It Could Happen Here - Rendition to El Salvador: How the Trump Administration Is Sending Asylum Seekers to Labor Camps

Episode Date: March 24, 2025

James and Gare discuss the rendition of 238 Venezuelan migrants to a prison labor camp in El Salvador.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

My husband cheated on me with two women. He wants to stay together because he has cancer. Should I stay? Okay Sam, that has to be the craziest story in OK Storytime podcast history. Well John, that's because it's dump of week and this user writes, last week we had an attempted break-in. I asked my husband, who was supposed to be at his mom's,

to come over and change the locks, but his mom told me he wasn't with her. And it took me less than an hour to find the first two women he was cheating on me with. Did you leave him? Well, to find out how this story ends, follow the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Prohibition is synonymous with speakeasies, jazz, flappers, and of course, failure. I'm Ed Helms, and on season three of my podcast, Snafu, there's a story I couldn't wait to tell you. It's about an unlikely duo in the 1920s who tried to warn the public that Prohibition was going to backfire so badly it just might leave thousands dead from poison. Listen and subscribe to Snafu on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Hey kids, it's me, Kevin Smith. And it's me, Harley Quinn Smith. That's my daughter, man, who my wife has always said is just a beardless, d***less version of me. And that's the name of our podcast, Beardless D***less Me. I'm the old one. I'm the young one. And every week we try to make each other laugh really hard.

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Listen to Beardless **** with me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever. You get your podcast. Causa Media. podcast. Calls on media. Hello, and welcome to It Could Happen here, a podcast about the world falling apart. And it was mostly just about that at the minute. But we do sometimes talk about how to put it back together as well. Joining me today is Garrison Davis. Hi, Garrison. Hello.

Hi. And we're on the falling apart theme. Since we've been on that one quite a lot the last few weeks. But today we are specifically talking about the, what I'm going to call the rendition of non-US nationals by the Trump administration over the last week. The reason I'm calling it, I guess, rendition and not deportation is because these people aren't being sent back to the countries they're from. They're being sent to El Salvador. Specifically, they're being sent to a place

called Secod. So the Trump administration has attempted to send 300 people who it accuses of being members of a foreign terrorist organization. We're going to get to how they get there under the Alien Enemies Act to a prison in El Salvador, where they will be detained for a year at the expense of the United States. And we're going to break down exactly how we got there over the course of this episode. So the Trump administration has accused these people of being members of two different gangs. The majority of them, there's 238 people, are accused of being members of Tren de Aragua. Tren de Aragua is a Venezuelan gang that the Trump administration recently declared a foreign terrorist organization.

Another 23 it's accusing of being members of MS-13, which is a Salvadorian gang. The Trump administration used something called the Alien Enemies Act to remove these people. The Alien Enemies Act, we actually spoke about it in November of last year when we were looking at provisions of US law that the Trump administration could use for its mass deportation agenda. This is one we spoke about. The Trump administration in the past has been quite good at finding obscure provisions of the United States law to exclude migrants. You can hear my whole series about Title 42 on that. That's kind of the paramount example, right?

The Alien Enemies Act is a 226-year-old piece of legislation. The last time it was used was to inter Japanese people during the Second World War. Right. So that's a pretty shameful part of United States history. And it's great that we're going back there. So who are the enemies in this case, right? It's generally like, I should probably point out the alien enemies act is intended for like, the people you're at war with. So if the United States is at war with, let's say, Canada, and there are Canadian citizens in the United States,

so people who have dual citizenship with Canada, and those people are individuals within that group are suspected to be spies or suspected to be serving the interests of Canada, not the United States, then they could be excluded or detained under the Alien Enemies Act or sent out of the country, as is the case here. As we saw in this instance,

there is very little recourse to appeal. This isn't like a deportation hearing or an asylum hearing where you have a lawyer representing you, where you have even a hearing. These people were rounded up and booted out of the country in very short order. Yeah, and like with or without due process, like we should not be blackbaking people and sending them to the like El Salvador labor prison, right? Like this is like just doing this at all, even with due process would already be horrifying.

