Bulwark Takes - Trump’s Immigration Policy Is Sending People to Their Deaths

Episode Date: August 27, 2026

Go to https://zbiotics.com/bulwarktakes and use BULWARKTAKES at checkout for 15% off any first time orders of ZBiotics probiotics.Tim Miller gives his take on the intentional cruelty and escalating human cost of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown—from a five-year-old boy detained by ICE on his way to soccer to the father of a U.S. Navy sailor being detained, with the White House defending the decision. Plus, ICE is planning a facility in Louisiana that could hold women and children, developed by the company that operates the state’s notorious Angola prison. Now, immigrants are being sent back to dangerous areas of Haiti and Guatemala, and even deported to countries they aren’t from. In some cases, people sent back to dangerous areas have been killed. Tim breaks down the growing list of horrifying cases and what they reveal about the administration’s immigration policy. 

Hey, everybody. It's Tim Miller from the Bullwork. Obviously, we've been talking with you guys a lot about the particular story of Fredison, Ed Gariani, the Venezuelan couple, and their seven-year-old who have been stuck in the Dillian tournament camp, even though they followed all the rules and have been asking to self-deport, just like the Trump administration said that they wanted people to do. I have some tentative good news. I'm knocking on my wood desk here. It seems like Fredyson and Gariani. and their child are going to be able to go back to Venezuela. And this is muted good news. I don't really know why assailies from Venezuela shouldn't be allowed to stay in the country if they're working and learning English, going to the process correctly. But whatever, she's pregnant, she wants to go where she has reliable medical care,

and that's in Venezuela. That's the state of the American dream right now. She has got to go to Venezuela for that. So, again, we're crossing our fingers, but it seems like that is progressing. I appreciate everybody that reached out to Senator Britt's office in particular on that. While all that's been going on, there have been a bunch of other horrific immigration stories that I've been wanting to get to. So I thought it would be useful to kind of run through them all so you can kind of get a sense of the scale of the problems here. And if there's something, one of these stories touches you or one of these stories is related to your community,

that might be a place for you to advocate. So starting in Texas, continuing in Texas at the Dilley internment camp, there is another story that ties to something that caught a lot of people's attention, including Senator Britt in Minnesota. You will remember five-year-old Liam in the blue bunny hat who was taken to a detention center there. the same thing happened to another five-year-old Liam in Texas recently. Here's the story. Victor Nieto and his five-year-old son Liam were pulled over and detained by ICE in North Austin on the way to a children's soccer game about 10 days ago now. Liam wanted to go play soccer, so his dad took him to the game while they're out.

The truck that they're in was pulled over by ICE. They immediately asked him their legal status, a classic Kavanaugh stop. Liam was supposed to start kindergarten this week. What happened then is that they were both detained and sent to Dilly. Victor at Dilley said essentially, similarly to Freddy Senagaryani, they're trying to self-deport back to Mexico and asked that Liam be allowed to go with his mother, who is still in the Austin area. And according to the family, Victor was not given the option for Liam to be released to his mother,

or any of the family members that live in the area. Greg Kizarre, a congressman from the district, Democrat, obviously, has been kind of working on this. And similarly to Freddie Sinagariani, there's some kind of sense that they might get out of this hellhole that we have them in. But even still, this is insane. Like what we're doing is insane. A seven-year-old and a five-year-old in this disgusting internment camp,

No access to medical care. They're not eating. The food they're given is terrible. Why do they need to be in a camp at all? Like, this is crazy. These are not criminals. These are not the worst of the worst. Like, even if they're wanting to self-deport,

like you could go through an orderly process to help them do that. And, you know, stay with family members or, you know, stay outside of these camps. Like, why? Why are children inside razor wire camps? like unless absolutely necessary and for a short term. To that point, the Trump administration is not, you know, they might have been responsive to the outrage over a couple of specific situations, but they are ramping up their efforts to detain children.

Right here, my home state of Louisiana, opposite side of the state, but over in Alexandria, ICE is planning to open a 528-bed facility, for families, including unaccompanied children and women. They're going to open it up next to the airport, because this airport has been the largest deportation hub. Our governor, Jeff Landry, you know, is not doing anything to help our status at the very bottom of economic development, at the bottom of education. You know, we're at the bottom on all these other metrics, but we're really at the top

on private prison development here in Louisiana. So Landry has given them the okay to have a women and child prison in Alexandria near an airport because that airport is where a lot of these deportation flights are going out of. They're claiming this is like just a 72 hour staging area. But like investigations into a similar facility shows that people are held there well past the three day limit, that the conditions are unsafe. I was reading this story and I was stopped in my tracks when I read who was building this prison. This is a private prison. It's a non-profit. It's a LaSalle Family Foundation, which is the nonprofit arm of a private prison corporation that runs Angola.

