Bulwark Takes - This Isn’t a Mistake — It’s Evil

Episode Date: April 1, 2025

Tim Miller takes on the latest disgrace from the Trump administration: the U.S. government knowingly deported a legal immigrant—a father and husband to US citizens—to a brutal prison in El Salvador. He had legal protection. He had no criminal record. ICE admitted it was an “administrative error.”  And yet they’re doing nothing to bring him back. Please, do your part now: Contact your elected officials and demand accountability: https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials

Hey guys, it's Tim Miller from The Bulwark. We have breaking news just out from the Atlantic. For the first time, the government has admitted that they wrongly sent someone to the El Salvador prison hell. And yet, they're going to do nothing to bring that person back. That's right, they've admitted that they sent somebody there that was here legally, that had a temporary protected status because they had fled El Salvador in the past. back. That's right. They've admitted that they sent somebody there that was here legally that had a temporary protected status because they had fled El Salvador in the past. This person isn't even from Venezuela. They had fled El Salvador as a child and were now here legally under our asylum laws. And they deported him anyway, even though he had a protected status

in this country, a legal status in this country, and they're not going to do anything to try to get him back. And to add an insult to injury, he's married to an American citizen and they have a child who's five years old with severe disabilities. So I want to go through the details. This is a fucking horrific story. This is a nightmare. If this is,

if this story isn't enough to wake people the hell up about what our government is doing, sending these people to El Salvador, I don't really know what will. And so before I get into the story, please subscribe to the feed. We've been following it. But more importantly, please take a minute to call your senators, particularly if they're Democratic senators. No, actually, no, it doesn't matter. No matter who your senator is, please take a moment to call your senators particularly if they're democratic senators no actually no it doesn't matter no matter who your senator is please take a moment to call your senators and let them know you'd like to hear from them about the people that were disappearing illegally to to an el salvador gulag based on no evidence based on the most base kind of racial profiling. Here's the story.

Bear down because it is brutal. The El Salvador man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, was deported accidentally. Deported accidentally. I don't know if it really counts as a deportation when we have chained him and shackled him and sent him to an authoritarian prison in another country.

Again, it's worth noting here, this person is not even Venezuelan. They said that they were sending Tren de Aragua gang members from Venezuela there. This person is not from Venezuela, obviously he's not Tren de Aragua. Here's a statement from the government. 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. Then they told the court that they have no ability to bring him back now because Abrego Garcia is in Salvadoran custody. The people that we're paying to hold him.

Whose custody is he in? I'm pretty sure it's still our custody because we're paying to hold him we're paying whose custody is he in i'm pretty sure still our custody because we're paying six million dollars tell salvador to hold him so i i don't understand how we don't have some jurisdiction here or some ability to bring this person back are you telling us bukele won't send the person back if donald trump asks i i find that very hard to imagine um the administration also then says that um trump has primacy in foreign affairs and his whims on foreign affairs outweigh the interest of abrigo garcia and his family that is what they say in a fucking dictatorship actually that, that is not true. The individual interests of Abrego and his family who are American citizens actually do outweigh the whims of the leader in a free country where the president is of, by, and for the people.

In a country where people have basic constitutional rights and protections, basic due process protections, that's what it means to live in a liberal democracy, which we still lived in until about two and a half months ago. The story of Ebrigo Garcia is absolutely just devastating. He came to the United States at age 16. I think I said 11 earlier. It was in 2011 at age 16.

He was fleeing gang threats in El Salvador. So there's a deep irony here. Not only is this person not a gang member, he actually fled the gangs to come to our country seeking freedom in 2011. Eight years later in 2019, he received the protected legal status known as withholding of removal from a U S immigration judge who found he would likely be targeted by the gangs. If he was deported back instead of what we've done is something way worse than

that. We have sent him into a place where there's human rights abuses into this fucking gulag where there's no, like you're, you have to stand in these like disgusting cells. Like you're a rat. You're not even a human. It's what we've done to him.

