How Many Innocent Men Did Trump Deport to El Salvador?
Last month, the Trump administration invoked the rarely used Alien Enemies Act to place hundreds of Venezuelan and Salvadoran migrants on deportation flights to El Salvador on allegations that they were criminals with extensive gang ties. Though James Boasberg, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., issued an order for the military flights to be halted as he weighed a legal challenge, the government has continued to transport migrants out of the country to be detained in CECOT, El Salvador’s notorious maximum-security prison.
But several family members are contesting the allegations against their loved ones, saying they’ve been deported based on faulty information and without due process. While the administration has doubled down on its deportation efforts, reports have emerged that the government is determining gang affiliation in part through an individual’s tattoos or clothing, a clearly imperfect metric. Here, some of the migrants with no reported gang affiliation who have been sent to an uncertain fate.
As The Atlantic reported on Monday, the Trump administration acknowledged in court papers that it had wrongfully sent Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland father, to an El Salvador prison despite his protected legal status. “Although ICE was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador, Abrego Garcia was removed to El Salvador because of an administrative error,” the filing read.
Abrego Garcia is a native of El Salvador who fled gang violence and entered the United States in 2011 as a 16-year-old. An immigration judge later granted Abrego Garcia “withholding of removal”........
© Daily Intelligencer