The fact that they're just doing it without even any court process entirely and trying to bypass that just adds another level to an already horrifying and evil and shameful action. Yeah, it's terrible. I want to define some of the categories here. I want to start with Tren de Aragua. Spanish understanders will notice the word tren, meaning train. That's because they came out of construction unions who are building trains as part of

a Venezuelan infrastructure project in Aragua, which is part of Venezuela. There are other Venezuelan gangs. Tren de Eliano is the other one that springs to mind, which also come from the same place and does have similar names, but just people should understand that they're different organizations. They also have a strong presence in Venezuelan prisons. They have in the past been accused of doing violence on behalf of the Venezuelan state, but in 2024 Maduro blamed them for the protests after his election. People remember that that election was widely seen as fraudulent, and I covered that in

my series on the Daring and Gap, if people want to learn more about Venezuelan politics of migration to the United States. In 2024, Biden named Tren del Agua a transnational criminal organization, and then Trump named them a foreign terrorist organization. He labeled several cartels as FTOs as well. At the time, there's a lot of speculation

about why was it to allow for like drone strikes or covert operations. I think we're now seeing that this was part of this large ploy of deportation. Yeah, because like, quote unquote, terrorists have even less, quote unquote, rights than, quote unquote, criminals. Yes. Right? Like it's like, it's like the triangle it like the triangle of like which, which deplorable class has the least amount of rights. Terrorists are always like the ones with the least. Yeah.

And we've been doing that for 20 odd years now with Guantanamo Bay and renditions to Egypt and Syria and other places. In this case, people are being sent to secult, which is this prison in El Salvador. It's sometimes ref- Can you spell that? Yeah, C-E-C-O-T. SECOT. Yeah, SECOT, I guess. SECOT. It stands for Terrorism Confinement, Terrorism Detention Center.

It is largely referred to as a super prison, right? It was built in El Salvador by Bukele, as part of his, like, Iron Fist would be the way you translate it, it's iron fist policy against gangs and against crime. And it has been widely condemned for human rights abuses. People are crammed into cells with more than 100 people, but there are fewer bunks than there are prisoners, right? So they can't even all lie down at the same time. The bunks don't have bedding, they're just flat metal sheets. They're four high, so you have to climb over other

people to sleep. For more than 100 prisoners, there are two open toilets. That's the only access to a bathroom that you have. They might be allowed out for half an hour each day. They're not allowed to communicate with their families or the outside world. They're forced to shave their heads, and they all wear white. The lights are left on all day. As I said, they're provided with no bedding, no contact with the outside world, very little access to anything other than standing in that cell. There's two Bibles in each cell.

It's the only sort of entertainment they're allowed. It just sounds like a torture camp. Yeah. This is completely inhumane. Right? It's horrific. And for a couple of years now, Bukele has been doing these media tours of the Secod. Using it to generate content.

It's very much designed to generate this image of like, this is what will happen to quote unquote, what will happen to you if you're quote unquote in a gang. It's sort of been used to promote his image of someone who's taking an iron fist to gangs. As we saw when these people were sent to El Salvador, this tendency to use, I don't know what you would call it, incarceration as a way of making content was very much the case here, right? Yeah. We're going to break for ads when we come back. we will be consuming content that is people being stripped of their human

rights. My husband cheated on me with two women. He wants to stay together because he has cancer. Should I stay? Okay Sam, that has to be the craziest story in OK Storytime podcast history. Well John, that's because it's dumping week and this user writes, my partner told me when we first got together that he has cancer. He's currently living with his mom while he is in recovery

so that it takes the pressure off me caring for both him and her baby until he's well enough to move into our new home with us. So far. Well, last week we had attempted break-in. I asked my husband who was supposed to be at his mom's to come over and change locks, but he wouldn't. Then his mom told me he wasn't with her.

I went to Facebook and it took me less than an hour to find the first two women he was cheating on me with. Oh, what else is he lying about? Well, one thing my paranoia just wouldn't let up was about the cancer in his treatments. I asked his mom about it, who told me he doesn't have cancer. She also informed me he was in rehab, not the hospital. He suffered from addiction and was trying to recover

for me and our baby. Did she leave him? Well, to find out how the story ends, listen and follow the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Is this a good time? It's me, Dylan Mulvaney, and my dear friend, Joe Locke

from Heartstopper and Agatha All Along is my very first guest on my brand new podcast, The Dylan Hour.. It's musical mayhem and it is going to be so much fun. I like a man. You like a man. What do I like, Joe? You like a man too. We often- There's quite a similar- There's some cross pollination happening in here. Not like- No. Have we? No. No. Not yet. Never say never. I cannot wait for all you girls, gays and theys to join me on this extremely special pink confection of a podcast.

