Must-Reads and Some Thoughts on Deportations and the Rule of Law

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Must-Reads

From Elon Musk’s misuse of the US Marshals Service to Trump’s weaponization of the IRS and Social Security Administration, here are some of the most important articles I’ve read this week.

• Rushing to Death in Canada’s MAiD Regime: Ramona Coelho for Inside Policy by Ramona Coelho. “The fundamental expectation of health care should be to rush to care for the patient, providing support through a system that embraces them—not rush them toward death without efforts to mitigate suffering or ensure free and informed consent.”
• “Not Just Measles”: Whooping Cough Cases Are Soaring as Vaccine Rates Decline by Duaa Eldeib and Patricia Callahan, and photography by Sarahbeth Maney. “While much of the country is focused on the spiraling measles outbreak concentrated in the small, dusty towns of West Texas, cases of pertussis have skyrocketed by more than 1,500% nationwide since hitting a recent low in 2021 amid the COVID-19 pandemic.”
• Inside the DOGE Immigration Task Force by Sophia Cai. “ Antonio Gracias, a Musk confidante whose history with the billionaire goes back more than 20 years, is quietly heading up a specialized DOGE immigration task force that’s embedded engineers and staffers across nearly every nook of the Department of Homeland Security, two of the people said.”
• How Trump 2.0 is Slashing NIH-Backed Research — in Charts by Max Kozlov and Chris Ryan. “The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has terminated nearly 800 research projects at a breakneck pace, wiping out significant chunks of funding to entire scientific fields, finds a Nature analysis of the unprecedented cuts.”
• Trump Wants to Merge Government Data. Here Are 314 Things It Might Know About You by Emily Badger and Sheera Frenkel. “Last month, President Trump signed an executive order calling for the ‘consolidation’ of these segregated records, raising the prospect of creating a kind of data trove about Americans that the government has never had before, and that members of the president’s own party have historically opposed.”
• Inside a Powerful Database ICE Uses to Identify and Deport People by Jason Koebler. “A powerful Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) database, parts of which have been seen by 404 Media, allows the federal government to search for and filter people by hundreds of different, highly specific categories.”
• How DOGE May Have Improperly Used Social Security Data to Push Voter Fraud Narratives by Stephen Fowler and Jude Joffe-Block. “One of Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency lieutenants working in the Social Security Administration has been pushing dubious claims about noncitizens voting, apparently using access to data that court records suggest DOGE isn't supposed to have.”
• A Fifth of Americans are on Medicaid. Some of Them Have No Idea by Anna Claire Vollers. “About 3 in 4 people who have Medicaid are enrolled in managed care organizations (MCOs), according to the latest national data. Most of these are private plans operated by companies such as UnitedHealth Group and Centene. But the branding from these companies can distance recipients from the fact that their care is paid for with public funds.”
• Elon Musk’s Secret Weapon: the US Marshals Service by Samantha Michaels. “In February, members of Musk’s private security detail were deputized by the Marshals Service, the enforcement and security arm of the federal judiciary, giving them federal law enforcement powers. On top of that, Musk appears to have some of the agency’s career staffers looking out for him.”
• This Passover, We Must Reckon With Israel’s Massacre of Children in Gaza by Brant Rosen. “I believe the Passover ritual actually offers us an important opportunity: to squarely face the way the Exodus narrative is playing out in a very real way in our own day, to ask hard questions and avoid the simple, pat answers.”
• 'Outrageous Abuse of Power': Trump Weaponizes Social Security for Deportation Spree by Jake Johnson. “‘If they get away with this, it would be no surprise if they then move on to marking their perceived enemies as dead—citizens and non-citizens alike,’ Altman added. ‘This is a total misuse of the dedicated revenue that workers contribute to Social Security, with every paycheck. Though Trump claimed he wouldn't cut benefits, he essentially is by diverting dedicated monies from their intended purpose of paying Social Security benefits to the immoral purpose of maliciously ruining lives.’”

