By BEN MARTINEZ
On March 15, President Donald Trump signed an executive order invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a wartime law, that would allow the government to detain and deport citizens of an “enemy nation.” That same night, three planes landed in El Salvador, carrying 261 men. The Trump administration had deported the men from the United States in defiance of an order by a federal court to turn the planes around. But only a few of them were actually from El Salvador; the majority of the deportees were from Venezuela. None of them were given due process. They were to be transported to El Salvador’s super prison known as Terrorism Confinement Center, CECOT for short.
The detained prisoners were forced to bend over and walk to their transportations, not even being allowed to look out of the windows of the buses. According to an ICE agent on the airplane, the deportees tried to take over the airplane, and in response the head of the prison told his men, “Show them [the deportees] they are not in control.” They did just that; once they arrived to their destination in El Salvador, the CECOT maximum-security prison, the guards showed their “control” of the prisoners. They continued to keep them down, slapping the newly arrived prisoners. One young man who had been pushed to the floor sobbed to the guards, “I’m not a gang member. I’m gay. I’m a barber.”
Those words fell on deaf ears. Eventually, he along with the others were taken to the intake room, where they had their heads shaved and were stripped of their clothes. That same man, the barber, would cry in prayer and asked to call his mother. The guard’s response was only to slap him again. According to his family and Lindsay Toczylowski, founder of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, the barber’s name is Andry José Hernández Romero. He is 31 years old, and he is a makeup artist. He had claimed asylum a year ago for being gay and for opposing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. He had no criminal record in the U.S. and Venezuela, but his tattoos (two little crowns with the words “Dad” and “Mom”) were enough for immigration officials to have him arrested, without due process. Ms. Toczylowski, who represents Hernández, has said that she lost contact with him on March 15, the same day he was sent to El Salvador.
Court rulings on Kilmar Abrego García
The Trump administration has also deported Kilmar Armando Abrego García, a Salvadoran refugee with protected status in the United States. He is a father and union worker, having lived in the country for 14 years, but was detained by ICE and accused of being a gang member—without any evidence. Abrego García’s attorneys state that he has been the victim of a “Kafkaesque mistake” and is in danger of being tortured and killed.
The government has acknowledged its mistake in detaining and deporting Abrego García but says that it is too late to get him back since they have no jurisdiction anymore. U.S. officials have gone even further by refusing to take responsibility, claiming that “Abrego Garcia had a full and fair opportunity to litigate the issue. He had the opportunity to give evidence tending to show he was not part of MS-13 [a Salvadoran gang], which he did not offer.” But how could Abrego Garcia have offered any evidence when he was arrested without due process?
On April 15, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ordered Trump administration officials to provide written documents and explanations of what it is doing to enable Abrego García’s return from El Salvador. In recent days, Justice Department attorneys have continually tried to block the judge’s orders on grounds that she lacks authority to rule on the case, while the White House has flatly refused to comply. “No court in the United States has a right to conduct the foreign policy of the United States,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared on April 14.
On April 10, the U.S. Supreme Court partially upheld Xinis’s earlier rulings, stating that the Trump administration must “facilitate” the release of Abrego García. But the Court stopped short of agreeing with Judge Xinis that the administration was obligated to “effectuate” (i.e., put into action) his return. This weak ruling by the Supreme Court bolstered the contention of Trump officials that they were not obligated to heed any court decision to free Abrego García or any other deportee.
During his visit to the White House on April 14, Salvadoran President Bukele indicated in response to questions from reporters that he would refuse to free Abrego Garcia. “How can I return him to the United States?” Bukele said. “I smuggle him into the United States? Of course I’m not going to do it. The question is preposterous.”
During the meeting, Trump hailed Bukele as “one hell of a president” while reiterating his own refusal to take steps to release Abrego García from prison. He also told reporters that he was open to deporting U.S. citizens to prison in El Salvador: “If it’s a homegrown criminal, I have no problem.”
Many other victims of the Trump administration
Jerce Reyes Barrios was another innocent victim of the Trump administration’s cruel deportation program. He is Venezuelan, and a professional soccer player and a youth coach, with no criminal record. He was disappeared one night, and his family only found out what happened to him when they saw him in viral videos of deportees in El Salvador, posted by the Trump administration. “We were surprised to see him in the videos being released on social media of those deported to El Salvador,” his uncle, Jair Barrios, wrote in a Facebook post. “We immediately contacted the lawyer because no more information about him was appearing on the ICE locator.”