There is so much darkness in this world. And what I think we could all use more of is a little joy. Listen to the Dylan hour on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Love ya. Prohibition. It's no secret that banning alcohol didn't stop people from living it up in the 1920s. When we're five years into Prohibition, the government is starting to go, okay, this isn't

working. In fact, you might even say it backfired spectacularly. I'm Ed Helms, and on season three of my podcast, Snafu, we're taking you back to the 1920s and the tale of Formula 6. Because what you probably don't know about Prohibition is that American citizens were dying in massive numbers due to poisoned liquor, and all along an unlikely duo was trying desperately to stop the corruption behind it. They were like superhero crusaders turning the page on a system that didn't work, wasn't

fair and was corrupt. So how did prohibitions' war on alcohol go so off the rails that the government wound up poisoning its own people? To find out, listen and subscribe to Snafu on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you remember what you said the first night I came over here? How goes lower? From Blumhouse TV, I Heart Podcasts, and Ember 20

comes an all new fictional comedy podcast series. Join the flighty Damien Hirst as he unravels the mystery of his vanished boyfriend. And Santi was gone. I've been spending all my time looking for answers about what happened to Santi. And what's the way to find a missing person? Sleep with everyone he knew, obviously. Hmm, pillow talk.

The most unwelcome window into the human psyche. Follow our out of his element hero as he engages in a series of ill-conceived investigative hookups. Mama always used to say, God gave me gumption in place of a gag reflex. And as I was about to learn, no amount of showering can wash your hands of a bad hookup. Now, take a big whiff, my brah. Listen to The Hookup on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. And we are back. Garrison, do you want to go ahead and play this? So the tweet in question, the zit in question, is by Naib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, right? Should I read it out? Yeah, I think you should. I think it's worth noting that like this style of propaganda closely mirrors a lot of what like DHS and the Trump administration is doing on their official accounts. A lot of a lot of the like a memeified content creation format and like aesthetics being used to just display like torture and deportations and human rights abuses is very common among government accounts in the states right now. It's pretty, pretty horrifying to look at. And this kind of follows the suit and is possibly even more bleak. Yeah. But yeah, we should read this whole message and then we'll probably skip around on the video and talk about what we're seeing. Yeah. So I'll just read it.

Obviously, you don't understand it. I'm quoting it here directly from him. Today, the first 238 members of the Venezuelan criminal organization Tren de Aragua arrived in our country. They were immediately transferred to Secult, the terrorism confinement center, for a period of one year, parentheses, renewable. The United States will pay a very low fee for them, but a high one for us. Over time, these actions, combined with the production already being generated by more than 40,000 inmates engaged in various workshops and labour

under the Zero Idleness Programme, will help make our prison system self-sustainable. As of today, it costs $200 million per year. On this occasion, the US has sent us 23 MS-13 members wanted by Salvatore and Justice, including two ringleaders. One of them is a member of the criminal organization's highest structure. This will help us finalize intelligence gathering and go after the last remnants of MS-13, including its former and new members, money, weapons, drugs, hideouts, collaborators and sponsors. As always, we continue advancing in the fight against organised crime. But this time, we are also helping our allies, making our prison system self-sustainable and obtaining vital intelligence

to make our country an even safer place, all in a single action. May God bless El Salvador and may God bless the United States. I should probably just add that the US sent $3 million to pay for these $6 million, I'm sorry, to pay for the 300 prisoners that intended to send. The Zero Idleness program is like one of the most sinister things I've like read recently. Yeah, I mean, you could pull out of a George Orwell or like a Alters Huxley or something, right? And it wouldn't sound out of place. I's even like, you know, it's almost cliche now to point like German work camps, but like, come on. Yeah, I mean, come on.