ICYMI

This week, I spoke with Eman Abdelhadi about Trump’s attacks on universities and the Palestine solidarity movement. I know many of us feel consumed by stories about the havoc Trump is causing, as he imposes and pauses tariffs, while DOGE guts the federal government. But it’s deeply important that we not lose sight of what’s happening in Gaza or to people who are being targeted for expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people.

Communities Not Cages Day of Action

On April 17, Detention Watch Network is leading a national day of action against the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda, which includes a $45 billion expansion of immigration detention. To find an action in your area, or learn how to organize one, check out the action toolkit.

Final Thoughts

It’s been a bad week for people who have put their faith in the rule of law—and it’s been a bad week for the rest of us, too. 

On Friday, an immigration judge in Louisiana ruled that Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil can be deported. Upon being forced to acknowledge that Khalil had broken no laws, the federal government argued that the views Khalil has expressed—which the administration has erroneously characterized as antisemitic—are grounds for deportation. On Friday, Judge Jamee E. ruled that the government had “established by clear and convincing evidence that he is removable.” Khalil will appeal the decision with the Board of Immigration Appeals sometime in the next few weeks.

Meanwhile, the State Department has revoked the visas of over 600 students at more than 100 schools. Many students have been informed via text or email that their visas have been canceled. As Zane McNeill reports in Truthout: “Attorneys representing the affected students say that many lost their visas without any prior notice, explanation, or chance to respond.” 

The speed and volume of these revocations are likely a sign of things to come. Todd Lyons, the director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has recently stated that he wants to manage deportations “like [Amazon] Prime, but with human beings,” noting that “we need to get better at treating this like a business.” 

In order to warehouse the human beings Lyons hopes to systematically capture and transport, with the efficiency of an exploitative two-day delivery system, the Trump administration is pushing for a $45 billion dollar expansion of the immigration detention system. Tom Homan, Trump’s so-called border czar, has previously stated that he plans to lower detention standards and reduce oversight of the conditions in which imprisoned immigrants are housed. 

According to the National Immigrant Justice Center, detained immigrants already experience “inhumane conditions and rights abuses that include medical neglect, preventable deaths, punitive use of solitary confinement, lack of due process, obstructed access to legal counsel, and discriminatory and racist treatment.”

An intentional worsening of conditions in the expanded system Homan and Lyons hope to develop would surely mean even more torturous and deadly conditions for many people.

It’s worth noting that as DOGE weasels its way into the immigration enforcement system, some strange things are happening. Over the past couple of days, amid a massive push to cancel the parole status of more than 900,000 migrants who applied for asylum using the CBP One app, some US citizens and Green Card holders have reported receiving emails from DHS declaring that their parole has been terminated and that they must leave the country. Some people who have seemingly received the emails in error have questioned whether the messages are part of some kind of scam, while others believe this is simply another example of DOGE having run amok. Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, Senior Fellow at the American Immigration Council, has discussed the bizarre emails on Bluesky, saying, “There is no reason to believe this is a scam. Thousands of people got it in the last 24 hours. It is reportedly part of their ongoing effort to strip hundreds of thousands of humanitarian parole.”

Whether the emails are a hoax or the product of the DOGE team’s bungling efforts to retool the workings of government, they feel like a harbinger of things to come, as the Trump administration continues to game out its stated desire to send US citizens to a prison in El Salvador. 

In a victory for rule-of-law fans, the Supreme Court ruled this week that the administration must “facilitate and effectuate the return” of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a legal resident of the United States who was “deported” to El Salvador and imprisoned in CECOT, along with hundreds of other Venezuelan men dubiously accused of gang membership. However, the federal government has remained defiant, refusing to provide federal judge Paula Xinis with a plan of action to retrieve Abrego Garcia. 

Abrego Garcia was reportedly investigated as a potential gang member in 2019, due to an anonymous tip from an informant, and because he was wearing a Chicago Bulls hat and hoodie. Abrego Garcia was not ultimately charged with any crime, but the role of the Bulls logo in the investigation is noteworthy. 

As the Chicago Tribune reported this week:

An American Civil Liberties Union legal filing last week revealed a checklist the Department of Homeland Security used to validate deportations of Venezuelan men under the Alien Enemies Act. The document listed Bulls and Jordan apparel as one of only three physical identifiers for field agents to detain and potentially deport young Venezuelan men.

