Bulwark Takes - 9: Trump's Evil Immigration Plan Just Got More Diabolical

Episode Date: June 25, 2025

Tim Miller talks to Aaron Reichlin-Melnick about how the Trump administration is aggressively deporting immigrants not to their home countries, but to unfamiliar third countries—often places facing severe unrest. This alarming tactic leaves people stranded, without resources or support, raising urgent human rights concerns.

Hey, everybody. It's Tim Miller from The Bullwork. I'm happy to be here with Aaron Recklin-Melnick, who is senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. Guy has been doing the Lord's work and just is a critical resource on all of the just parade of horribles with regards to immigration policy from this administration. So I really appreciate you coming on and I appreciate all the work you've been doing. Yeah, thank you for having me.

I want to talk specifically about one element of this. We can go down some other rabbit holes if necessary. There's just obviously with the ice raids, with El Salvador, there's so many different angles. But there's been some we haven't covered as much. And that has been the Trump administration's desire to deport people, not back to their country of origin, but to third countries. And it feels like they've selected the countries as a punishment to the people, essentially. This policy was stopped by a district judge, particularly with regards to some immigrants he was deporting to South Sudan. They put a stay on this, a hold on it. The Supreme Court in one of their shadow docket rulings came

down on party line six three, basically saying the Trump administration could do this. So I have a couple of specific questions, but like at the top level, like what do you see is happening here with regards to these deportations of folks from like Asia or Central America to Africa? Yeah, so the Trump administration is trying to send people to countries that are not their own for a couple of reasons. For some people they are trying to send them to other countries because those persons' home countries don't take them. They're so-called recalcitrant countries, countries like Cuba or Venezuela or Iran that say, no, you actually cannot deport people here. So in those cases, the third country removals allow the United States to essentially deport people that previously haven't been able to be deported or deportation

has been very difficult. But the other, and I think broader, thing that the Trump administration is doing here is sending a message that nobody is safe and as we can't send you to your home country, we're just going to find somewhere that you can go. And if it's a small country with some sort of civil war ongoing or imminent or serious human rights issues, we don't care. In fact, that's probably something that makes it more desirable because it sends that message, get out now. There's one particular case was one that I've been following, which caught my eye on this.

And it's a guy named Omar Amin. Are you familiar with this case at all? I am, yes. Yeah, it's been going on for a while. I wrote about this, I got five years during the first Trump administration. It's been going on for that long. And the short of this case was essentially this guy was a refugee from Iraq, did everything, came the right way to not come across the border illegally or whatever. Like came through the program, got to America. There was some source in Iraq, I guess, that told somebody that he had been in ISIS. And so as such, like the US ICE went and detained him and helped. He'd been working in America, didn't have any issues, hadn't done

anything illegally in America, had family here. He was detained for God knows how many years, many years. And he was fighting this and I hadn't seen the name in a while and it just popped up as him as one of these cases, they have decided to resettle him to Rwanda where he knows nobody. I mean, this is just like so horrible and inhumane. I know nothing. You know, the idea that like, we're going to take some guy that's from Iraq who came here didn't actually come here illegally, but we couldn't, we don't have any actual

evidence you could take them to court over. But because of some hearsay, intelligence report, we're going to now send them to Africa, to Rwanda. And it's unbelievable. The Omar Amin case is arguably something that falls into a more traditional use of third country removals, which is by all reports, this was a fairly detailed diplomatic negotiation about one specific person rather than a more broader agreement to take many people from random countries, even people that the other country doesn't know anything about.

So if you look at the history of third country removals in the past, what happened with him is a little bit like what previous administrations have done, where third country removals really are specific to an individual person that the United States wants to kick out. Of course, with Mr. Amin, that occurred under both Democratic and Republican administrations trying to get him deported. But what's happening with the Trump administration is much more widespread. It's a very different practice. It's taking large numbers of people who have no connection or no specific diplomatic reason for the United States to want another country

to take them and expelling them through a third country without any kind of agreement about how that country is going to treat the person. And I think that is a really key difference. You know, previous third country removals, the third country agreed that it would give that person some form of status and let them stay there. Now we're just planning on dumping people in another country and saying, what you do with those people is up to you. And we wash our hands of it. To that point.