Yeah, yeah, we're doing it again. So yeah, we'll probably play a clip of the music and then I'm gonna skip around on the video. We can just talk about what we're seeing here. Mm-hmm. It's first we have a shot of an airplane talk about what we're seeing here. At first we have a shot of an airport with three different planes and people getting rounded up and pushed on in single file. It has this action movie type music, lines of soldiers.

soldiers. So as the people getting loaded on the plane, they're getting like forced down. There's like people with like guns, police, military, like manhandling people, pushing their heads down, physically removing clothing. They're showing their tattoos there, right? That's when they're pulling up his shirt. Yeah. But like the way that they just walk around with these people, forcing their heads almost to their concrete as they make them shuffle along the ground, just basic dehumanization. Yeah. Shows them getting transported onto buses.

Yep. So they said they're arriving at Secord now. It shows them getting transported onto buses. So this said they're arriving at Secot now. Sort of bright white, very sterile facility. Now they're being forced onto their knees and shaved. Getting their beards shaved, heads shaved, getting shackled, all while being forced onto their knees on the ground. Then the cops doing this are all wearing, I guess balaclavas, I would describe them as,

face masks and hats. Yeah, all of the military and police officials are trying to hide their identity as they publicly display the actions that they're doing when they're shaving and holding people's heads up for the camera. Yeah. So it's a lot of that kind of stuff. You see them pushing people all in matching white clothes in single file into cells.

Yeah, and this is the cell we spoke about before. We'll include this link in the sources. It's basically just three minutes of torture porn. That's what they're doing. It's pretty bleak, honestly. I don't know what else to say about it besides it's just channeling pure evil. There's nothing else to say. Yeah, I don't know how anyone can watch that and think good. So we should talk about how they're identifying these people and we should talk about the process by which they were sent there.

ICE policy says a person can be deemed a gang member if they offer some notes to quote gang membership identification criteria. One of the criteria that they seem to be using in this instance is their tattoos. So there are some gangs that have a process of tattooing to enter the gang, right? MS-13, Mara Selva Strucha, it's what the MS stands for, being one of them. These like Mara, Central American gangs have tended to use that in the past. This isn't really something that happens with Tren de Agua, as far as I'm aware of. Some people, they've pointed to tattoos of trains in a document that Gaia found from the

Texas Department of Public Safety. They're pointing to stars as evidence that people were part of Tren de Agua. As far as I'm aware, Tren de Agua does not have a policy of tattooing people specifically because this is a thing that has been used by law enforcement to identify members, right? Like it would be silly to keep doing that once it's become so clear that the state uses that. So the one sort of case that I've seen legal documents on of these people, the one name we have, one of these people who's been sent is a man named Herceres Barrios.

He was a footballer, professional footballer in Venezuela who protested against the Maduro regime and was tortured and detained as a result. I've spoken to probably, I would imagine thousands of Venezuelan migrants, right? Again, I would like you to listen to my series on the Darien Gap. If you haven't, it would put a lot into it. All of these people have stories of watching people be shot, the brutal repression of protest, state violence, economic collapse, persecution for supporting the opposition in the country, right? And this is one of those stories. The criteria that they used to identify him were a tattoo, which had a football with a crown over the top and then the word Dios, God in English underneath.

Reis Barrios' lawyer says that this is an homage to the logo of Real Madrid, his favourite football club. They have claimed that it's evidence of gang membership, that's what the government is claiming here. The other criteria that they used is a picture of him throwing up the horns, I guess, which I believe it means I love you in sign language. I'm not sure if that's like an urban legend or if that's the case, and there are obviously different sign languages. But this is a hand gesture that's especially common in the Spanish-speaking world. If you're not familiar, I have my little finger and my index finger extended and my two other fingers curled up as if I was making a fist.

Almost like a Spider-Man hand symbol, I guess. my index finger extended and my two other fingers curled up as if I was making a fist. Almost like a Spider-Man hand symbol, I guess. Sure, I'm not familiar, but if you say so. To visually reference for people. If you were making a little cow, like a bull with your hands, that's what you would be doing, you know, shadow puppeting. It's very common. Yes, it's a very typical hand symbol.

It's a thing that people do when they're taking photos. I've even seen it like when you know If there's if I'm working with a photographer and they're just snapping photos of large groups of people people just do it Don't like just like people do the peace sign, you know, it's a thing to do with your hands Those are two criteria they use so I should point out that none of these people have been Accused or convicted of a crime either in the United States or in El Salvador. Even if they had been accused of a crime, even convicted of a crime in the United States, it's very unclear what legal basis there would be to then detain them in El Salvador.

