Up First from NPR - Wrongly Deported, DOGE And Agency Data, Harvard Defies The White House

Episode Date: April 15, 2025

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele says he has no plans to return a Maryland man mistakenly deported to El Salvador, an NPR report details unusual data events at the National Labor Relations Board, and Harvard University says that it won't comply with a list of demands from the Trump administration.Want more comprehensive analysis of the most important news of the day, plus a little fun? Subscribe to the Up First newsletter.Today's episode of Up First was edited by Roberta Rampton, Brett Neely, Steven Drummond, Mohamad ElBardicy, and Janaya Williams. It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Carla Estevez, Ashley Montgomery, Nia Dumas and Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Arthur Laurent. And our technical director is David Greenburg. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The Trump administration seems to have no plans to bring back a Maryland man mistakenly sent to a prison in El Salvador. Why don't you just say, isn't it wonderful that we're keeping criminals out of our country? Is the administration defying the Supreme Court? I'm Michelle Martin, that's Leila Fadl, and this is Up First from NPR News. A whistleblower at the National Labor Relations Board tells NPR that after Doge, Elon Musk's cost cutting group gained access to their servers, records were deleted and security tools were deactivated.

That doesn't just happen. Logs don't just disappear. Tools don't just turn themselves off randomly. Was the agency's data compromised? And Harvard says it won't let the Trump administration dictate what it teaches, who it hires, or who it admits. It's risking billions of dollars in federal funds by defying the demands. Stay with us, we'll give you the news you need to start your day.

99% of the US population lives within listening range of at least one public media station. And everyone can listen to NPR podcasts free of charge. That means you get completely unpaywalled access to stories, prize-winning reporting, and shows that represent the voices in every corner of the country. Hear the bigger picture every day on NPR. NPR informs and connects communities around the country, providing reliable information in times of crisis. Federal funding helps us fulfill our mission to create a more informed public and ensures

that public radio remains available to everyone. Learn more about safeguarding the future of public media. Visit ProtectMyPublicMedia.org. Wait, wait, don't tell me. Fresh air? Up first. NPR News Now, Planet Money, TED Radio Hour, ThruLine, the NPR Politics Podcast, Code Switch, Embedded, Books We Love, Wildcard are just some of the podcasts you can enjoy sponsor-free with NPR+. Get all sorts of perks across more than 20 podcasts with the bundle option.

Learn more at Plus.npr.org. Despite a Supreme Court order to facilitate the return of a Maryland man who was wrongfully deported to a Salvadoran prison, the White House appears to have no intention of doing that. Why don't you just say, isn't it wonderful that we're keeping criminals out of our country? Why can't you just say that? And Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele says he doesn't plan to release the man either. The Trump administration has accused Kilmar Rodrigo Garcia of being a gang member.

His attorney says that is not true and there's been no evidence presented publicly to support that. The Salvadoran president was in the Oval Office yesterday meeting with President Trump. NPR White House correspondent Franco Ordonez is covering this story and he joins us now. Good morning, Franco. Good morning, Leila. Franco, tell us more about the situation here involving Kilmer Abrego-Garcia. Yeah, he is a Salvadoran citizen who has lived in Maryland for about 15 years.

He was granted some protections by the court, but then last month he was deported along with hundreds of other migrants to a Salvadoran mega prison. But the Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return. So wait, Franco, are they ignoring a Supreme Court ruling? Well, I mean, first, the Trump team is downplaying this as a paperwork issue. They insist Abrego Garcia has ties to the MS-13 gang. Again, his lawyer says he's not a member. So at this meeting yesterday, Attorney General Pam Bondi said the Supreme Court's order

to facilitate simply means they need to provide a plane to return them. But first, El Salvador has to release them. And it's clear the Trump administration has no intention of asking Bukele to do that. Here is White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller speaking from the Oval Office. He is a citizen of El Salvador. So it's very arrogant even for American media to suggest that we would even tell El Salvador how to handle their own citizens as a starting point. And Secretary of State Marco Rubio also described this as an international matter and said that

no court in the US had the right to conduct US foreign policy. So what are the implications of this? Attorneys say there are more cases like Abrego Garcia where people are wrongfully being accused of being gang members. Yeah, that's right. The American Civil Liberties Union is challenging the administration's use of a really old law to deport gang, alleged gang members. It's called the Alien Enemies Act. I spoke with Lee Gellar, one of their attorneys. This is a case not just about legal technicalities, but American values.

