Bulwark Takes - ICE’s Cruelty Hits a New Low

Episode Date: April 3, 2025

Adrian Carrasquillo talks with Andrew Egger about the latest issue of his newsletter, Huddled Masses, about Adriana Quiroz Zapata, an asylum seeker from Colombia who ICE attempted to deport to Mexico in defiance of an immigration court order. Read more about her story in Huddled Masses

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Hi, everybody. This is Andrew Egger with The Bulwark. The Trump administration, as it tries to ramp up its mass deportation proceedings to actual mass levels, it's getting more and more blowback over some of the people who are being swept up in the deportation dragnet, not just people who are not, you know, the sort of violent criminals who many Trump voters thought they were voting to have deported, not just people who, you know, have been living peaceable, quiet, productive lives here, but actually, in fact, in more and more cases we're hearing about, people who had specific immigration court protections already in place on them, protecting them against various forms of deportation. There have been a few of those in the news lately, and our immigration reporter,

Adrian Carrasquillo, in his latest Huddled Masses newsletter today, has a story that's pretty striking. So he's here to talk with me a little bit about it today. Adrian, why don't you just tell us what's going on here? This is a woman who has not previously had her story in the press, but you've uncovered some pretty striking stuff. So just talk us through your story a little bit here. Yeah, thank you so much, Andrew. Her name is Adriana Quiroz Zapata. She is a, I mean, this is a really tough story. She's a rape victim. She's a torture victim. This is all detailed in court documents that we have where an immigration judge ruled that she could remain in the United States, withhold her removal under

the Convention Against Torture. These details are, you know, I'm not going to go into them fully, but some of the stuff in the story, the immigration judge goes to pains to explain why she would be allowed to stay. And, you know, it's basically her a vengeful ex using his connections in the Colombian police to continually trap her down violently and sexually abuse her 10 times over three years. So now this woman has the ability to not be sent back to Colombia. And the only way you can send someone to a third country is if that country not only agrees, but if there's ties to that country. And I think where these details matter and where it's part of the larger situation of what's going on with mass deportation, is that we are now seeing multiple instances where the Trump administration is sort of seeing the law as an inconvenient speed bump

along their path to execute these deportations. This woman cannot be sent anywhere, you know, without those connections that I just made, except they put her on a bus and they tried to dump her in Mexico. And Mexican officials were the ones that had to say, hey, actually, she's not, you know, she was sort of yelling about her successful torture case. And so Mexican officials were the ones that said, you cannot drop this woman here. The story gets into, you know, her lawyer alleging that ICE has been retaliating against the client. And we can get into that as well. Yeah. So just to kind of nail down some of the backstory here, because it's interesting. I mean, this this the the way that this woman is kind of like tied up in in a lot of these like longstanding different issues with with U.S. immigration, in, and particularly the

asylum system, that she and her significant other both came from Colombia, applied for asylum here. The significant other, as you alluded to, is someone who had a lot of family ties in Colombian national police, in law enforcement in Colombia. And they both apply for asylum. He is granted asylum. She is not. So she goes back to back to Colombia, right, for a time. And it's then and it's then he gets into some trouble in the United States. They call her up to to kind of or he calls her up to try to be a kind of a character witness for him, for U.S. police. And instead, she she sticks up for the person who he was allegedly abusing. And this is all in your piece. If people want to go read it at the Bulwark dot com.

But that is kind of what then creates the conditions of of a whole new set of unsafe conditions for her in Colombia is what is what she said, because he is unhappy with her, that she didn't stick up for him to US police. And then he, you know, helps to bring about this, this retaliatory system that then again, makes her fear for her life. And not just fear, it's not just fear, but that she's experienced this, I mean, this abuse is actively happening to her in Colombia. And that's what leads her to to make a second trip to the United States. Do I basically have all that right? No, 100 percent. You know, we've got the police report where after she is sent back to Colombia, her ex is now, you know, basically is accused of domestic violence, of assaulting her sister. So, you know, the reason that all those details were

important was, as you said, this is why this man was so upset at her. He gets deported over this assault. And so he basically tells her, I blame you and your sister for what happened and that he's going to exact revenge. Then when she comes back and now, you know, she has this pending case to see if she can remain in the United States. That's where we start getting into, you know, how much was ICE retaliating against this poor woman who's been through hell and why? And I think that that's really interesting, because what we have is, you know, ICE is not used to accountability and they're not used to being questioned. And they sort of can run free with what they want to do in terms of enforcement. And there were, you know, instances where, for example, the lawyer of Adriana is saying that, you know, we need to reach out to other people to get our story told because