I think that the Trump administration sees this as a green light to really, who knows how many types of folks are planning on deporting using this third party country method, but Trisha McLaughlin, the DHS spokesperson, tweeted out, fire up the deportation planes after all this, which, who the hell knows? I could just been there saber rattling bullshit on social media, but I think it was a pretty alarming warning that like, uh, you know, that this could be a mass practice that they, that they at least intend to take up. Uh, what,

what are you guys hearing on that front? We know that they are already trying to do this with countries in the region. Um, front. We know that they are already trying to do this with countries in the region. Mexico and Panama are the soon to be the destinations of place for people who are not from those countries. We of course, have already had that kind of third country removals going on under the Biden administration to Mexico. The Biden administration actually led on this becoming the first administration to ever deport large numbers of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans, recent migrants specifically to Mexico. And now the Trump administration is expanding that and they are doing this through essentially strong arming other countries in the region, threatening that if those countries do not go along with this plan, that they are going to either refuse to sign some sort of deal

or pressure them diplomatically or financially. Of course, with Panama, that Trump has said he wants the Panama Canal back, it seems that they agreed to take people who had never been to Panama in their life specifically to essentially get some leeway with the Trump administration here. And I think we're going to see that with the expanded travel ban. We have seen specifically that there are apparently 32 countries that are potentially going to be subject

to a new travel ban that haven't been already. And Secretary Rubio has indicated as, you know, part of these Department of State cables that those countries might be able to avoid a travel ban if they agree to take deportations. So we could potentially see a very significant expansion of this practice, which would have very serious negative impacts for due process and for some broader American principles. When somebody is deported to their home country, the person knows what to do next. They know the language, they know where they are, they potentially have people they can contact.

When somebody gets dumped in a third country that they might never have been to in their life, they can just disappear. They might not have a phone, they might not have any way to contact a loved one. People just vanish. And it might take weeks or months before anyone in their family knows where they're gone. Because the US government is not telling people that. Pete Slauson Yeah, the Panama situation is striking because it's something, it's one of those things where people say, oh, this is a distraction. This

is Trump being goofy on his social media talking about how he wants the Panama Canal and like Democrats shouldn't take the bait and all this. I pushed back on this like the Panama thing is way too a very real policy and the canal itself is real policy. But this, like what you're saying is right, right? Like they're bullying Panama into taking deportees. And there's a good New York Times story on this that feature like what Panama was, Panama isn't built for this. They don't have like, you know, a way to accommodate, you know, this kind of influx of deportation. So there were people that were in, I forget if it was like in a hotel or apartment building, and they'd been stuck there, and they were immigrants from other places, including the one story that stuck in my mind was a woman from Iran, actually. And she was, she was a Christian

from Iran holding up a sign. Jared Sussman A Christian convert, which was even more dangerous. Pete Slauson Yeah. So, yeah, she was holding up a sign to the, to the journalists around the building building like, save me, you know, something to that effect because we're going to, she was either going to get stuck in Panama where she knows nobody or be deported back to Iran to her death. It's a crazy situation and it's all related to its stupid bleats about how we should take back the Panama Canal.

And it's also a way for them to get around asylum. Because if you look at a woman like that, an Iranian Christian convert, that woman qualifies for asylum without a doubt, had she been allowed to access the asylum system. But what the Trump administration wants to do is get rid of that. And what they've done is not only

have they restricted access to asylum, but they're also now making the sort of backup protection, withholding of removal, which people may now know of because of Kilmara-Brega Garcia. Withholding of removal is the protection that's in US law to ensure we do not violate the UN Convention on Refugees, basic international law.

And so what withholding says is, yes, you can be ordered deported, but you can't be deported to your home country. So what they're saying is, well, anybody who wins withholding, we're just going to deport them somewhere else. And what happens next is then people often get deported from one country to another country that's not their own. And then that country deports them back to their home country. So essentially it's the US using a country as a middleman to get around these orders. And one of the people that was actually deported in violation of court order was a Guatemalan

gay man who had fled from Guatemala, one withholding a removal. At his immigration court hearing, the judge said, you cannot be deported to Mexico because the man was really worried about it. He had been raped and abused in Mexico on his way to the border. And he said, please don't sendorted to Mexico because the man was really worried about it. He had been raped and abused in Mexico on his way to the border. And he said, please don't send me to Mexico. And the judge said, I'm not, you can't be sent to Mexico. I'm saying you won withholding, congratulations.

48 hours later, ICE deports him to Mexico. And then from Mexico, he gets deported to Guatemala. Right with the very place he said, the judge said that he could not be deported to. And we're going to see more situations like this following the Supreme Court decision, because situations like that are now significantly easier for the government to pull off without due process.