The United States doesn't have a system whereby we can send people to penal colonies. At the time of writing, this has of course been challenged in court. A district court judge attempted to block the, or the district court judge did block these removals. Now he actually blocked them before the people had arrived in El Salvador. However, despite this, the planes didn't turn around. And I'm just going to quote directly from what the judge said here, quote, any plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States. Then it's a little another quote later. This is something you need to make sure is complied with immediately. This didn't happen,

right? The planes went from the US to Honduras, Honduras to El Salvador. They didn't stop even when the judge had given his order for them to stop. Now, normally in illegal proceedings such as this, right, the government or one of the parties may not agree with the findings of the judge and they may choose to appeal it, right? That's very normal. You still comply with the order, then appeal it, right? You don't just keep doing whatever you feel like doing because you don't think the judge was right.

Like that's in theory not how this works. Now in practice, what means does a judge have to force the executive to listen to him? I don't know. We're not seeing any of them on display at the minute. The government has cited various reasons for ignoring the ruling. One of them, Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt, claimed that there was quote, no lawful basis for the ruling. I'll go back to my previous statement about how you're supposed to appeal things. They also claimed in court that a verbal order is not the same as a written one, that's not something that's generally understood

to be the case, and that because the flights were over international water, the order did not apply. This was then part of the foreign policy powers reserved to the president. That last one is particularly worrying. It's you effectively don't have your rights in international waters, or like humans don't have rights in international waters. Yeah, it's just allowing the US government,

or the US government trying to say that it's allowed to do whatever it wants If the actions being taken or not like immediately on US soil or other foreign soil Yeah, we're gonna take another break and when we come back we will talk about their response to this judge's ruling Ruling. My husband cheated on me with two women. He wants to stay together because he has cancer. Should I stay? Okay Sam, that has to be the craziest story in OK Storytime podcast history.

Well John, that's because it's dumping week and this user writes, my partner told me when we first got together that he has cancer. He's currently living with his mom while he's in recovery so that it takes the pressure off me caring for both him and her baby Until he's well enough to move into our new home with us. Good so far.

Well last week we had attempted break-in I asked my husband who was supposed to be at his mom's to come over and change locks But he wouldn't. Then his mom told me he wasn't with her I went to Facebook and it took me less than an hour to find the first two women He was cheating on me. Oh, what else is he lying about? Well one thing my paranoia just wouldn't let up was about the cancer and his treatments.

I asked his mom about it, who told me he doesn't have cancer. She also informed me he was in rehab, not the hospital. He suffered from addiction and was trying to recover for me and our baby. Did she leave him? Well, to find out how the story ends, listen and follow the OK Storytime podcast

on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Is this a good time? It's me, Dylan Mulvaney, and my dear friend, Joe Locke from Heartstopper and Agatha All Along is my very first guest on my brand new podcast, The Dylan Hour. It's musical mayhem and it is going to be so much fun. I like a man. You like a man. What do I like, Joe? You like a man too. We often, there's some cross-pollination happening in here. Not like, no. Have we? No. No. Not yet. Never say never. I cannot wait for all you girls, gays, and theys

to join me on this extremely special pink confection of a podcast. There is so much darkness in this world and what I think we could all use more of is a little joy. Listen to The Dillon Hour on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Love ya! Prohibition. It's no secret that banning alcohol didn't stop people from living it up in the 1920s. When we're five years into Prohibition, the government is starting to go, okay, this isn't working. In fact, you might even say it backfired spectacularly.

I'm Ed Helms, and on season three of my podcast, Snafu, we're taking you back to the 1920s and the tale of Formula Six. Because what you probably don't know about prohibition is that American citizens were dying in massive numbers due to poisoned liquor and all along an unlikely duo was trying desperately to stop the corruption behind it. They were like superhero crusaders turning the page on a system that didn't work, wasn't fair, and was corrupt. So how did Prohibition's war on alcohol go so off the rails that the government wound up poisoning its own people? To find out, listen and subscribe to Snafu on, iHeart Podcasts, and Ember 20 comes an all new fictional comedy podcast series. Join the flighty Damien Hirst

as he unravels the mystery of his vanished boyfriend. And Santi was gone. I've been spending all my time looking for answers about what happened to Santi. And what's the way to find a missing person? Sleep with everyone he knew, obviously. Hmm, pillow talk. The most unwelcome window into the human psyche.