Reyes Barrios was also an asylum seeker, with a hearing due on April 17. It’s believed he would have won asylum due to his background, having been a victim of the Maduro regime. Barrios had marched against the Maduro government, only to be kidnapped and tortured by that very government. He left Venezuela for the United States five months ago, where he was supported by family and friends. But Barrios had tattoos, soccer tattoos, and just like with Hernández, his tattoos were used him against him as proof that he was affiliated with a Venezuelan gang known as Tren de Aragua.
This story is similar to what we hear about virtually all of the people who have been sent to El Salvador’s mega-prison; one day they were with family and friends, and the next they were disappeared. We got to see how these people may have been possibly disappeared when on March 25, Tufts PhD student Rumeysa Ozturk was surrounded, detained, and dragged off by ICE agents. It was all caught on camera, showing the ICE agents masked and in plain clothes, with no marked law enforcement vehicles, and not even announcing that they were ICE agents until after taking her phone and detaining her.
Other innocent people have been swept up in this disaster. Another barber is named Franco José Caraballo Tiapa, age 26; he was detained by ICE in February and accused by the Department of Homeland Security of being a member of Tren de Aragua. Tiapa has no criminal history in the U.S. or in Venezuela, and though he has tattoos, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has not specified whether they thought they signify Tren de Aragua.
Quite a few people seem to have been rounded up by the Trump administration for political reasons. The administration claims to have revoked the visas of hundreds of university students. On March 9, Palestinian activist and Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder who is married to a U.S. citizen, was detained by ICE. In a court filing in the case, the DHS submitted a memo from Secretary of State Marco Rubio asserting that the law gives him the power to decide that a person should be deported even if their actions are “otherwise lawful.” Rubio wrote that Khalil should be deported because of his alleged role in “antisemitic protests and disruptive activities” at the university and because his actions undermined “U.S. policy to combat antisemitism around the world.” An immigration judge ruled on April 12 that based on those grounds, Khalil can be deported—even if no concrete evidence has been presented to verify the charges.
On March 26, farmworker and union organizer Alfredo Juarez Zeferino was detained by ICE. On March 19, immigrant rights activist Jeanette Vizguerra was also detained. On April 14, another Columbia student activist and a permanent resident of the U.S. who was born in Palestine, Mohsen Modawi, was arrested after attending his naturalization interview in Vermont. Even as I mention these people, ICE raids and kidnappings continue and it is unknown if these people will actually be deported to the country of origin or to CECOT or if they will rot away in the private prisons that have been used to detain migrants in the past.
These people were kidnapped by ICE, and now many of them are in El Salvador with little possibility of returning home. According to Border Czar Tom Homan, these victims are not deserving of due process: “Due process?” he snorted. “Where was Laken Riley’s due process? Where were all these young women that were killed and raped by members of TdA? Where was their due process?”
Laken Riley was an innocent young woman murdered by Jose Ibarra, a Venezuelan man who had had previous run-ins with the law but was released from prison before murdering Riley. Unfortunately, the right wing, as they always do, exploited her death for propaganda, and now there are government officials who feel that due process is not needed because of her death. But isn’t due process what separates the lawful from the lawless? Isn’t due process what shows to the world that we have advanced from the epoch when a child could get their hand cut off for stealing a loaf of bread?
Trump’s agenda
Donald Trump made his intentions clear when it came to immigrants, but few expected the ferocity with which he would commit to his goals. How many could have imagined that the Trump administration would not even deport these immigrants to their original countries, but send them to be shut away in El Salvador’s super-prison, CECOT. The fact that some judges have tried to halt the Trump administration’s deportation process has only caused ICE and the immigration agency to move faster and with more stealth. Some of the court-ordered halts happened when the planes were already in the air.
How is Trump getting away with this? Well, other than being a capitalist president in a capitalist country, Trump has invoked the Enemies Aliens Act of 1798 to fulfill his goals.
The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 was passed as part of the Alien and Sedition Acts, a series of laws passed (despite furious opposition) by the Federalist-led U.S. Congress due to growing fears of war with France and the alleged danger of “pro-Jacobin” subversive actions inside the United States. Among their measures, the emergency laws stated that publicly speaking or writing in opposition to the government could be deemed an act of libel, or even treason, with prison terms or heavy fines as punishment.
