“President Donald Trump has cracked down on immigration in his second term, deporting undocumented migrants and perhaps citizens next.
In the process, members of Trump’s administration have demonstrated an overt hostility to basic rights of due process.
On March 12, agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an undocumented immigrant from El Salvador. Three days later, the government deported him back to El Salvador to be held in the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), an overcrowded and dangerous mega-prison where the country’s president offered to warehouse deportees from the U.S.
There is much to oppose in that action, perhaps most of all that Abrego Garcia—who had previously been granted a reprieve from deportation—was denied any semblance of due process when government agents grabbed him up, told him his protected status had been revoked, and shuffled him out of the country, all within the span of a long weekend.
The Trump administration contends Abrego Garcia is not entitled to due process, in part because he is a member of the violent street gang MS-13. “That may be true,” wrote Cato Institute scholar David Post. “The government, however, has provided no evidence, to a grand jury or to a magistrate or to any third party, that it is true.”
Nevertheless, the government is sticking by the claim.”
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“According to an April order by Judge Paula Xinis of the U.S. District Court of Maryland, Abrego Garcia immigrated from El Salvador to flee gang violence, settling in Maryland with his brother, a U.S. citizen. After he was arrested in 2019 and turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for deportation, he told an immigration judge he would be subject to gang retaliation if he was sent back. The judge denied his request for bond and ordered him detained “pending the outcome of his requested relief from deportation,” as Xinis wrote. (By itself, a denial of bond is not indicative that he presents any danger: “The immigration judge is only taking at face value any evidence that the government provides,” said David Bier of the Cato Institute. “It is not assessing its underlying validity at that stage.”)
Later that year, “following a full evidentiary hearing, the [immigration judge] granted Abrego Garcia withholding of removal to El Salvador,” which “prohibits [the Department of Homeland Security] from returning an alien to the specific country in which he faces clear probability of persecution,” Xinis added.”
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“Vance’s post is galling for how little he seems to care about due process, the constitutional provision nominally preventing the government from throwing any of us in prison for any reason it wishes. That this seems to reflect the general attitude of the administration in which he serves would be frightening even if not for the fact that its only justification is that it simply doesn’t make mistakes when identifying terrorists and gang members.
“Ask the people weeping over the lack of due process what precisely they propose for dealing with [former President Joe] Biden’s millions and millions of illegals,” Vance wrote. “And with reasonable resource and administrative judge constraints, does their solution allow us to deport at least a few million people per year?”
This has nothing to do with deporting the undocumented: A judge already adjudicated Abrego Garcia’s case and granted him a reprieve from deportation. If the Trump administration had contrary evidence indicating he should instead be deported, then it should present that evidence in a court of law.
Instead, what evidence has been presented is flimsy, to say the least. “The ‘evidence’ against Abrego Garcia consisted of nothing more than his Chicago Bulls hat and hoodie, and a vague, uncorroborated allegation from a confidential informant claiming he belonged to MS-13’s ‘Western’ clique in New York—a place he has never lived,” Xinis wrote. “No evidence before the Court connects Abrego García to MS-13 or any other criminal organization.”
Even what flimsy evidence there is has fallen apart in recent days: That single “vague, uncorroborated allegation” was lodged by Ivan Mendez, a Maryland police officer who arrested Abrego Garcia in 2019. Within days, Mendez was suspended, and would later be indicted, for giving “confidential information” about “an on-going police investigation” to “a commercial sex worker who he was paying in exchange for sexual acts,” according to the Prince George’s County Police Department.”
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“”When Garcia was arrested he was found with rolls of cash and drugs,” wrote Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). “He was arrested with two other members of MS-13” while “wearing what is effectively MS-13’s uniform.””
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“wearing NBA merch is not a crime. And if Abrego Garcia were actually associating with MS-13 members, or if he were abusive to his wife, then these are details that would be extremely pertinent to bring up in a court of law.
Instead, the administration has obfuscated even in the face of judicial action. Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld a lower court order finding deportees were entitled to due process and instructing the government to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S. The administration even admitted in court filings that Abrego Garcia was deported “because of an administrative error.” (The attorney who filed the brief containing that language was apparently later suspended.)
Nevertheless, the administration insists it has no ability to retrieve Abrego Garcia from the Salvadoran prison where the U.S. government is currently paying $25,000 to house him—what Reason’s Damon Root called “a naked assertion of unchecked power.” In the Oval Office, Trump and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele each claimed they were unable to return the man mistakenly deported and housed in a facility intended for terrorists.”
“Attorney General Pam Bondi has decided that instead of working to facilitate the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) as the Supreme Court has ordered, she will instead take to X to release documents from his 2019 arrest, in which a detective claimed he was an MS-13 member.”