We've admitted we sent this individual to El Salvador by mistake. We all know that he may spend the rest of his life in this brutal prison, and yet the United States is battling in court not to bring him back. Gellert says the case goes well beyond just this one man and really could have big implications on all these other cases. I mean more than 200 migrants were deported to the prison without due process using the old law and he argues that the US should not be using a system where people have no due process especially if the US is not

willing to correct its mistakes. So is Trump having any second thoughts about this? I mean it doesn't appear that way. In fact, he was talking yesterday about expanding work with Bukele. Trump said he should build more prisons, and even floated the idea of sending some US convicts to El Salvador. But it's not clear that would be legal.

That's White House correspondent Franco Ordonez. Thank you, Franco. Thank you. Ordoñez. Thank you, Franco. Thank you. Since President Trump took office again, members of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, that's that ad hoc cost-cutting group led by Elon Musk, have aggressively sought access to government data and computer systems. Today we're going to learn how they've done that at one small agency. A whistleblower told Congress and NPR about what Doge did when it arrived at the National

Labor Relations Board. We're joined now by NPR's Jenna McLaughlin, who covers cybersecurity. Good morning, Jenna. Good morning, Michelle. So what sort of things did the whistleblower see that made him want to come forward? A lot. So, the whistleblower's name is Daniel Baroulis. And he's one of the people who manages the NLRB's cloud.

That's the virtual servers that host almost all the agency's data. So when Doe arrived, he says they demanded the highest level access, the so-called God Tier accounts. And then, weird stuff started happening. He saw a big spike in data leaving the agency, something that almost never happens. Meanwhile, security and monitoring tools were turned off, a bunch of records were deleted. He even started to notice login attempts from a Russian IP address that had the right username and password. Listen to how he describes it.

Why was that done? And that's a purposeful effort. That doesn't just happen. Logs don't just disappear. Tools don't just turn themselves off randomly. Everything in a computer has a cause and effect. That means it has to have a trigger. So it's difficult to prove exactly what happened, but Barula says he and his colleagues agreed it looked like a breach and that the agency's data could have been compromised. Let's back up for a second. For people who don't know, what is the National Labor Relations

Board or the NLRB, and what does it do, and why is the data that it holds sensitive? Yeah, so it's a small independent agency, but it is really important for workers' rights. It investigates and adjudicates unfair labor practice complaints. So if a group of employees believes they were wrongfully fired, they might call in the NLRB to look into it. It also protects the rights of employees to unionize. So in the course of their investigations, Michelle, they gather really sensitive data from lists of people interested in forming a union to witness statements, maybe even corporate secrets. So this Department of Government Efficiency or DOJ is led by Elon Musk. Does he fit into

the story? Yeah, so there currently are several ongoing NLRB cases involving Musk's companies, including SpaceX and Tesla. That was really concerning to some of the labor law experts that I spoke to. He said that he will recuse himself from anything involving his companies, but we haven't really seen any evidence that's true so far. If he got access to information about how the government was building those cases, or

private statements from witnesses even, it could give him a real leg up in court for one. Do we have any evidence that Doge is acting this way in other parts of the federal government? Absolutely, Michelle. According to my reporting and a lot of public evidence, this seems like a trend. First, there are over a dozen court cases where government witnesses have outlined DOJ's mishandling of sensitive data at agencies like the Treasury Department or the IRS. I also heard from aides in Congress, and they say there are ongoing

investigations into other reports of DOJ removing data from agencies for unknown reasons. Part of the reason Brulas came forward was to inspire others to speak up. I believe with all my heart that this goes far beyond just case data. Brulas provided a lot of technical data we have not seen before, but this could be just one piece of the puzzle. That was NPR cybersecurity correspondent Jenna McLaughlin. Jenna thank you. Thank you. You can find a lot more of Jenna's reporting at NPR.org

and hear more about this story and all things considered tonight. Last night, the Trump administration froze more than $2.2 billion in contracts and multi-year grants for Harvard University. This move came hours after Harvard said it will not comply with the administration's demands that it drastically change its hiring, admissions, and other policies in exchange for federal money. And PR's Johnaki Mehta has been following this. Hi, Johnaki.