the law is not being followed here. So they reach out to Congresswoman Veronica Escobar in El Paso. They reach out to Congressman Rob Menendez in New Jersey because Adriana may be an asylum seeker who now can stay in the country, but her family are U.S. citizens. Her niece is a U.S. citizen. Her sister's a U.S. citizen. They're constituents of Rob Menendez in New Jersey. So his office gets involved and finds out from the Mexican embassy, hey, you actually cannot send her to Mexico. Mexico will not take her. You know, that's what they find out. And it appears that there were multiple instances of ICE getting frustrated after the lawyer reached out to members of Congress and, you know, ICE agents even saying, hey, look, we were going to help you, but now you've put it over our head. You've sent it to members of Congress and ICE agents even saying, hey, look, we were going to help you, but now you've put it over our head. You've sent it to members of Congress, so we're not going to help you anymore. And just instances like this where you hear the horrible situation this woman's been through, and you're wondering, why the hell is ICE treating her this way? Why are they trying

to dump her in Mexico? So it's really a case where the more you uncover those layers, the worse there is there. Yeah. And I wanted to dwell on some of those details that I was talking about before of the asylum claim in particular, because I think a lot of times, you know, these stories that you report, these stories that other people report, a lot of people who support the president on immigration and kind of just his approach in these things. A lot of times, these people tend, one of the stock responses tends to be kind of rolling their eyes and saying, well, of course, that's what this person says. Of course, that's what this person's lawyer says. You know, they'll tell any sob story. But I think what's really important to point out here is that

you are not sourcing this only to her, only to her lawyer. I mean, a lot of this stuff is stuff that has already been adjudicated in an asylum court and found credible by a U.S. or sorry, in immigration court found credible by a U.S. she hasn't seen an immigration judge write a 19 page ruling before. And I think that gets into, you know, the judge is explaining, hey, this is the definitions of torture. This is what this is, the bar that she needs to reach to then be allowed to stay here under the Convention Against Torture. And then he explains all the terrible things she went through and why she did reach that level. So, you know, I think that those details are really important. And, you know, the Congressman Robin Nendes in New Jersey, his office has been working on this,

and he talked about it on the House floor, this case, without mentioning her name and just saying exactly what you said. The Trump administration is saying they're going after criminals, not the victims of criminals. So what is going on here? And I asked him if he thought that ICE was retaliating against this woman and he wouldn't speculate, but he said, what else is there? Why else would they be so dogged in their efforts to remove this woman, you know? And then again, that gets into, we've heard that there's quotas, we've heard they just want to remove people, and the amount that the administration is comfortable either flouting the law or going

against established law. And for example, in this case, where this woman can remain, and it should not be being sent to Mexico on a bus. Yeah, yeah. So my understanding here, as far as what's happening with this woman now, I mean, she has been granted the right not to be returned to Colombia specifically, right? But she has not actually been fully granted asylum in the United States. Is that correct? So basically, her lawyer now is trying to file a habeas petition in Texas and this has happened with some people where the administration takes someone from New Jersey sends them to Louisiana you know it's very difficult for lawyers to keep track of their clients and to file the proper

paperwork she basically wants to file what she says is two decades of accepted procedure from ICE she wants to have this petition to say, hey, why are we holding her? Why is she still being detained if she can't be sent to her home country? She wants parole in New Jersey with her family members with an ankle monitor. And, you know, another thing that struck me is just like the personal, the humanizing aspects of the story. This woman has her cat named Preciosa is still in Columbia. This woman is a very clean woman who likes to do her hair and do her nails. And she's languishing in El Paso detention right now when she doesn't have to be. She could be on parole in New Jersey and things like that. So her family is affected. Her niece is 24 years old

and is quoting police reports to me and is quoting court documents to me. She shouldn't have to be dealing with that. She's a U.S. citizen. Her mother, the sister of Adriana, is a U.S. citizen. She's lost eight pounds during this process and she's really stressed out. So, you know, I think it's the human cost of what's going on here. When we hear these numbers, it's hard to sort of understand even what that means. And then you zero in on the case of this woman and report, which is just kind of the internal accountability, the internal oversight component of this, because when this woman wanted to bring forward allegations that ICE was basically pushing her around, basically coercing her into signing away certain of her rights and things like that, she successfully brought a complaint, you report, before the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman, which is an internal, was an internal kind of policy shop, you know, within DHS there. Can you just talk a little bit about how that all went down for her? And then, you know, what's happened with that office

just in the last few weeks and months? Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, she's given, ICE did this twice. They gave her an untranslated document. In the first instance, they're saying, hey, this is nothing bad. They tell her in English, this is nothing bad. Then they say to her in Spanish, an agent says, don't worry, sign that. It's nothing bad. It's been pre-filled out. What they wanted her to do was sign away her rights for parole for a parole hearing. So the immigration lawyer told me this actually did complicate her situation because she was coerced into signing this document.

