This New York Times article (“What Rights Do Immigrants Have?”) by Albert Sun and Miriam Jordan—purportedly about who is and isn’t “safe” from arrest and deportation based on their legal immigration and citizenship status—is written in the typical here’s how it’s normally done/here’s what’s actually happening approach we’re all used to from the Times, with its quiet, thoughtful, “we’re just sharing facts, here” tone, with links to stories that are the editorial equivalent of I can’t talk… he’ll hear me….

I find it absolutely maddening.

Especially frustrating are the charts it includes, which give a deeply misleading sense of, for example, who could be “arrested and deported based on [their] speech or for engaging in protest”—look at all the green! Things are fine!—but which doesn’t match current reality. The article itself acknowledges this fact, in its own blink-twice-for-no manner, by circling the “Situations in which the Trump administration has attempted to restrict the rights people have.”

In other words, the premise of the article—here are the protections green card and visa holders have under the law—is undermined by the article itself. The Times knows that these legal residents are being arrested and deported for their speech, for engaging in protests. That it’s happening without those people being convicted of—far less committing or even being accused of committing—any crimes. Yet they refuse to speak it plainly.

The entire article reads like a well-mannered version of “Oh my god! Trump’s immigration plan is completely fucked up! Look at this shit! He’s denying legal residents due process of law! We must fight against these atrocities or citizens are next!”

They need to get a damn anger translator.

A chilling site from Danielle Harlow:

Inspired by the USA Disappeared Tracker account on BlueSky, this dashboard visualizes persons brought into ICE custody when the Trump Administration has demonstrated undeniable political motive/animus and/or the person has been denied appropriate due process, even if the charges are eventually substantiated in a court of law.

As of April 6, 2025, it shows 803 people have been “disappeared.” When I first saw it on April 2, it was 243 people. A testament to the power of crowdsourcing no doubt, but that this site exists—that it needs to exist—is appalling, and a scathing indictment of both the United States government for doing it, and its citizens for allowing it.

Brian Tyler Cohen and Glenn Kirschner on The Legal Breakdown illustrate the utterly preposterous and incredibly dangerous state of affairs in Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s “mistaken” deportation case:

Cohen: Are you telling me, with all the agreements that we have with El Salvador that allows us to just—without any due process—deport these people to their country… we have no mechanism whatsoever to bring back somebody who is a legal resident, who is there as a result of an administrative error, that we have no mechanism to bring that guy back?

Kirschner: I don’t believe, you don’t believe it, but that is what the attorneys who are in court—not exactly defending this action, because they concede they did not have a legal reason to deport him, a legal basis—they’re also saying “Uh, we just don’t think we have a mechanism to bring him back.”

Cohen later makes this astute observation about Trump’s intentions:

I think this isn’t necessarily about this one specific person, this is about Donald Trump showing his detractors that he is exactly as all-powerful as he perceives himself as being […].

He doesn’t care what person he has to steamroll through in order to get his way, he’s trying to send a message and everybody that gets hurt as a result of that, that’s just collateral damage […] The goal here is the chilling effect this will have […].He’s not looking to bring [Abrego Garcia] back, because the fact that [Abrego Garcia] can be disappeared in an extrajudicial way is the point unto itself. It’s not about this guy, it’s about Trump being able to display his power.

In response to a question from Cohen about what can be done, Kirschner offers one possible solution:

The Trump administration and these ICE agents that engaged in this unconstitutional deportation violated a court order, violated a judge’s protection order saying Mr. Garcia cannot be deported to El Salvador.

One thing the court has available to it is the power of contempt, and if a court wanted to inspire the Trump administration to get a plane down there to El Salvador and bring this man back, the judge could say “I am going to begin to hold everyone in contempt who was part and parcel of this unconstitutional deportation that violated a judicial order.”

