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El Salvador

Abrego Garcia’s Wrongful Deportation Case More About Individual Rights Than Trump’s Foreign Policy

Trump administration officials have repeatedly claimed that judges who order the administration to take action to bring deported Venezuelans back from the El Salvador prison where the U.S. sent them are meddling in the conduct of foreign policy. “The foreign policy of the United States is conducted by President Donald J. Trump − not by a court − and no court in the United States has a right to conduct the foreign policy of the United States,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on April 14. His comments refer to cases including that of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old Salvadoran man who was deported to El Salvador on March 15, 2025, without any due process.

US Supreme Court Temporarily Blocks Further Deportations Of Venezuelans

The US Supreme Court temporarily blocked the deportation of Venezuelans who are detained in North Texas under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a controversial 18th-century military law. In a brief order issued on Saturday, April 19, the US Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration not to expel migrants held at the Bluebonnet Detention Center “until further order of this court.” The ruling comes just hours after a federal appeals court similarly blocked the US government from moving forward with eliminating temporary legal protection, better known as TPS, for some 350,000 Venezuelan migrants, who would be at risk of imminent deportation.

Western Nations Join The United States In Repressing Dissent

It is easy to see that authoritarian governance has accelerated in the United States recently. Donald Trump entered office with a flurry of Executive Orders and dubious agreements with major universities and law firms which in effect put them under his control. On April 10 the Supreme Court of the United States ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, one of 200 men sent to an El Salvador prison under circumstances of very questionable legality. Abrego Garcia differs from the others in that the Trump administration originally admitted that he was deported in error and that they did not have grounds to send him to his home country, El Salvador.

Trump Targets Migrants Amid Human Trafficking Allegations

Donald Trump has launched an aggressive campaign that targets Latino migrants – particularly Venezuelans – as scapegoats in a broader geopolitical agenda. Bolstered through a controversial alliance with the Salvadoran president, Trump has overseen mass deportations, detentions in Guantánamo Bay and El Salvador's notorious CECOT prison, and invoked 18th-century war powers to justify these actions. Trump’s brutal attacks on the working class have been supplemented by the systematic demonization of immigrants – many of whom are themselves working class. During his electoral campaign, Trump not only promised large-scale deportations but, pandering to a far-right base, vilified migrants to unprecedented degrees.

Salvadoran President Refuses To Return Wrongfully Deported Man

“Of course I’m not going to do it,” Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele told reporters when asked if he would return the wrongfully deported Maryland worker Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States. Bukele was surrounded by Trump administration officials and seated next to President Trump himself in the Oval Office, who smiled at the Central American leader in approval. Bukele claimed that returning the 27-year-old Maryland sheet metal worker would be akin to smuggling “a terrorist into the United States.” Neither the US or El Salvador’s governments have provided any evidence that Garcia participated in gang or criminal activity.

Ruling To Return Kilmar Abrego Garcia Gives Clues About How to Fight Back

On Friday, April 4, a Federal District Judge ordered that Kilmar Abrego García, a Salvadoran man who was erroneously and illegally sent to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison, be returned home by midnight on Monday, April 7, 2025. During a hearing in the lawsuit filed to demand his return, the judge discussed with the Justice Department attorney many ways in which Abrego García’s arrest and deportation were unlawful. She also reached the resounding conclusion that the US government still has effective custody over him and can restore him “to status quo”—meaning living with his family and working legally in Maryland.

Trump Administration Using ‘State Secrets Privilege’ As It Was Intended

President Donald Trump’s administration invoked the “state secrets privilege” to prevent a United States court from reviewing the abduction of immigrants, mostly Venezuelans, who were flown to El Salvador and Honduras. A number of explainers related to the Venezuelan migrants case have been written about the state secrets privilege. One in particular from CNN suggested that Trump had broken with “past practice.” Most of them gloss over or omit similarities between this case and the 1953 case known as U.S. v. Reynolds, which established the state secrets privilege.