Under the Alien Enemies Act specifically, the president could authorize the arrest, relocation, or deportation of any male over the age of 14 who comes from a foreign enemy country. Although the other laws of the Alien and Sedition Acts were allowed to expire, the Alien Enemies Act remained on the books. The Alien Enemies Act was invoked only three times, the first time being against British nationals during the War of 1812, and the second time during World War I against nationals of the Central Powers. The third time, and the most infamous, was in World War II, against nationals of the Axis Powers. Although it was used to detain German and Italian non-citizens, both Japanese non-citizens and native-born or naturalized Japanese Americans were also detained for years in concentration camps.
As history shows, the law was created as nothing more than a response to fear—fear of losing control and fear of the “other.” It is no coincidence that such a law would be made to not expire. It is no surprise that someone like Trump, who has run his candidacy and presidency on fear of the other, would invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, giving him and the predominantly Republican government, jurisdiction on who is a threat.
But even the law has specifics; it can only be used during times of war. We are not at war with Venezuela nor El Salvador. But Trump has found a work around by designating Venezuelan gang Tren De Aragua a foreign terrorist organization on Feb. 20, 2025. As we have seen with the Bush years, it is easier for the capitalist state to attain massive power when they label anyone and anything as a terrorist.
What is Tren De Aragua?
It seemed it was not until 2024 that the name of the gang was being thrown around. Tren De Aragua is a criminal organization founded in 2014, and has spread beyond the state it was founded in—Aragua, Venezuela. They have a presence in Peru, Chile, and Colombia, where they came to blows with the left-wing guerrilla organizations FARC and ELN. The first time Tren de Aragua appeared in the news in the U.S. was in Chicago and its nearby suburbs. Chief Garry McCarthy of Willow Springs estimated that they were present among the migrants in the city, but The Chicago Sun-Times found no evidence. The NYPD stated that Tren de Aragua was linked to violent crimes in New York in 2022, claiming that the members were living among the city’s migrant shelters and neighborhoods.
In 2024, surveillance footage of armed men entering apartments in Aurora, Col., went viral, causing massive panic among liberals and conservatives alike. Aurora’s mayor, Mike Coffman, stated that the city had “lost control” of the gang infiltration “and we’re working aggressively to get it back.” He later tried to walk back his statement by claiming that the city was not under siege, just several apartments, but it was too late as right-wing media had already jumped on it. But the truth is that the residents of the apartment house did not even consider the armed gang members, if they were gang members at all, their biggest problem; instead it was the landlord. “I have bedbugs in my apartment, I have cockroaches, I have rats. My kids are all covered in bites,” said Juan Carlos Alvarado Jimenez, a Venezuelan immigrant living in The Edge at Lowry apartments. “I don’t see any criminals here. I think we all know who the real criminals here are.”
Mr. Alvarado would not be the only tenant who was angry, many tenants had the same complaints, and were joined by tenants-rights advocates and community organizers. On Aug.13, 2024, hundreds of residents, many of whom were Venezuelan immigrants, were evicted from Fitzsimons Place, an apartment complex owned by CBZ Management. This happened after the City of Aurora hD condemned the property, declaring it uninhabitable. There had been problems with the apartment complex owned by CBZ Management since 2021, when residents reported pests, trash pileups, damaged railings, broken appliances, and collapsing ceilings. CBZ Management would be in the news again in 2023, with tenants complaining to Denver7 of mold, leaks, flooding, and no heat during most of the winter.
These are the real issues that need to be talked about, but instead the right has successfully diverted focus from the real issues into something that even the tenants don’t take seriously. The right has successfully veered people’s attention to focus on the Aug. 20 incident, while ignoring three years of misery that the tenants have had to face. “The city is choosing to meet with the property owner, and is not choosing to listen directly (to) the tenants who have years and years of evidence against the property owner, and also deserve a meeting to talk to them about the conditions and the reality of the situation,” said V. Reeves, an organizer with Housekeys Action Network Denver, a homelessness advocacy group. “These families deserve the opportunity to have resources and time to move somewhere safe.”