I would love to see them all held in contempt. Sadly, enforcement of such sanctions is done via the US Marshals Service, which is under the Executive branch, and while the US Marshals are supposed to legally comply with a judicial order, I expect the president, via his attorney general, to attempt to block any contempt order.

Nick Miroff, at The Atlantic, chronicles this incredibly harrowing tale (Apple News+ link):

The Trump administration acknowledged in a court filing Monday that it had grabbed a Maryland father with protected legal status and mistakenly deported him to El Salvador, but said that U.S. courts lack jurisdiction to order his return from the megaprison where he’s now locked up.

The case appears to be the first time the Trump administration has admitted to errors when it sent three planeloads of Salvadoran and Venezuelan deportees to El Salvador’s grim “Terrorism Confinement Center” on March 15. Attorneys for several Venezuelan deportees have said that the Trump administration falsely labeled their clients as gang members because of their tattoos. Trump officials have disputed those claims.

But in Monday’s court filing, attorneys for the government admitted that the Salvadoran man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, had been deported accidentally. “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 government told the court. Trump lawyers said the court has no ability to bring Abrego Garcia back now that he is in Salvadoran custody.

This story is absolutely terrifying. It’s a constitutional five-alarm fire that should see Americans up in arms and flooding the streets.

In their filing, the US government’s lawyers write:

This Court lacks jurisdiction because Abrego Garcia is not in United States custody.

Writing further:

[…] a person “is held ‘in custody’ by the United States when the United States official charged with his detention has ‘the power to produce him.’”

They’re claiming that no United States official has such power. Rather than apologizing profusely and taking every possible action to rectify the situation, Trump’s lawyers instead argue against the judge’s jurisdiction and the family’s right to petition for redress. The government has effectively professed that once they deport a person—without any due process—there’s nothing the United States can do to reverse course, even after admitting the removal was done in error. That Abrego Garcia—or anyone else—is forever out of their reach. It’s the despotic equivalent of “finders keepers, losers weepers,” or the “Oh no! Anyway” meme, applied to a man’s life.

A week ago Timothy Snyder wrote:

If you accept that non-citizens have no right to due process, you are accepting that citizens have no right to due process. All the government has to do is claim that you are not a citizen; without due process you have no chance to prove the contrary.

The truth is, today, right now, there is absolutely nothing preventing Donald Trump’s regime from snatching you or anyone you know, throwing you or them on a plane to El Salvador, and wiping their hands clean.

Or, as Gillian Branstetter wrote:

No matter your station in life, there is astoundingly little separating you from those men in that cage behind Kristi Noem. No charges, no attorneys, no hearings, no trial. Just conjecture and brute force could be enough to justify completely dehumanizing you, too.

How are we any different from Nazi Germany, or modern-day Russia?

In a story for WBEZ (signup required; Apple News+ link), Adriana Cardona-Maguigad writes that “attorneys with the National Immigrant Justice Center and the ACLU of have Illinois” accused the federal government of violating immigration law—arrests without probable cause, “making arrests without proper warrants and creating warrants in the field after the arrests,” which allegedly violate something called the Nava Settlement.

The story includes this revelation about one of the arrested people:

[…] Chicago resident Julio Noriega, 54, a U.S. citizen […] was arrested, handcuffed and spent most of the night at an ICE processing center […]. He was never questioned about his citizenship, and was only released after agents looked at his ID.

“I was born in Chicago, Illinois and am a United States citizen,” Noriega said in his statement, adding that on Jan. 31, after buying pizza in Berwyn he was surrounded by ICE agents and arrested. Officers took away his wallet, which had his ID and social security card. “They then handcuffed me and pushed me into a white van where other people were handcuffed as well.”

ICE arrested a US citizen—born here!—because, I presume, he “looks like” an immigrant and has “an immigrant’s” last name. No questions, no due process. He was held for ten hours:

He was released after midnight without any way to return home and without documentation of what happened […].