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“These documents had already been publicly available, if you cared to look through the prior court proceedings. The Gang Field Interview Sheet, drafted up by Ivan Mendez, then an officer with the Prince George’s County Police Department, says Abrego Garcia was arrested with purported MS-13 members in a Home Depot parking lot, that he was wearing clothing that they believe to be affiliated with MS-13 (“a Chicago Bulls hat and a hoodie with rolls of money covering the eyes, ears and mouth of the presidents on the separate denominations” which “officers know such clothing to be indicative of the Hispanic gang culture”), and that a confidential informant said he was part of MS-13.
Interestingly, reporting by The New Republic notes that Mendez was suspended the next month for “providing information to a commercial sex worker who he was paying in exchange for sexual acts.” (“The information he provided focused on an on-going police investigation,” per the county’s news release.)
Information has also come out about Abrego Garcia allegedly beating his wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, stemming from a protection order she filed against him in 2021: “At this point, I am afraid to be close to him,” she wrote in the protection order. “I have multiple photos/videos of how violent he can be and all the bruises he [has] left me.” She cites specific examples from August 2020 and November 2020 in which he was violent toward her. Vasquez Sura told CNN that “she sought a civil protective order in 2021 after a disagreement with Abrego Garcia” and that “she had survived a previous relationship that included domestic violence.” She says she did not appear at a court hearing and pursue the matter further: “We were able to work through this situation privately as a family, including by going to counseling.””
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” the administration keeps implying that you cannot both support due process for Abrego Garcia and have empathy for the victims of violence from illegal immigrants.”
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“The Supreme Court has ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return. The administration continues to demur on this front, instead choosing to release, via X…the protective order Vasquez Sura filed”
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“most people are neither angels nor demons, and even very bad and violent people—if that is what Abrego Garcia is—deserve due process. The punishment for wifebeating in Maryland, or entering the country illegally, is not indefinite confinement in a Salvadoran prison. He has not just been deported, he has been locked up in CECOT. (“A prison where there is no education or remediation or recreation, because it is a prison that does not intend to release its inhabitants back out into the world,” writes The New York Times’ Ezra Klein. “It is a prison where the only way out, in the words of El Salvador’s so-called justice minister, is a coffin.”)”
“The Trump administration plans to eliminate the IRS’ Direct File program, an electronic system for filing tax returns directly to the agency for free, according to two people familiar with the decision.
The program developed during Joe Biden’s presidency was credited by users with making tax filing easy, fast and economical. But Republican lawmakers and commercial tax preparation companies complained it was a waste of taxpayer money because free filing programs already exist, although they are hard to use.”
“as of May 2024, there were around 600,000 open positions in manufacturing (there’s almost 500,000 open today, according to the St. Louis Federal Reserve), so there isn’t exactly a shortage of roles out there. Instead, there is a disconnect between how Americans in general think of manufacturing and how they view it for themselves. This is one reason why the National Association of Manufacturers and the former Secretary of the Navy under President Joe Biden both called for increased immigration, Grabow notes.
“Such jobs can’t find enough interested Americans to fill them,” he wrote.
Manufacturing workers themselves report “markedly” lower personal satisfaction with their jobs than other workers, according to the Pew Research Center. They also report less satisfaction with their pay, health insurance, and other benefits, and flexibility of their work hours.”
The independence of the Fed is key to protecting the dollar, the economy, and price stability. People can trust in the dollar because the Fed will do what needs to be done to control inflation, even if it is painful.
Big things Trump’s economic team wants to do would require great international deals, but those deals are worthless if no one trusts the United States or its president. Trump is so erratic, that no one trusts him. He made the NAFTA 2.0 agreement with Mexico and Canada during his first term, then during his second called it junk and tried to break it. He threatens to take territory from allies and threatens to renege on NATO promises. Countries won’t make the sacrifices of a big Trump-pushed-for-deal when they can’t trust Trump to keep his promises.
“Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday that he expects President Donald Trump’s tariffs policy to cause higher inflation and slower economic growth, complicating potential central bank efforts to ease the fallout.”
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“”Markets are struggling with a lot of uncertainty and that means volatility,” Powell said on Wednesday. Still, he added, the volatility reflected the significance of the policy changes, rather than abnormal behavior in the markets.”
“the cost of site construction might rise further because of the 25 percent tariff Trump has imposed on steel, a major input in industrial construction”
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““The same concern applies to manufacturing equipment, which is all stainless steel,””
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“What actually encourages companies to move — as Trump alluded to when he called out Dublin — isn’t tariffs, said Ned Hux, a pharmaceutical and life sciences tax partner at PwC.
“Targeted tax incentives, streamlined regulatory approvals, and prioritized government procurement could make U.S.-based production more attractive and competitive,” he said, adding those measures could come in the form of tax deductions, lower tax rates on manufacturing activity, tax credits and low-interest financing for domestic production.”