Hi, Laila. Okay, so what does the Trump administration want Harvard to change exactly? Yeah, there are a range of demands. They include ordering the university to screen international students for what they call supporting terrorism or anti-Semitism, eliminating diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, and making sure their hiring and admission practices are solely based on merit rather than race-based preference, for example. Now Harvard is refusing to comply, which is very different than what we saw at Columbia,

which did comply with a list of demands from the administration to keep its funding. Tell us why. Yeah, that's right. On Monday, Harvard's president Alan Garber wrote a letter to students and staff that said, quote, no government, regardless of which parties in power should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.

He also went on to say that even though some of the demands outlined by the government were aimed at combating anti-Semitism, the majority were trying to regulate what he called intellectual conditions at Harvard and threatening free speech. And then just hours after that response, the Trump administration froze that $2.2 billion and said, quote,

Harvard's statement today reinforces a troubling entitlement mindset that's endemic in our nation's most prestigious universities and colleges. That federal investment does not come with the responsibility to uphold civil rights laws. Has Harvard said anything in response to the funding freeze?

Yeah, so minutes after the announcement about the freeze, a spokesperson from Harvard pointed me to one specific part of the president's letter, which said, for the government to retreat from these partnerships now risks not only the health and well-being of millions of individuals, but also the economic security and vitality of our nation. Okay, so in what way, Janaki, just break down what this 2.2 plus billion dollars that's already frozen does, and this other 6.7 or so billion that's on the line. What are they used for?

Yeah, so Harvard actually updated the home page of its website to reflect how federal dollars support research they do. They've listed research on treatments for several forms of cancer, heart disease, organs and transplantation. And they say federal funding is the university's largest source of support for what Harvard calls

cutting edge groundbreaking research. Now it's not just Harvard, the Trump administration has sent similar threats to dozens of universities. How are leaders of those institutions responding? Yeah, the administration has threatened billions of dollars of funding for other universities, some of whom say they will cooperate with the government's demands you pointed to Columbia, but that has created a lot of

anxiety for college leaders who are in this unprecedented bind, change their policies or lose money for important research. My colleague Alyssa Nadwarn recently spoke to some of those leaders. Here's Andrew Martin, the chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis. We're in a moment with great uncertainty about what the future of the relationship between the federal government and American institutions of higher education look like. Uncertainty is challenging. And a lot of these leaders said that's made it really hard not just to focus on budgets,

but also on students, faculty, and education itself. And PR education reporter Janaki Mehta. Thanks Janaki. Thank you, Leila. Peace talks to end the civil war in Sudan are happening in London today. It's been two years of war. A hundred thousand people have been killed and fifteen million are displaced. This is the world's largest humanitarian crisis. The UN says famine there is the worst the world has seen in decades.

Sudanese officials have criticized the negotiations in London. They say their representatives weren't invited and that even as talks were happening massacres were still taking place in the Western region of Darfur. NPR's Emmanuel Ekenwotu has been covering this since the beginning. He's at that conference in London and he is on his way back to Sudan. You can follow his ongoing coverage of the conflict on npr.org. conflict on NPR.org. And that's Up First for Tuesday, April 15th. I'm Leila Faldon. And I'm Michelle Martin.

Your next listen is Consider This from NPR. We here at Up First give you the three big stories of the day. Our Consider This colleagues take a different approach. They dive into a single new story and what it means to you in less than 15 minutes. Listen now on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Roberta Rampton, Bretney Leet, Stephen Drummond, Mohammed El-Bardisi and Janelle Williams. It was produced by Ziad Butch, Carla Estevez,

Ashley Montgomery, Nia Dumas and Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Arthur Lorenz and our technical director is David Greenberg. Join us again tomorrow. Oh, hey there. I'm Brittany Luce. And I don't know, maybe this is a little out of pocket to say, but I think you should listen to my podcast. It's called It's Been A Minute and I love it. And I think you will too.

Over the past couple months, over 100,000 new listeners started tuning in. Find out why. Listen to the It's Been A Minute podcast from NPR today. At Planet Money, we'll take you from a race to make rum in the Caribbean. Our rum from a quality standpoint is the best in the world. To the labs dreaming up the most advanced microchips. It's very rare for people to go inside. To the back rooms of New York's Diamond District.

What, you looking for the stupid guy here? They're all smart, don't worry about it. Planet Money from NPR. We go to the story and take you along with us wherever you get your podcasts.