Angola is the prison in Louisiana that famously has the Angola Prison Rodeo, which is a disgusting in human display that is a stain on our state. And honestly, I'll just get my blood pressure up if I tell you too much about what happens at the angle of prison rodeo. So if you're curious, just Google it. But the way that the prisoners are treated like it's fucking ancient Rome. And the whole thing is just racist and disgusting and feels like it's out of the Confederacy. And in the stories about this prison, I have friends that are lawyers here, and a lot of the stuff has gone out in the public.

Like the treatment of the inmates there is horrific. So, like, the idea that the group that runs this infamous prison for violent criminals in Louisiana and treats them awful is now going to run a child prison, people that didn't do anything. Like these kids literally didn't do anything. It's not like it's juvie. It's kids that were brought here illegally or overstayed visas or whatever or who's or maybe didn't do anything whose parents, you know, have in some cases didn't do anything illegally. Maybe they had temporary protected status that the Trump administration has now pulled out from under them.

So the notion that the Angola prison is going to run a child prison in Louisiana is fucking insane and outrageous and disgusting. on the level of what they're doing in Dilley or Alligator Alcatraz. You know, we'll continue to monitor it as we see that. But like, there's no reason for a staging area detention center for children. Like, if children are going to be deported, like, there are other ways to go about this, despite putting people into prison camps. This message is sponsored by Zbiotics. So I have to tell you all about this game-changing product to add to your routine before a night out with drinks. It's called pre-alcohol by Zbiotics. Zbiotics, pre-acolcohol, probiotic drink is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic. It was invented by PhD scientists to break down acetaldehyde, a byproduct by-product. Now, pre-acolcohol produces an enzyme that is designed to break down this byproduct. Drink pre-acolcohol as your first drink of the night,

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Luis Manuel Villis it was as the father he's taken into custody near Republic's in Key West where he lives. Luis is originally from Nicaragua. He's been living here for 20 years. He works as a handyman for hotels

in Key West. You know, you have to imagine that Trump, I don't have to imagine, we know. The Trump has had many people like Luis working at his hotels over the years. And this is how he's going to treat them now. It's how he's going to treat the father of a sailor that has volunteered to serve our country. He's living peacefully in South Florida, not breaking any laws, working in the hospitality industry,

doing what is necessary to provide for his family. family. His son has been going through hell on the USS Abraham Lincoln. Joshua's his 25-year-old U.S. Navy Sailor. You all know the story. They've been out at sea for nine months on a mission that is pointless, well beyond what is standard for how long sailors in the military are at sea without coming into port. It's been confirmed by the Navy that Joshua's on this ship. And not only that to add just a disgusting insult to injury. The government has put out a statement about this. DHS spokesperson said having a family member in the military is not a free pass to violate our nation's laws.

This is just fucking sick. It's just so disgusting and inhuman. And like imagine being Joshua, son of an immigrant, doing what you're supposed to do in this country. If you just work hard and play by the rules, you can get an opportunity. his dad is working as a handyman. He grows up, volunteers, says, you know what I'm going to serve this country that has given us this opportunity and treated us so well. And he gets sent out on a ship and he gets basically stranded at sea. People are trying to kill themselves on the ship.

The president and the Department of War have no actual plan for why they're there, what they're doing. the guy that runs the military allegedly. The secretary is spending more time, like going to the Iowa State Fair and attacking transgender people than he is trying to come up with a plan to win the war. And so you're Joshua, you're out there, you're stuck on this ship,

you're trying to keep a good attitude, you're trying to think about how you're serving your country, you're trying to think about, you know, what this service means. And meanwhile, back home, fucking masked thugs are nabbing your father. And putting him in a detention camp. Just the lack of gratefulness for the service,

just the total indecency of this administration on display in the life of Joshua Veles right now. And it's just, I feel horrible for him. It sucks. Luis's wife was interviewed recently. She said he was counting the days and weeks until his son arrived. so he could hug him. And then this happened. Luis, again, I've been following the rules,

showing up for his ice check-ins, how-to-work permit, had a social security card, had a driver's license. These are the people that are going after. And, you know, I brought this up on a podcast recently, but I think this is an important thing

to understand right now, is that they are absolutely going after after the people that are following the rules, like, because they're the easiest to find. There's another example of this. A 54-year-old name one was detained by ICE in Houston earlier this month. He had called Houston PD to report a shooting in a Home Depot parking lot.

So I said he didn't say what his offense was when they arrested him. So it's like this is what we want. We want people to be scared. We want people to live in fear in this country that they can't call the police and let them know that there's a shooting. We want them to not do that. We want them to not be part of society. You know, it's just like,

the people that these guys are nabbing and putting into the to just camps that have unimaginably intolerable conditions the people that we're doing that to is people that are going to their checkups the people that are on the grid the people that are trying to do this the right way people that are calling the police and letting them know that there's actual crime happening that they might want to look into and that's who they're going after. You know, just some of these horror stories, it's just hard for me to get into, but we'll just, I'll just give you a couple more. There's been a report from the Washington Post about the overcrowding at the ice facility

in New York City. In the first four days of June in 2025, the number of detainees in four holding rooms on the building's 10th floor jumped from approximately eight to more than 80. The room is a square cell with 30 feet on each side. So we got, what, 20 people in a room. That's 30 by 30. So that's what we're doing, shackling them. Apparently, the space is reeked of unwashed bodies.