Ultimately, they file this office of the detention ombudsman. As you said, it's an OIDO complaint and they file that and it's successful. One of the deportation officers who acted improperly is reassigned to not work with detainees anymore. And so what's crazy about that is, though, in March, on March 21st, the Trump administration shuts down this office and other civil rights offices, the Department of Homeland Security, because they explained that they often function as internal adversaries that slow down operations. So one of the small measures of justice that this woman received was through this, you know, ombudsman's office, and they've been gutted, right? So now there's not going to be this level of accountability in the future. And that is what I kept going back

to the way that ISIS is bristling at being held accountable over their actions. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I feel like that's the kind of thing that we see a lot out of this particular administration. I mean, just this kind of like irritation about the whole notion of internal accountability of any kind, right? I mean, obviously here within ICE, that's a major, major one because these are people who have essentially no other recourse or so little other recourse to accountability to having their rights, you know, such as they are protected and upheld. But it's also, I mean, it also goes to, you know, Donald Trump firing inspectors general across the federal government.

Also goes to, you know, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, how one of his big crusades before he came into the administration, kind of the crusade that got him on the radar of the administration, was advocating for military personnel who were convicted of war crimes. You know, that's kind of the same the same sort of of critique where you're like, ah, well, these are our guys. And here you have these do gooders on the inside who's making their lives harder by making sure they're following the rules and essentially moving to make that harder, making it harder to achieve any kind of accountability or, you know, Trump's embrace of of a complete immunity for police officers accused of misconduct, things like that. I mean, it all kind of it all kind of it's all sort of a piece in that way.

The one thing other thing I wanted to ask you about is just when you have a story like this, I mean, you have all this information. A lot of it's assembled from court documents. A lot of it is stuff that an impartial judge has already kind of seen and and signed off on. Obviously, a lot of it as well is from her family members, her lawyers, all of this. What kind of action do you get from the administration? I mean, like, is there any attempt to justify any of this when you when you bring this before before the government? Sometimes, not in this in this case, but in previous stories, DHS spokesperson will respond. And it's sort of, you know, when they're saying that certain people are gang members and then evidence comes out that they're not or that this person could be innocent. And then sometimes they'll say, well, you know, we determined that they're gang members through multiple criteria.

In this instance, I sent detailed questions to ICE in El Paso, no response. The Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said, yes, send us the court documents. I sent over the court documents and no response. And it would be critical to get a response. And the lawyer was like, oh, please, please send it. I want a response because I want to know if they'll allow my client to go be on parole with her family in New Jersey wearing an ankle monitor, whatever the case may be. So, you know, I think that it's sort of in a case by case basis. Sometimes they respond, sometimes they don't. And I think that this one is so like the details of this case are so hard and so obvious that this woman has been through a lot that maybe that's why they didn't respond. And the only other thing I was going to tell you was that, you know, listeners, viewers may have seen this story of a Maryland father who was not supposed to be sent to El Salvador ever.

He had an asylum claim and he's not supposed to be sent to El Salvador because he could be harmed. And he was sent to an El Salvador prison anyway. And the administration admits that they've made an administrative error. And, you know, too bad we can't bring him back. And I see this story in many ways as a complementary to that. And just as problematic because this woman should not be being sent to Mexico. This woman cannot be sent to Colombia. And it seems like ICE is frustrated by not being able to remove her from the country. So it's just very obvious, whether it's vindictiveness, whether it's incompetence, various different things we've seen this administration thus far.

This is an instance that I think would shock a lot of people if this happens to this woman. Yeah, we can leave it at that. Thank you, Adrian, for coming on to talk through a lot of this stuff with me. Obviously, you've got a million things you could be writing about every day, and we'll look forward to seeing the other rocks you turn over, the other stuff you uncover in the weeks ahead. Thanks as well to all you out there in TV land for watching, for listening to us. If you enjoy the content, send it to a friend, like it, subscribe, come to our page, thebullwork.com, read all the good stuff we're putting up every day.

We're trying to be, you know, salt and light out there for all of you. So thank you for watching and we'll see you next time.