Bulwark Takes - Trump Shreds Due Process as GOP Plays Political Games With People’s Lives

Episode Date: March 27, 2025

Donald Trump is throwing due process in the garbage to snatch up innocent people and send them to El Salvador. Democrats are meeting the moment with lukewarm statements while the GOP play political games. Tim Miller, Sam Stein and Adrian Carrasquillo are furious and discuss what needs to happen now.

Bettering your business takes working with the best. With the James Hardy Alliance, you gain access to leads, training, networking, and support from the number one brand of siding in North America. Achieve new levels of success by joining the James Hardy Alliance today. Hey guys, it's me, Sam Stein, Managing Editor at The Bulwark. I am joined by Adrian Carasquelo and Tim Miller. We're coming to you because all of us are pretty hot on a couple of stories right now, our rage level at 100 or so, over what's happening with these Venezuelans being deported to El

Salvador and what's happening, frankly, on college campuses with ICE agents coming in and basically swooping up kids who wrote bad op-eds about Palestinians. Before we get to that, subscribe to the feed. Thank you for doing that. Appreciate it. Adrian, I want to start with you because you were the one who first pointed this out. There's a new Mother Jones story, and it goes through a number of these people who were caught in this dragnet. And basically, the gist is they all kind of were here, some through legal channels

to get here, applying for asylum, things like that. And then they were detained because they each had tattoos. And in the most shocking case, one of the people that they profiled had a tattoo that is about autism awareness because their sibling has autism. And they explained this to, they explained to the ICE agent, the ICE agent said,

you're in the clear. We realize you're not in Trendy, Aragua. We're good. And yet he still was deported to an El Salvadorian prison. So you wrote, I think, that this is just absolutely scandalous. And the question is, does it break through? And I'm kind of struck and almost paralyzed by that same question. Why is this not breaking through?

To me, this is just like, it's just shocking. It's so inhumane. What is going on here? I think we're going to get into with Warner and Gallego, where Democrats are looking at it through this like purely political lens. But it's obviously a scandal that they are completely removing due process from these men in the past as you know some lawyers of immigration lawyers have told me if you were thought if you had a tattoo and they weren't sure you would then get that adjudicated you would then do due process okay actually he's not a member of the andaragua these mistakes have been made in the past is that now no one cares and they're just shipping you

to an el salvadoran black site right and it's all just because of tattoo yeah i mean it seems like that's it the one guy you said his 15 year old brother has autism. So he has a tattoo. His name is Neri Alvarado. You have another guy who's a Venezuelan musician. These guys have no criminal records. They just have tattoos. The other thing that gets me is these tattoos are always like so innocuous. They're like a hummingbird, you know, tattoo because it gives good harmony and good energy. I mean, it's not like these are like scary looking tattoos uh the one guy arturo suarez he's a venezuelan musician the other guy fris get out cornejo owns a streetwear clothing company i mean these guys are trying to do

something with their lives escaping the like black hole that is venezuela and it's you know government and its economy trying to do something here. And this is on the heels, Tim, of the case that you spotlighted too, which was an LGBTQ makeup artist. The photos of him were like he was clearly not a gang member. And he's then – Pink mafia maybe. Yes, pink mafia. But he then finds himself in an El Salvadorian prison, again, because of tattoos.

Yeah, and others. There's another case yesterday the Miami Herald covered where – in this case, they didn't even come to the border. They did it exactly the right way. They didn't even use the asylee process. They went to a third country, Colombia, applied for refugee status, got vetted, fully vetted. Nobody gets vetted more than someone applying for refugee status. Come to america get to america the airport look at the tattoos again and it's like oh we're going to detain you and then they get sent to san salvador and they didn't even deport this person again and none and none of these cases it's not even right to say they deported

them because they're getting sent back to venezuela we've sent them to this prison camp in el salvador where who the hell knows what's happening to them and in the report, we've sent them to this prison camp in El Salvador, where who the hell knows what's happening to them. And in the report that we've been covering from Time Magazine, like the reporter saw them slapping, and like physically abusing these, these men. And, and so if that's what they're doing in front of the cameras, like who the hell knows what is happening in the depths of this prison camp that's been known for having human rights violations? It's absolutely, like, unbelievable and astonishing. I mean, this photo, again, this photo of Nary Alvarado is, to me, just rightly akin to the case that I've been talking about with the makeup artist.

