schools, churches and hospitals and a rush of active duty troops to help build border barriers and escort people onto removal flights.
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Donald Trump remains in a tight race with Vice President Kamala Harris which ends in just under a month, and the stakes are rising higher than ever. In a new interview, Donald Trump attacked immigrants with a vile comment suggesting that they are “bad genes” in the country who have a genetic predisposition to murder.
Donald Trump appeared on The Hugh Hewitt Show on Monday (October 7) and immediately seized upon the xenophobic fears of his supporters by aiming attacks at Vice President Harris and immigration policies enacted under President Joe Biden. Furthering his stances on the southern border and attempting to frame Harris as a communist, Trump went on a verbal tear that many are currently decrying.
“When you look at the things that she proposes, they’re so far off she has no clue. How about allowing people to come to an open border, 13,000 of which were murderers,” Trump says.
He added, “Many of them murdered far more than one person, and they’re now happily living in the United States. You know, now a murderer, I believe this, it’s in their genes. And we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now. They left, they had 425,000 people come into our country that shouldn’t be here, that are criminals.”
Trump’s comments were found to be appalling by others in the media, including the panelists of the Morning Joe show on MSNBC, which discussed the matter on the Tuesday morning broadcast of the program. Across X, others observed Trump’s chat with Hewitt and considered his words offensive and a rallying cry for fascism among other digs.
Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt, perhaps realizing how much of a gaffe this could be considering Election Day is fast approaching, countered in a statement that Donald Trump was referring to murderers and not migrants but it appears the damage is done.
Across X, formerly Twitter, many are discussing Donald Trump’s “bad genes” quip. We’ve got reactions listed below.
JUST NOW: @realDonaldTrump leans heavily into race science by telling @hughhewitt that you can tell whether migrants are predisposed to committing murder by “their genes.”
“We got a lot of bad genes in our country right now,” he adds. pic.twitter.com/t722iYq4Hm
— Andrew Feinberg (@AndrewFeinberg) October 7, 2024
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JD Vance, the candidate for Vice President of the United States and Donald Trump’s running mate, gets a little weirder and racist after making an explosive claim. JD Vance shared a baseless rumor that Haitians converging in an Ohio town are taking pets from homes and eating them.
On Monday (September 9), JD Vance took to X to share a video of him appearing on the CNBC network and used the caption field to attack Vice President Kamala Harris and her position on immigration.
“Months ago, I raised the issue of Haitian illegal immigrants draining social services and generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio,” Vance wrote. He added, “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country. Where is our border czar?”
Springfield, Ohio has become ground zero for an ongoing debate about immigration laws in the country and part of Trump and Vance’s strategy to highlight any perceived weaknesses in Vice President Harris’ plans to protect the border. Trump has been running his campaign from the standpoint of bringing the country back from ruin without mentioning his showing in the White House and handling of several policy matters he is now aiming attacks at the Harris and Gov. Tim Walz presidential campaigns.
Melanie D’Arrigo, the Executive Director of The Campaign for NY Health organization, shared a reply on X debunking the rumor spread by Vance and others who shared those sentiments across social media. In the reply
D’Arrigo’s reply caption read as follows:
• No local police reports of pets being stolen
• Man mentioning the ducks is a local podcaster promoting his mayoral bid
• Photo *taken in Columbus* of the guy holding the duck isn’t an immigrant
• Woman arrested for eating a cat isn’t an immigrant
All GOP fan fiction:
• No local police reports of pets being stolen
• Man mentioning the ducks is a local podcaster promoting his mayoral bid
• Photo *taken in Columbus* of the guy holding the duck isn’t an immigrant
• Woman arrested for eating a cat isn’t an immigrant https://t.co/dUjAMTxlff pic.twitter.com/kMAoZLIm2w
— Melanie D’Arrigo (@DarrigoMelanie) September 9, 2024
There have been several reports from major outlets regarding the Haitian immigrants in Ohio in recent times, including NPR and the New York Times. On X, users are shooting down JD Vance and his racist and xenophobic remarks regarding the Haitians in Springfield.
Those replies can be viewed below.
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