Follow our out of his element hero as he engages in a series of ill-conceived, investigative hookups. Mama always used to say, God gave me gumption in place of a gag reflex. And as I was about to learn, no amount of showering can wash your hands of a bad hookup. Now, take a big whiff, my bruh.

Listen to The Hookup on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Alright, and we are back. So, Trump's response to this Judge Boasberg's ruling was, I'm just going to read this as a true social post, aka a truth, quote, this radical left lunatic of a judge, a troublemaker and agitator who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama was not elected president. I'm not going to say what is capitalized, just understand that it's sporadically capitalized in the fashion that Trump likes to do. He didn't win the popular vote, parentheses by a lot, exclamation mark, comma. He didn't win all seven swing states. He didn't win 2750 to 525 counties. He didn't win anything.

I won for many reasons in an overwhelming mandate, but fightling illegal immigration may have been the number one reason for this historic victory. I'm just doing what the voters wanted me to do. This judge, like many of the crooked judges I'm forced to appear before, should be impeached. We don't want vicious, violent and demented criminals, many of them deranged murderers in our country. Make America great again. Tom Homan, the border czar, also told Fox News, quote, I don't care what the judges think. We made a promise to American people. The president Trump has made a promise to American people. We're going to make

this country safe again. I wake up every morning loving my job because I work for the greatest president in the history of my life and we're gonna make this country safe again. I'm proud to be a part of this administration. We're not stopping. I don't care what the judges think. I don't care what the left thinks. We're coming. Yeah.

I just love seeing you going through these protesters just crunching on the apple as their liberal tears just just flew out the hallway. Tom Holman, thanks so much for joining the program. This is open defiance of the courts, right? Like I don't really know. It's what we've been talking about the past month on executive disorder, how we are just continually like ramping up this clash between the executive branch and the judicial branch. The congressional branch has already basically given up all of their power. And yeah, this is like an

actual constitutional crisis. Very few people are taking this as seriously as what it should be. And even the courts seem a little bit tepid to like actually enforce their own power or like try to. Yeah. I mean, Boasberg mentioned contempt once from what I can find on PESA, but like, obviously, these judges, I think, are somewhat concerned that if they find the government in contempt court, then what happens? Because if you play your Trump card and no one cares and you have no cards left to play. It's kind of odd how the judges themselves are seemingly afraid of, like, pushing this constitutional crisis

into, like, explicit territory, right? To be like, what if we do the thing that then makes it clear to everyone else, like, oh, we have no power? Like, we actually have, like, like, it is just authoritarianism via the executive branch. Yeah. It's almost like they're trying to like backpedal from this like very obvious accelerationist push of like, no, we need to actually test this out.

Yeah, because we need to know where we're at. And they're scared too because they're scared, what if that testing causes like the Trump side to win? Yeah, but they're already winning in the absence of the testing. Exactly, and the problem is that in absence of that, you were just giving in the absence of protesting. Yes, exactly. And the problem is that in absence of that, you were just giving up and letting Trump win.

Yeah. After Trump called to impeach the, quote unquote, radical leftist lunatic of a judge who tried to temporarily halt the deportation of these 300 Venezuelan immigrants, Chief Justice John Roberts made a rare public statement rebuking calls to impeach judges for rulings that don't align with political agendas. And that's as far as they're going right now. They're making rare public statements saying you probably shouldn't call to impeach a judge. Meanwhile, Musk complains on Twitter.com about a quote unquote judicial coup and mistakenly

calls for 60 senators to impeach leftist judges. Now, of course, the Senate does not do impeachments. The House does and the Senate requires 67 votes to convict and remove someone from office once impeached. So ha ha, we got you. We got you, Elon. You made a mistake. We win.

Co-thefting. Yeah, it's where we're at right now with this case. We're recording this on Thursday. Boats by gave him a 24 hour extension to provide details about the flights. The government has suggested that it might claim that these are state secrets, despite the fact that it has widely publicized his fights, including in the video that we discussed. Yeah, they're turning these into fucking like TikTok, Instagram, real hype videos. They're not state secrets. It's propaganda.