Country that said that we were protecting him from, from the gangs. When he came here, as I mentioned, he married a U S citizen. His five-year-old U.S. citizen. His five-year-old disabled child is also a citizen. He has no criminal record in the United States. The Trump administration does not claim that he has a criminal record. On March 12th, Abrego Garcia had picked up the five-year-old son after work from the boy's grandmother's house.

And this is all from the Atlantic. When the ICE officers stopped the car, saying his protected status had changed, officers waited for Abrego Garcia's wife to come to the scene and take care of the boy, and they drove him away in handcuffs. Within two days, he'd been transferred to the ICE staging facility in Texas.

Along with the other detainees, the government was preparing to send to el salvador in response to trump's invocation of the alien enemies act of 1798 again worth remembering that the whole point of the alien enemies act which is absurd from the start is that we're in a war with trenda aragua from venezuela that is why that is the basis of the justification that this administration has made for sending people to a prison in a third country with no due process. It's that we're in a war, that they're not going to have due process rights. This person is not a trend or a wagwa.

So, like, how is this even relevant to the Alien Enemies Act of 1798? Since he was taken on March 12th, he's had no contact with any law enforcement agency. There's attorneys with a couple other facts about Obrador Garcia from the Atlantic. He works full time as a union sheet metal apprentice. He's completed requirements to check in annually with ICE ever since 2019. And he cares for his son who has autism and a hearing defect and is unable to communicate verbally. His family has had no contact with him since he was sent to the mega prison in El Salvador. This is inhuman. What we are doing to this person is inhuman. We are treating him as a subhuman with no rights to advance some political

agenda. We're taking away from his disabled kid that he is caring for. From his wife. From the U.S. citizens that he lives with. Legally. Under a protected status. We are taking him away from them. And shackling him. And sending him possibly to die.

In a prison. In another country. Flying him on some plane. With maybe gang members. Who who knows maybe there aren't even any gang members there like honestly this story hits and i was wondering oh which of the cases that we've been covering here at the bulwark is the one where the where the government has admitted a mistake none of them there wasn't any of the 10 cases that uh that mother jones reported on that we talked about in a different video. It's not the case of Andri. It's not the case that the Miami Herald's been covering. Like, it's none of the

existing cases. It's a totally different one that we had not yet heard of. He was not on this, this man Abrego Garcia was not even on the original manifest that the government put out. So we don't even really know who's in El Salvador. Like, the fact that this government

could say essentially oopsie which is what bukele tweeted when when you know there was the the judge is ruling that it was illegal to send these planes to el salvador and the judge put a stay on it and then the planes already went to el salvador And then Bukele put oopsie. That's basically what this government is saying right now. Oopsie. We are going to take the husband and father of an American citizen who is here legally. We're going to shackle him. We're going to put him on a plane.

We're going to send him to San Salvador. We're going to put him on a fucking bus to a prison for terrorists outside of San Salvador. We're going to fucking shave his head. We're going to slap him. We're going to beat him. We're going to make him live in filth. Make him live in conditions that you would not wish upon your worst enemy, upon your evilest foe, and we're going to make him do all that without any contact with his family, without any ability to appeal, we're going to say no, you are stuck there. You are stuck in a fucking prison with masked, robocop sadistic guards doing whatever they want to you.

You have no rights. You have no ability to get a meal. You have nothing. You are just at the mercy of evil, sadistic, fascist monsters now. And we, America, is enabling that. This is absolutely appalling to a degree that I really can't even process. It is the worst nightmare that you could possibly imagine. We're inflicting this upon a man who is just trying to flee his country to find freedom. A man who is just trying to parent his child with severe

challenges. And we're not going to leave that child fatherless. This is the family values party. This is the party of free speech and freedom. These people are sick. Everyone who's involved with this is sick and demented. And we need to bring this man home. We need to bring the rest of them home. And we need to put them in front of a judge like you do in a normal country. And I need you who are watching this to call your senators, call your representatives, and tell them that is what we demand from this.

More on this soon. Subscribe to the feed. Appreciate you.