I mean, are there gang members that have a rainbow ribbon tattoo for autism awareness? Like, is that a common tattoo for gang members? I don't really think that violent criminals like also, you know, have their little sort of ribbon, you know, activism ribbon. And this thing is ridiculous. ridiculous if they if they wanted to deport gang members or people or violent criminals or rapists then like okay i i think that they would have do it pretty yeah do it yeah but like what is this and and i just to me this is just absolutely you know the two other elements to this one these guys are fleeing communism so we're about to yell at the democrats for not speaking out enough but like for republicans for marcoio, for somebody whose family fled communism, like you would think

there would be some ideological sympathy with people like fleeing the Maduro regime and coming to this country. And it was like the fundamental, uh, uh, you know, element building block of like what America is and about Reagan reaganism and and so like the idea that people now are fleeing communism and then we are treating them as if we are the communist autocrats where you get no due process you have no rights and we just send you into into a fucking gulag in another country like it's it is just absolutely enraging and gobsmacking. And I think that to your point about the lack of outrage. Well, I know what's happening here.

I mean, you know what's happening here. The Trump people want you to engage in this because they think they have like a real bait and switch here. They get us to get outraged over these individual cases and then they'll come up like, well, you know, there's some social media posts that you're not even examining where they really did sort of show their colors that they really liked the gang. What about Lincoln Riley? Or what about like, what about these three horrible guys? People are tweeting me at this all the time. Like MAGA people are like, oh, what about these three examples of these people that have like nine criminal convictions and never got deported by biden and i'm like great biden should have deported the guy with nine criminal convictions i don't like that doesn't have anything to do with the basic human rights and the basic american

values of protecting and i guess this is other people and i guess this is what really pisses me off is because i know and i think we all know they're they're playing a political game here yeah to them this is bait it's not it's both about deporting as many people as possible which is because I know, and I think we all know, they're playing a political game here. To them, this is bait. It's both about deporting as many people as possible, which I think is the ideological foundation, but it's also about fucking bait. Because they think that this is a smart issue for them to go bait the Democrats and anyone else to argue that, no, you can't deport these people unless you vet them. Because they think that the public's with them on their side. And frankly, honestly, maybe they're fucking right. Yeah, I can't deport these people unless you vet them because they think that the public is with them on their side.

And frankly, honestly, maybe they're fucking right. Yeah, I don't know. Kristi Noem is down there I think right now. Like I think today. But I think they're right about the Democrats honestly because I've not seen – and you two have talked to them. I've not seen one Democrat actually impassionately – with passion argue that this is antithetical to American values. You talk to Ruben Gallego when you are in Arizona. I mean, he's he's gotten he just won election. He just

won election. Like what does he have to lose here? Yeah. You know, Ruben made it clear that the calculation he's making on everything from Lake and Riley to Guantanamo to now the El Salvador notorious prison is, you know, are Democrats fighting on smart ground and should they fight on higher ground? And so, you know, you're not, if you're, if you're making that argument, you're not talking about due process. You're not talking about the rights of these men being completely violated. And so it's just like, that's where Gallego is coming from. And to me, what struck out to me about that is that I think every, every decision he makes on immigration over the next few years is going to be through that lens.

And also he's going to, he's going to determine a lot of what the party itself does on immigration. Yeah, because even when I did, he's from Arizona and he's young. And even when I give this story, the folks in the house, they often hear, where's Gallego on this? So he has a lot of hope. And Tim, you talked to Mark Warner? I talked to Mark Warner yesterday, mostly about the Signal Intel breach, since that's his remit. But I asked him about this issue at the end.

And again, he was he said it was wrong. He gave a perfunctory statement about being opposed to it, said he wants the courts to do something. But I interrupted him. I'm like, the courts can't do anything about somebody that is not an American that is in a San Salvador prison. Like it's too late. Like the, the, the, you know, for the example of some of these men, they've, they're now in the custody of El Salvador. They don't have recourse. They're not on us land. They're not us citizens. So there is no, and there's for certain people,

there's still court cases. Um, so for some of though, there's not. And, you know, and he was just like, well, you know, then I guess there's protesting and there's whatever. It was just, it was very lukewarm. And I think that you could just, and I asked him specifically about Democrats' reluctance and like, he didn't really want to engage on it, but you could just tell like that there is not, this is not the hill that they want to die on and i just think that by i think the opposite is true of the bait like by by humanizing the people like by giving specific examples of people who are being tortured and tormented against you know for no fault of their own um and then tying into what's happening on college campuses people don't want