Andres Diaz, an immigration lawyer with The Resurrection Project, has recommended that people who are concerned about being investigated, detained, or deported by DHS refrain from wearing clothing or shoes with the Bulls logo, including Jordan-branded gym shoes. 

For Abrego Garcia, an appreciation for the Bulls and the fleeting suspicion he faced in 2019 appear to have resulted in his unlawful removal from the United States and his incarceration in CECOT.

The administration leveraged a wartime law called the Alien Enemies Act to send Abrego Garcia and 130 other Venezuelan men to El Salvador without hearings or any semblance of due process. The Supreme Court has ruled that the administration’s use of the 1798 law is acceptable, but that all deportees are entitled to due process—something the Venezuelan men sent to CECOT were clearly denied. However, Mahmoud Khalil’s case is a stark reminder of how meaningless “due process” can prove in a system rigged against marginalized people—one that routinely facilitates injustice rather than preventing it.

In addressing the deportation of immigrants to El Salvador, many advocates have focused on Abrego Garcia, whose capture, removal, and imprisonment were clearly unlawful. Headlines and discourse have also highlighted the fact that 90% of the men the administration has sent to El Salvador have no criminal record. While Abrego Garcia and Andry José Hernández Romero, a gay makeup artist who may have been targeted over tattoos that paid tribute to his parents, deserve the attention they have received, I am concerned about the way this crisis is being framed.

If criminalization is all it takes to erase people from narratives about fascist outcomes, we are all in serious trouble. Law enforcement and the judiciary have always been biased, death-making forces in the lives of marginalized people. Now, the stakes are being raised by an overtly fascist government. This administration holds the truth in contempt, both philosophically and as a matter of policy. The most reliable indicator that any of Trump’s officials are lying is that their lips are moving. The Supreme Court, which has been captured by the right, stands ready to rubber-stamp all manner of injustice. This administration is gutting environmental protections, medical research, life-preserving services, and so much more. It is attempting to make the removal of our neighbors as efficient as the delivery of Amazon packages. It is pursuing a legal path to send US citizens to a nightmarish Salvadoran prison that local officials say no prisoner will emerge from alive. 

This may be one of the worst moments in history to fetishize the law or the quality of being law-abiding.

It’s us and them. It’s the fascists vs. everyone else. If criminalization is all it takes to void our solidarity, then we have already lost, because the enemy holds the power to criminalize whoever they want, whenever they choose. Right now, they are on the verge of deporting a man for legally protected speech. There is no limit to what they will do. To hold the law sacred when criminalization is the very beast our lawless enemies would feed us to is beyond self-defeating. It’s social suicide. 

I highly recommend checking out Criminalization: the Core of Authoritarianism, Fascism, and Resistance, a recent panel discussion between Andrea J. Ritchie, Ejeris Dixon, Rachel Herzing, and Scot Nakagawa. I also hope that many of you will join Detention Network’s Communities Not Cages Day of Action on April 17. We must understand how criminalization functions as a system of social disposal and how that system will be weaponized under this regime.

We must oppose the fascist violence of criminalization. 

As the administration and the Supreme Court have demonstrated, the law is not a moral instrument—and we cannot afford to treat it as such in an era that necessitates widespread resistance. If we believe that people should be willing to defy the law in the name of justice, how can we cast criminalized people aside? What mechanisms of social disposal are we reinforcing when we reserve our advocacy for “the innocent”? 

I believe in leveraging the law when doing so can preserve life or freedom. But I also recognize that the "rule of law" is a horribly elastic thing. For the marginalized, it is a weapon zealously wielded by the state, and for the rich and powerful, it is a minor concern that often ceases to exist. These dynamics will only intensify under the current regime.

From a moral standpoint, I don’t care about the law. I care about justice. I care about you, my community, and what happens to us. To keep as many of us alive and free as possible, we are going to have to recognize the nature of the fight we’re waging, and we are going to have to refuse characterizations that deem some of us disposable—because that’s how fascist politics actually function. 

Much love,

Kelly

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