It was this incident that put Tren de Aragua on everyone’s mind, and even after the truth was revealed, it was too late. From the MS-13 to the Mexican cartels to now Tren de Aragua, the right has found another boogeyman to keep people afraid and prevent them from realizing their true enemy—the capitalist class. The Trump administration knows this, which is why the groups just mentioned have now been declared terrorists, giving the U.S. government jurisdiction to persecute anyone who fits a certain “distinction.” So, any Venezuelan man with a tattoo is now being detained, without due process, without familial contact and correspondence, and without dignity.
Trump and El Salvador
The Trump administration, to show its seriousness, is sending these people to CECOT. CECOT was founded in 2023 at the behest of El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele. Nayib Bukele was born to a rich family, even claiming he was born in a golden crib and was able to attend the Pan-American School, which was only for children of wealthy families. Despite his wealthy background, however, he joined El Salvador’s left-wing party, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), even winning elections under their banner.
By 2017 Bukele saw where the wind was blowing—the majority of the Salvadorean people appeared to be tired of both the right-wing party, ARENA, and the reformist FMLN—so he left the party and created his own, Nuevas Ideas. Inspired by Trump, he wanted to capitalize on the anger by becoming a populist and spousing anti-establishment rhetoric, though he had no real ideology. Nonetheless, Bukele had won the popular vote by 53%.
Once he’d won the presidency, his true colors guided his political direction. He established closer ties with the United States and ended the Social Action Secretariat, which was an organization that focused on social issues such as poverty, human rights, and injustice. He cut budgets for programs meant to support women and youth, and other measures linked to welfare. He also fired 3000 government workers through Twitter, and promoted his half-brother and uncle into office.
All of this was in 2019, but it was Feb. 9, 2020, when Bukele became the man he is today when he and his military entourage interrupted a Legislative Assembly session. The Assembly had refused a $109 million loan for the police, and that was enough for Bukele to lead a “popular insurrection.” What should have led to his downfall only caused him to grow in popularity and by February 2021, the majority of the Legislative Assembly were members of Nuevas Ideas and other right-wing parties that sided with it.
But what seems to be Bukele’s driving force is his war on gangs. Just like many other populist leaders, Bukele announced that he would fight the gangs in El Salvador with a heavy hand. He has pushed for more funding for the police, arming them to the teeth, but his real magnus opus has been CECOT.
CECOT is the largest prison in the Americas, with a capacity for 40,000 inmates, and has become a symbol of the nation’s crackdown on crime. It was built to be as brutal as possible. Every cell in the prison is meant to hold 80 inmates each, where men are held for 23.5 hours a day; the only furniture are metal bunks with no sheets, pillows, or mattresses. They have an open toilet, a cement basin and a plastic bucket for washing, and a large jug of water for hydration.
It seems that cruelty is the point; the inmates are not allowed any familial visitation, phone calls, or even letters. They aren’t even allowed to contact a lawyer, nor to participate in any sort of activity, except Bible reading. The lights are on 24/7, preventing the inmates from gaining any real sleep, and even when it comes to food, the inmates must grab the food through the spaces between the bars, with a first come, first served mentality. They are not allowed to work and they are not allowed to read, or even play card games, and they must face the possibility that they might not ever be released. There is no rehabilitation; some prisoners must endure torture. According to testimony obtained by Salvadoran rights groups and media, 375 inmates have died in CECOT during its brief time of operation.
What stands out even more about CECOT is that many of the inmates in the prison were sent there without due process. In 2022, Bukele declared a state of emergency, with support from the Nuevas Ideas-led legislative assembly. This allowed him to suspend constitutional rights, such as due process and the right to an attorney. The measure was only supposed to last for 30 days but has been extended for three years. The crackdowns have been brutal, with thousands of innocent men having been arrested. Bukele claims that the innocent prisoners have been released, but the government has refused to allow any international observers to enter the prison, so all we have is his word—and the word of a capitalist dictator isn’t worth anything.
Considering the size of the prison, the lack of essential amenities, the organized cruelty of the system itself, along with Bukele’s fawning of Trump and wanting closer ties with the U.S., it makes perfect sense for the Trump administration to work closely with the Bukele government. Moreover, the lack of due process in the country is perfect for the Trump administration, as it makes it incredibly difficult to rescue anyone who was sent to CECOT. Many lawyers and family members have still not heard back from the men who were sent to CECOT, and the Trump administration has doubled down on its assertions of the guilt of the people they sent. By actually investigating them, the Trump admin would lose some of the return on the $6 million they have been sending to Bukele to house the Venezuelans. Not investigating the deported prisoners would be ideal for both governments; the Trump administration wants to get rid of them in the cruelest way possible, and Bukele wants as much money as possible to continue the cruelty. It’s a match made in hell.