to live in fear that their friends are going to be – and we haven't talked about this Tufts situation. People aren't going to want to live in fear that their friends who are here legally on visas are going to be rounded up by secret police and fucking hoodies and unmarked cars. Yeah, the Tufts situation. So there you have a student at Tufts who's just walking down the street on her phone and what is it four five six people come up to her masked hooded put her hands behind her back take her phone

bring her to a car I mean there's people there's a guy walking the dog in the background like what the fuck and and this student as far as I can tell, according to the reporting, the crime, and put that in air quotes, is that she once wrote an op-ed praising or saying support the Palestinian cause and divest from Israel. I mean, what the hell is going on? Is that right? I think that's it. I think that's all they've had on her so far. Now, again, I'm sure the DHS Spocks will have some sort of tweet saying, you know, we monitored some social media posts. And maybe it's true. But there are processes that cannot involve just hooded undercover ICE agents abducting you from the street and then your lawyer not knowing where the hell you are.

We have to have a better system than that and you know what point of personal privilege but like it gets me so pissed off because all these free speech absolutists they all saddled up to trump right after the election saying ah you know finally someone who protects free speech and you know the ability for people on campus to you know speak their mind and all this stuff and it's like that's such horseshit where are they honestly where the fuck are they zuck zuck what was free speech for zuck he's like oh i just don't want to get regulated that was free speech that was free speech yeah i don't know and the the thing is again what is this person a danger like i thought that the point no all right i thought that the point of this whole thing was that oh we're going to prioritize the criminals you know and it's like how's that process going tom homan you know because the deportation total numbers if you look at them are not really any different than during the

biden administration for good for ill or good you know like that but like the total numbers are not up there's not been a mass deportation so far. What we've had is, you know, them doing these kind of made-for-TV efforts to target people that they think that they will get political advantage of because they have some ideological valence because they want to go after the campus protesters because of Israel. They want to go after the gang members because of trend to Aragua, the Venezuelans because of trend to Aragua. So, I mean, and they're doing so very, like, haphazardly would be the fucking nicest way you could put it. The nicest way to do it. Adrian, just honestly, how are the numbers? Like, is Tim right?

Is it sort of on par with where Biden was? Yeah, I think there's been a lot of talk about that where the Trump numbers, I think they started out at higher levels and they sort of have leveled off. We've heard a lot about, you know, these sort of Stephen Miller driven quotas, you know, where they want each ice field office to be getting certain arrests per day. I think like I'm with you, Sam, watching that Tufts video, it was like horrifying. Can you imagine like being a woman who's being surrounded by all these dudes in masks who are like, I'm coming with you. And she's like, can I call the police? And they said, we are the police. So first of all, that's horrifying. But again, it like the canceling of green cards, the canceling of legal status, it goes along. I think it's, it's tied in many

ways, like Tim was saying to the, the, the Alien Enemies Act, where an immigration lawyer told me, under what legal basis are you moving? Okay, Alien Enemies Act says you can kick them out of the country. Under what legal basis does it say you can disappear them to a prison for forced labor in another country? So these are the things where it's like, if no one speaks up, if Democrats don't speak up, then this allows the Trump administration to go further and further each time. Let me just end with this. Like there's a, there's a real cost to this. One, if you're an international student, why the hell would you want to come to the United States and study at our universities right now? Honestly, why would you do that? We're not going to attract anyone to come over here.

Now, maybe that's what they want. So maybe they don't view that as a cost. But two is the communities that are being destroyed by the indiscriminate targeting of people based on tattoos is evident. And I just want to note, going back to the morning of Mother Jones piece, Arturo Suarez, venezuelan musician who was caught in the dragnet he has a kid he has a wife uh they are now left at home they have no idea uh where the husband and father are they were able to ascertain that he was in el salvador because they saw the snuff film and they recognized him i don't know how because his head is shaved and it's down but that's how they saw him. And that picture, the picture, again, it looks like Abu Ghraib.

Yeah. Like the picture that he's in. It's dehumanizing. They're all in white shirts and underwear. And they're shaved heads. And they're chained. And they're sitting on top of each other. It's dehumanizing.

Imagine just seeing your husband or your father like that randomly the next day, not knowing where he is. I mean, the emotional trauma that that would cause, the profound developmental trauma it's going to cause the kid. We need to recognize that too. This is all levels of messed up. And that's why we're talking about it. Anyways, Adrian, Tim, appreciate it. Sorry, I had to get that one off my chest. Thank you for doing this. Thank you for turning to the feed. Be in touch.