“On March 15, the Trump administration loaded more than 200 men onto three planes bound for El Salvador, where they were to be locked in its notorious CECOT prison. A video of the men being marched, head-down, into police vehicles and into the facility ricocheted around the world, a symbol of the United States’ position on immigrants it accuses of having gang ties.
But not seen by the camera were eight women who were also on the planes but never got off. Shortly after they landed, according to court filings, El Salvador apparently refused to take them. So they were shipped back, to be locked up again on American soil.
Now, for the first time, two of those women are speaking out in an interview with NBC News, describing the chaos they say they witnessed during the Trump administration’s deportation efforts and how, they allege, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials deceived them about where they were being taken.
“We were lied to,” said one of the women, Heymar Padilla Moyetones, 24. “They told us we were going to Venezuela, and it turns out that, no. When we arrived at our destination, that’s when they told us we were in El Salvador.”
Trump administration officials have said all of the people it has sent to El Salvador were Venezuelans who were carefully vetted and had clear ties to Tren de Aragua, a gang from Venezuela that the administration has designated a terrorist organization.
But the vetting process apparently did not include determining whether El Salvador would accept female detainees.
Moyetones said ICE officials kept her on the aircraft. “They didn’t let us leave. They told us that we were going back, that we were coming back here,” she said.”
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““I came with a lot of dreams,” Moyetones said. Since she was a child, she said, the United States had been the country where she wanted “to make a life.” She ultimately came about a year ago, with her son, then an infant, to give him a better future.
“We thought that perhaps the treatment from people in this country would be different toward us,” she said, but after what happened with the flights, she is sad and disappointed with the United States and just wants to be deported back to her home country, Venezuela. But her son, now 2 years old, is in the care of a relative, and she does not know whether they will be reunited. “I am very afraid, because I have always been with my son,” she said. “I have always looked after my son, but I don’t know. I wouldn’t know what to tell you.””
“President Donald Trump claims that the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 grants him the power to deport certain Venezuelan-born aliens without due process based on the mere allegation of membership in a criminal street gang.
But the text of the Alien Enemies Act does not allow the president to do anything of the sort. “Whenever there shall be a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government, or any invasion or predatory incursion shall be perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States, by any foreign nation or government,” the act states, the president may direct the “removal” of “all natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects of the hostile nation or government, being males of the age of fourteen years and upwards, who shall be within the United States, and not actually naturalized.”
The alleged crimes of the alleged members of the street gang Tren de Aragua do not meet this legal standard. There is no “declared war” between the United States and Venezuela, and there is no “invasion or predatory incursion” of the U.S. by “any foreign nation or government.” The gang is not a foreign state, and the gang’s alleged crimes, as heinous as they may be, do not qualify as acts of war by a foreign state. Trump’s frequent talk about a rhetorical “invasion” of the U.S. by undocumented immigrants utterly fails to satisfy the law’s requirements.
The fatal defects of Trump’s position are further illuminated when you compare Trump’s stance with James Madison’s 1800 “Report on the Alien and Sedition Acts.” (The Alien Enemies Act was one of the three laws that comprised the Alien and Sedition Acts.)
As Madison explained, there are two categories of “offences for which aliens within the jurisdiction” of the United States “are punishable.” The first category involves “offences committed by the nation of which they make a part, and in whose offences they are involved.” In this case, “the offending nation can no otherwise be punished than by war.” In other words, the offending nation in this case has committed an act of war against the United States. The aliens who fall within this category are “alien enemies.”
The second category involves offenses committed by aliens “themselves alone, without any charge against the nation to which they belong.” In this case, “the offence being committed by the individual, not by his nation, and against the municipal law, not against the law of nations; the individual only, and not the nation is punishable; and the punishment must be conducted according to the municipal law, not according to the law of nations.” The aliens who fall within this second category are “alien friends.”
Notice that “alien friends” may certainly be punished by the normal U.S. legal system for whatever crimes they commit while on U.S. soil. They may be deprived of their life, their liberty, and their property. But—and this is a big but—they may only be deprived of life, liberty, or property after they have received due process of law, which is what the Constitution guarantees to all persons, not just to all citizens.”
“The flights suggest the Trump administration may be growing more brazen in its defiance of judicial restraint. The U.S. Constitution established the judiciary as a co-equal and independent branch of government.
Trump has sought to push the boundaries of executive power since taking office in January, cutting spending authorized by Congress, dismantling agencies and firing tens of thousands of federal workers.”
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“On Monday, Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, said the flights were already in international airspace when the judge’s orders came and that more flights would continue.
“Once you’re outside the border, you know, it is what it is. But they’re in international waters, already on the way south, close to landing. You know what? … We did what we had to do,” he told Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” program.
Asked what was next, Homan said: “Another flight, another flight every day.”
“We’re not stopping. I don’t care what the judges think,” he added.”
““The CBP Home app gives aliens the option to leave now and self-deport, so they may still have the opportunity to return legally in the future and live the American dream,” Noem said. “If they don’t, we will find them, we will deport them, and they will never return.””
Trump paused tariffs on automobiles because big auto companies called him and convinced him to pause them. What about all those companies and consumers who do not have Trump’s ear?
“Trump’s new budget blueprint, which is also known as a resolution, does three things.
First, it calls for extending the president’s 2017 tax cuts, which would otherwise expire at the end of the year, at a cost of $4 trillion over the next decade. It also makes room for another $500 billion in tax cuts Trump talked about on the campaign trail, such as no tax on tips, for a grand total of $4.5 trillion.
Second, the blueprint greenlights modest spending increases targeted toward immigration enforcement (up to $110 billion), customs and border protection (up to $90 billion) and military involvement in border security (up to $100 million) — top Trump priorities.
And finally, at the behest of conservative deficit hawks, the resolution mandates $2 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years to partially offset new border spending and the trillions in revenue lost to Trump’s tax cuts. (Even then, the new budget would still directly add $2.8 trillion to the deficit.)
For now, Trump’s budget blueprint doesn’t say which programs will be slashed; instead, it instructs specific House committees to cut specific amounts from the programs under their jurisdiction.”
“Few things do more to increase humanity’s aggregate prosperity than allowing people to migrate from less wealthy nations to the United States. And the immense benefits that immigrants derive from moving to the US do not come at the expense of native-born Americans. To the contrary, in the long term, immigration makes Americans more prosperous, while rendering the country’s retirement programs more secure.
Precisely because immigration is so beneficial, however, it’s imperative for Democrats to forge a politically tenable approach to the issue. The party should neither embrace full-bore restrictionism nor project complacency about chaos at the border.
Instead, Democrats must make American politics safe for mass immigration. Maintaining the party’s recent pivot toward more aggressive border enforcement and less lenient asylum policies is likely necessary for achieving that goal.”