You're publicly displaying these to show that these people are not human. You're trying to scare everyone into saying, we decide if you are a person or not. And if you're not a person, this is what we can do to you. We can do whatever we want to. It should be noted as well, there is actually a process in US law through the Alien Terrorist Removal Court for the expedited removal of terrorist suspects without revealing classified information publicly. In fact, Boesberg was chief judge on that court for five years. Jesus Christ.

But we are not using that process, we're using the Alien Enemies Act instead. So, yeah, this is a new exciting territory. On Monday, so that's the day that you're hearing this, a panel of judges from the district court in DC will hear an appeal by the United States government against Boasberg's attentive restraining order, the one that it didn't obey anyway. So we will have more on this and we will keep updating you on this. And suffice it to say that, I guess, again, this is a constitutional crisis. This is what it looks like.

I don't know if people expect fireworks to go off or some confetti to drop and it to be like, the separation of powers is gone. But if the government can ignore the courts, the separation of powers is gone. But if the government can ignore the courts, then that is what is happening. So I guess we will see in the meantime, these people, many of whom, one of them was a musician, one of them was a football player, right? Like I've interviewed hundreds, if not thousands of fence-wearing migrants, and most of them, it will shock you to hear, are just people who don't want to live with the boot of the state on their neck, people who want to make a decent living for their

families. For what it's worth, none of the Venezuelan migrants I met in the Tarrién Gap are in the United States or have come to the United States for my knowledge, just for people who are wondering how those stories resolve. They resolve with people currently stuck in Mexico in pretty terrible conditions, either working for very little or unable to work at all and trying to work out what to do. It's pretty bleak for them. It's pretty bleak for us too, if this is the direction that things are going. I don't know if I have much more to say.

No, I don't know what else there is to say about them just bypassing the courts to do a complete authoritarian over grab so that they can send hundreds of people to essentially a labor camp black site in a different country for an unknown period of time without any legal process. To be clear, not all of these people even entered the United States between ports of entry, which has been charged as a misdemeanor, generally isn't charged. Some of them came with the CBP-1, the fucking app, the thing you're supposed to do.

These are not proven criminals. Like these are just people, some of whom who immigrated legally and have been detained by ICE and are now shipped off to a like torture labor prison in a different country where they're going to stay for at least a year in parenthesis renewable. So like indefinitely like it's like they can be forced to labor for the rest of their lives.

A thing that has happened before in human history. No, like if you're like history, understanders should look at what's happening and be like, oh, we're doing that again, huh? And the only way that this ends is with people getting angry enough to start doing something about it. And I feel like we are, we're so like, everyone's become so complacent that it's even hard to get people to like care or like hear about this sort of thing from happening. Yeah. And you don't have to be like, I want to phrase this in radical terms, that you don't have to be like anywhere on the left to understand that like this is an assault on basic human rights.

It's assault on the foundational principles of the United States government. and everyone should be concerned about this. It shouldn't be a left right issue. This should be like a right wrong issue. So hopefully you can all have some talks with your family this week. I don't know. Like I think it's really important to push back on the idea that these people have done any crimes because they have not. That they have been convicted or found using any reasonable degree of evidence to be members of gangs like Tren de Aragua. And even if they have been convicted, they should not be sent to the Al Salvador torture labor camp.

But the fact that they're not even convicted, these are just random, in some cases, like random Venezuelan men who have been rounded up. For the crime of having tattoos, for the most part. Fucking horrifying. It is petrifying. Yeah. It's happening. It is petrifying. Yeah. It's happening. Like it is happening here.

Every day we're getting closer to the cool zone as more and more people start taking the situation seriously. Yeah. Um, so yeah, take it seriously. Uh, you know, advocate for these people. Best of luck. And, uh, if you want to email us, you can do at coolzontips at proton.me. That's an encrypted email address, but it's only encrypted end to end.

If you also send from an encrypted email address, do your due diligence. And yeah, send us tips if you have tips, ideas if you have ideas. And we will be back tomorrow with more things that are happening here. back tomorrow with more things that are happening here. If What Happened Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.

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