Appallingly, this isn’t the only instance of citizens being detained. Since Trump retook office, ICE agents are allegedly targeting people they presume don’t look or sound American, including Spanish-speaking Puerto Ricans and Navajo Nation tribal members.

We’ve officially entered the snatching Americans and legal immigrants off the streets phase of fascism. Next, we’ll be told it’s merely protective custody.

Kaveh Akbar drops a searingly emotional piece for The Nation in reaction to the abduction of Rumeysa Ozturk:

This is, more than anything, a plea for principled leftists to rise en masse and not just decry but disrupt a nation helmed by gleeful genocideers. I’m writing frantically, aware my prose is ugly, overearnest, unvetted against worst-faith readers. It’s graceless, unlovely. So am I.

Tonight I want to be understood, not appreciated.

I could quote the piece at length, but to do so would be a disservice to both Akbar and to you.

It’s critical that I share this plea, however:

I want to tell you powerlessness is an alibi. Hopelessness too. I want to ask, what specifically are you going to do? Tomorrow, the next day? What’s your “I am Spartacus” move to protect the more vulnerable, the targeted, the invisibled, the next-on-the-list?

I want to say, it’s your turn now, help. This is us asking you while we still can.

I’ve taken one tiny step: I added the phone number for the San Francisco Immigrant Rapid Response Hotline (415-200-1548) to my contacts, so I’m prepared to act if I see someone being confronted by ICE.

Find the equivalent service in your area and add the number to your phone.

I finally brought myself to watch the video of ICE’s abduction of Tufts PhD student Rumeysa Ozturk. It’s even more disturbing than I expected after reading the story because, watching, it looks exactly like a random kidnapping off the streets—plainclothes men and women, with masks, approaching a woman and coercing her into an SUV. It was simply done quietly, with badges and handcuffs, instead of loudly, with guns and chloroform-soaked handkerchiefs.

Opportunistic criminals with two-bit tin badges can now confidently disappear someone off the street, and we’ll simply assume they’re with ICE. 

That ambushing people on the street or at home is tolerated, even applauded by a fraction of Americans—and defended by our government officials, no less—is profoundly alarming. That it’s done in such a casual manner is equally disturbing.

At what point does ICE become indistinguishable from the Gestapo?

Jasmine Mooney writes in The Guardian about her harrowing experience being locked up in a series of ICE facilities after her visas were revoked:

I was taken to a tiny, freezing cement cell with bright fluorescent lights and a toilet. There were five other women lying on their mats with the aluminum sheets wrapped over them, looking like dead bodies. The guard locked the door behind me.

For two days, we remained in that cell, only leaving briefly for food. The lights never turned off, we never knew what time it was and no one answered our questions.

Stories about the inhumane conditions in these detention facilities mainly seem to make the news when it’s someone who “doesn’t belong there,” but the conditions are awful for everyone. It’s imperative that we continue to bring attention to this issue. I’m glad Mooney was willing to speak out and use her personal privilege.

To put things into perspective: I had a Canadian passport, lawyers, resources, media attention, friends, family and even politicians advocating for me. Yet, I was still detained for nearly two weeks.

Imagine what this system is like for every other person in there.

I can’t imagine having no way to reach someone who can help you, whether in the US or your home country, because you don’t have their telephone number or email address. It’s a nightmare—and there’s no incentive for the facilities to resolve things:

The reality became clear: Ice detention isn't just a bureaucratic nightmare. It's a business. These facilities are privately owned and run for profit.

Companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group receive government funding based on the number of people they detain, which is why they lobby for stricter immigration policies. It's a lucrative business: CoreCivic made over $560mfrom Ice contracts in a single year. In 2024, GEO Group made more than $763m from Ice contracts.

The more detainees, the more money they make. It stands to reason that these companies have no incentive to release people quickly. What I had experienced was finally starting to make sense.

If Donald Trump and Elon Musk were truly serious about cutting wasteful government spending, they’d abolish ICE.

Which I’m sure is next, right after “cancel Starlink contracts”.