But there might be more to this deal than one would expect, and it has to do with a man named Cesar Humberto Lopez-Lairos, aka Greñas. Greñas was born in El Salvador during the civil war of the 1980s, but moved to the U.S., like many others. He founded MS-13 in Los Angeles, and would eventually be deported, which helped bring MS-13 to El Salvador. According to federal indictment, Greñas has been involved in secret negotiations with the Bukele government. Bukele wants to prove that his policies have helped make El Salvador a safer place, and to do that he was allegedly making a deal with Greñas—he quiets the gang activities and supports Bukele, and in return, Bukele won’t crackdown on MS-13. But Bukele has denied this, and Greñas was sent to El Salvador on the same flight alongside the Venezuelans.
Nonetheless, there are more leaders who were involved in these dealings with Bukele, such as Elmer Caneles-Rivera, aka El Crook. El Crook was sitting in a prison back in 2021, but when the U.S. demanded he be extradited, the Bukele government quietly released him that same year, and according to the El Faro website, it was Carlos Marroquin, the state negotiator with MS-13, who drove him out of the country. When the United States demanded that Caneles-Rivera be apprehended and handed over, El Salvador tried to make a deal with Mexican cartels for his arrest. The Mexican government beat them to the punch, having arrested and extradited Caneles-Rivera to the United States. As of right now, he is sitting in a federal prison in Philadelphia. He’s a high-ranking member of MS-13 and a possible founder, who was also at the negotiations with Bukele. As long as he is here, Bukele has no choice but to continue playing ball with the U.S.
What is to be done?
The situation is dire and can be downright demoralizing. So many people are being taken away with a quickness not seen before, and it is all merciless. We have witnessed nothing but utter cruelty committed by this administration, and it is clear that we cannot continue to allow these crimes against humanity to continue. It is imperative that working people get organized and educated in order to properly handle the perils we see before us. It is times like these when solidarity is the key to our victory against this immoral illiberal institution.
We must also be clear that we will not win this by giving our loyalty to the Democrats, who have refused to fight at every single moment. Some liberals claim that we don’t have to worry since Bernie, AOC, and the rest of the Squad are leading the way. Yes, they are leading us back to the Democrats, where they will once again try to silence any independent mass opposition and convince people to vote “blue no matter who.” These politicians only want a return to “normalcy,” but for the workers of this country, normalcy is working non-union jobs for little to no pay, little to no sick days, and plenty of long hours with little to no overtime pay.
We cannot go backwards, because if we do, we will only be returning to this mess once again. Even if a “progressive” politician is elected, the mask of humanity will slip once again as long as capital is king. We are seeing it now, we’ve seen it before, and we will see it again unless the workers organize and class consciousness grows. These people being kidnapped and sent off to the tropical gulag have all been workers and allies of the workers!
Trump’s deportations are nothing more than a façade, to keep us scared and divided while the rich continue to dig their hands into our pockets—as they’ve been doing for centuries. This is an illness, but one we can overcome; class consciousness is our medicine and we are long overdue for it. Only through this and massive mobilizations of working people and their allies will the Trump administration feel that black eye they so deserve. But we won’t stop there; our united power can do much more, and can bring about true justice.
Top photo: Jennifer Vazquez Sura, the wife of Kilmar Abrego García, speaks at April 4 news conference. (José Luís Magana / AP)
Sources:
https://time.com/7269604/el-salvador-photos-venezuelan-detainees/
https://time.com/7268733/el-salvador-mega-prison-cecot-trump-deportations/
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/secret-bukele-trump-deal-grenas
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/venezuelan-professional-goaltender-rendition-deported-dhs
https://www.kuow.org/stories/ice-detains-farmworker-activist-in-northwest-washington-state
https://apnews.com/article/columbia-university-mahmoud-khalil-ice-15014bcbb921f21a9f704d5acdcae7a8
https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/18/us/jeanette-vizguerra-detained-ice-colorado/index.html
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/27/us/rumeysa-ozturk-detained-what-we-know/index.html
https://litci.org/en/el-salvador-who-is-nayib-bukele/