That's horrible. How do you think judges are gonna handle that now? Like having seen that experience, you know, do you think that's gonna make judges act differently going forward? Well, unfortunately, what's happening right now is that immigration judges are being ordered to essentially incorporate this process into the system. So what we are hearing on the ground is that immigration judges are saying, I'm going to order that you be deported, not just to your home country, but also to Mexico, but also to Panama, but also to somewhere else. So that people can't raise due process concerns

when they are suddenly deported to that country. And this means that the administration really wants to build this into the process, that even if you win withholding of removal, that doesn't matter, we're just gonna deport you somewhere else. And if that other country deports you back to the place that we said we can't send you well, again, the

US can just claim to have washed its hands of it. And this is just a really, really dangerous viewpoint. And I think Sonia Sotomayor in her dissent in the Supreme Court case recently really got it right. You know, she said, apparently, the court finds the idea that thousands will suffer violence in far flung locales more palatable than the remote possibility essentially that a district court got it wrong. And this is what I fear is that we're going to see

these third country rules more often or they will just use third countries as a stepping stone to have people deported to places that they can't legally be deported from the United States. Yeah. And it's tragic. So it's just so interesting that you raised the travel ban side of this because I saw that list and I was like, there's some weird countries on that list. So like, why would there be a travel? I don't know in front of me right now, but why would there

be a travel ban from this place where there's no terror threat? Like I started Googling a couple of the countries. I was like, has there been a terror threat I'm not aware of right in that country? But no, it's part of these negotiations to get them to take these deportees. Yeah, and I think we were going to find out more about that whenever this new travel ban list of countries comes down. Reportedly, there was a 60 day period for countries to come into compliance with whatever sort of issues

the State Department claims. And after that 60 days, which is coming up, it's already been a week or two, so it's only about another six weeks left on that, we will find out what other countries have made agreements and it could be a large number of them. Crucially, the court didn't say all third country removals are legal.

What the Supreme Court did is lift an injunction that just forced the government to provide people due process. And there may be more developments in that court case. And of course, the government's policy still says on the books that people are supposed to get a tiny little bit of due process. But I do think we are going to see significant increase in the use of third country rules and more splashy operations to these countries that are so obviously not equipped to be sending people to, you know, Venezuelans to South Sudan, Mexicans to Libya, that kind of thing. All right, two last things I'll let you go.

Does the court ruling, you know, folks you talk to in circles, obviously also winding through the courts simultaneously, something that's very important to both of us that we've been talking about, which is the El Salvador kidnappies, I don't want to even call them deportees, and in those cases, they were also deported to a third country, to a third country gulag from Venezuela to El Salvador. So is there concern among their legal advocates that this ruling augurs badly for them, assuming that as those cases kind of go through the process up to the Supreme Court. Yeah, it's hard to say because the people that were sent to seek out to rot in El Salvador in a prison with no due process,

with no right to see a judge, no right to even talk to their loved ones, includes some people that were formerly deported there, deported to a third country in the way that we've been talking about, and some people who were sent there under the Alien Enemies Act. And so the Supreme Court so far has actually said that the Alien Enemies Act deportations must have due process, whereas those who had already been ordered deported and sent to El Salvador, now they're suggesting maybe those people don't get the same degree of due process. So this creates a really tricky situation where you might have the 125 or so or 130 people or so who were sent there under the Alien Enemies Act. Maybe they get more rights than the people who are Venezuelans who were just sent there to be imprisoned anyway. And I think that's why the Supreme Court's refusal to explain itself in this decision

from earlier this week is so significant. If it will impact those cases, we can't know how because the Supreme Court said nothing. It essentially allowed people to be sent to war zones with little due process without even explaining what it thought the lower courts got wrong. And it did that at the same time that it has actually stepped in to save people from being deported to third countries under different circumstances. And that kind of confusion is only going to work in the administration's favor. All right. You're following this stuff as close as anybody, closer than anybody. And

so is there anything else that just, this kind of broad question, immigration space, like you don't think is getting enough attention, a trend, you know, something or some abuses that haven't gotten as much attention as the stuff that's in the headlines? Yeah, I think one thing we're looking at right now is the massive increase in the use of detention, immigration detention in particular. It was reported earlier this week that ICE is now holding 59,000 people in detention. At the start of the year,

they had 39,000 people in detention. And as even as much as five weeks ago, there were only 48,000 people in detention. So they've added 11,000 net people into our immigration detention system in a month. And that means that every detention center is overcrowded. People are jammed into cells that have way too many people in them.

Rumeza-Ozter, before even all of this expansion happened, was in a cell with 22 people in a cell that had a maximum capacity of 14. So you are looking at people that are being held in appalling conditions, conditions worse than county jails, conditions that likely violate the constitution because this administration is ramping up enforcement so quickly. And I am deeply concerned about the health and safety of people in these detention centers. As always ICE detention has been bad enough, but when you are shoving people

into these detention centers, which are usually understaffed and have particular problems with medical staffing, you're gonna have people with preventable illnesses get significantly worse. And unfortunately, I really worry that people are gonna start dying as they expand

these detention centers and shove people in there. Well, all right. Aaron Reichman-Mellick, thank you so much for all your work on this. And unfortunately, there's going to be much more to talk about in your area of interest. So hopefully we'll be talking again soon. Yep. Happy to be back anytime. All right. Thanks, brother.