People slept sitting up because there wasn't enough space to lie down. A shortage of medical staff. You hear this in every attention center. Nobody's getting health care. No people are serious health conditions. aren't getting their medicine. Text among ICE officers showed this. They received via FOIA. The numbers haven't really changed that much either. This is from June 2025. If you look at this chart, which you'll put up there, you know, we're a little bit down from peak, but huge, huge population

of people in ICE holding centers, detention centers nationwide. And, and, and, and, we just don't have the bandwidth to treat them like humans. So we don't. We treat them like dogs. One of these deportation stories that just, you know, makes you want to not get up in the morning. As an overland Missouri couple, they were from Guatemala. They did the right thing again, I guess, the right thing, nothing I would want them to do. But they did what they were told that they should do, which is self-deport.

and they went back to their hometown in Guatemala. It was very dangerous. And they were killed a couple weeks after they self-deported. The most devastating part of the story, their 14-month-old daughter, Giovanni, was found crying beside her mother's dead body in southern Guatemala. The child showed signs of dehydration and was taken to a medical center where she is recovering,

according to a Guatemalan news outlet. It's like, what? This is the whole point of this country. So, like, people like this that are fleeing danger, that want opportunities for freedom that they can come here. And, like, that's what the whole country is. This is not, our country is not Hungary. You know, it's not Italy.

It's not China. It's not like a country that is, is based on blood and soil and, you know, where there is like a coherent, you know, national culture and identity. Like, that's not what this country is. Like, this country was found by immigrants and, um, and had a tradition of welcoming people like this, uh, throughout its history. And there's also a tradition of people fighting this and using demagoguery.

Um, but, um, this is the first time that just an under, unabashed demagogue, um, became the president of the United States and let people that are sadistic run our immigration regime. And so we have a white national sadistic immigration regime that ends up sending people back to dangerous places like Haiti or places like Guatemala where they'll have to die, which takes us to the other big story that's been happening that I haven't had a chance to get to, which is we're sending people not even back to their country. It's like sick enough to send people that came here through a legal process, TPS, back to Haiti where things are dangerous,

back to certain parts of Guatemala that are still run by gangs where they get killed, that's bad enough. We're taking people from one example, a guy from Cuba and sending him to Central African Republic, which is a failed state where the Secretary of State says that we shouldn't, there's a travel warning there,

there's a travel advisory. People shouldn't go and visit there. We're sending people there who aren't even from there, don't know anyone, don't have any status. We don't have any status. How are they supposed to survive? You're in case the one man for the Cuban. His wife is a citizen. Like, he has family.

He's American family. It would be horrific enough to send these people back to Cuba that were embargoing and trying to starve out. But to send them to the Central African Republic, again, this is sadism. This is intentional, cruel. And it is fundamentally un-American and it's just story after story like this. And, you know, I don't know. I had, I guess I won't out of them. But I had a pretty prominent commentator that was Trump supporter, react to a video that I put out

about our new internment camps a couple weeks ago about the Iranian family that we've, that we continue to intern in Texas, who are here legally on a green card. And they were targeted by a campaign of, you know, whatever pro-Iranian freedom agitators or whatever. And, you know, one member of the couple had a parent that, you know, had been a regime, an Iranian regime official. And so this couple, this, oh, that has nothing to do. do with this couple and their child are now interned in an interment camp in Texas like just because

of their family because their race because their nation of origin it is japanese interment again that's exactly what it is and so anyway I said that I shared that and this person um gave me a little heart I get a little heart is that a is that courage no uh you know but Is it a positive sign that if we tell enough of these stories, enough of these individual stories, that there will be people that got sucked into the Trump orbit, that will recoil from it because they come from an immigrant family because they believed in the America laid out by Ronald Reagan

when he talked about the Shining City on the Hill? I think so. So I think it's important to keep driving this in the hopes that more and more people like that person. see these stories. Lastly, I just, this is just an update

because this happened right for I went on vacation. Obviously, there was the killing of Lorenzo Arojo in Maine, disgusting. Ice, just murder.

I have on camera, agents of the state murdered somebody. Two of the three witnesses were in that car. They're still in ICE custody. So, you know,

I assume that they would have testimony for in testimony about, you know, the agent that did summary execution in the street on the person in their car, the parent, father. And so it's harder for them to do that if they're in ICE custody. So that's something we'll be continuing to monitor. And on Good Morning America this week, Alex Prettie's family spoke out and talked about how they haven't heard for the government. And there seems to be not really a lot of effort made going to investigate and look into the person that killed their son.

So there it is. This is an uplifting video. So it's happening with just the ongoing, escalating horrors from our government and from ice. And so we're going to keep on it. So appreciate you guys. If you made it through this whole video, you're of Stern stuff.

So subscribe to the feed. Tell your friends about what we're doing here. And we'll be seeing you soon.