Venezuela To Receive UN Assistance For Migrants Illegally Imprisoned In El Salvador

The United Nations secretary general and the UN high commissioner for human rights “expressed their commitment to activating all the available mechanisms to re-establish as soon as possible the flagrantly violated rights of the Venezuelan migrants” abducted in El Salvador. This was reported by the Foreign Affairs Ministry of Venezuela via a statement issued on Friday, March 28. This comes after Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro held a telephone conversation with UN Secretary General António Guterres two days ago about the issue of the Venezuelan migrants deported from the US and illegally incarcerated in a maximum-security prison in El Salvador.

Law Firm Demands Release Of 238 Venezuelans Detained In El Salvador

The prominent Grupo Ortega law firm filed a habeas corpus petition on Tuesday before El Salvador’s Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ). The legal action seeks the immediate release of 238 Venezuelan migrants currently detained at the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT). In an official statement, the firm argued that these detentions may violate fundamental rights, including personal liberty, due process, and protection against cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. They emphasized that these rights are protected under both El Salvador’s Constitution and international treaties ratified by the country.

Will Trump Send US Citizens To El Salvador?

Donald Trump is in a position to do almost anything he wants. He was the clear favorite of republican voters and won the popular vote and majorities in congress. Not content to be satisfied with what he says is a mandate, Trump has upped the ante and departed from the traditional definitions of power in Washington. He has legislative control, but he is making an end run around it with executive orders and defiance of the courts. At a moment of radical political change which includes firing thousands of federal workers and claiming that programs supported by most people are no longer needed, the democrats provide only the thinnest veneer of opposition when the public want them to step up.

Venezuela Demands Immediate Repatriation Of Detained Migrants

Thousands of Venezuelans rallied in Caracas on Tuesday, March 18, to protest the deportation of Venezuelan migrants from the United States to a high security prison in El Salvador. Family members of the deported migrants addressed Venezuelan officials and fellow citizens to demand the immediate return of their loved ones, with many insisting that their relatives are not criminals or members of the infamous Tren de Aragua as Donald Trump claims. The mobilization occurred days after the deportation of over 200 migrants to El Salvador in one of the most controversial acts by the administration of Donald Trump during his two months in office.

Venezuela Vows ‘All Strategies’ To Repatriate Citizens

Venezuelan National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez declared Monday that the government will mobilize multilateral organizations and international law firms to repatriate citizens detained abroad. He accused the United States of “kidnapping” Venezuelan migrants and collaborating with El Salvador in a “modern slave trade.” The announcement came after reports that more than 200 Venezuelan migrants were transferred from U.S. custody to prisons in El Salvador based on unproven allegations of ties to the Aragua Train criminal gang.

Venezuela Condemns Washington’s Criminalization Of Migrants

Venezuela has categorically condemned the United States government’s persecution of Venezuelans in the US, calling it an “infamous and unjust criminalization of Venezuelan migrants.” The Venezuelan government’s official statement in this regard, issued on Sunday, March 16, likens Washington’s position to “the darkest episodes in human history, from slavery to the horrors of Nazi concentration camps.” The statement condemned in strong terms the persecution of Venezuelan citizens in the US, including the expropriation of their personal property, assets, businesses, vehicles, and bank accounts.

Prison Imperialism: A Critical Examination Of Bukele’s US Deal

El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele has recently proposed a controversial agreement with the United States: to house ‘violent’ criminals from the U.S. in his country’s prisons in exchange for financial compensation. This deal, confirmed by Bukele on social media, would see convicted individuals, including U.S. citizens and legal residents, incarcerated in El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) , a mega-prison with a capacity for 40,000 inmates. While Bukele frames this as a mutually beneficial arrangement—low-cost for the U.S. but financially significant for El Salvador—the implications of this agreement extend far beyond economics.

Edmundo Gonzalez’s Role In US-Backed Massacres In El Salvador

The Venezuelan far-right former candidate for the presidential elections that were held on July 28, Edmundo González Urrutia, has declared himself the winner despite coming in second place. He has been recognized as the “president” of Venezuela by Washington and some of its vassal states as part of a plot reminiscent of the failed Guaidó project. In parallel, there is a broad campaign on mainstream media and social media to create an image of González as a “bird-loving old grandfather;” a career diplomat with a “democratic vocation” who is “fighting for democracy” against the “Maduro regime” in Venezuela.

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Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

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