Immigration Reporter Nick Miroff on Trump’s Mass Deportation Campaign
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From KQED in San Francisco, this is Forum. I'm Mina Kim. The Trump administration says in a court filing it mistakenly deported a Maryland man to a prison in El Salvador on one of the three planes at the center of a dispute between the administration and a federal judge.

The incident, first reported by my guest Nick Miroff, is inflaming fears that in Trump's haste to deport, quote, millions of criminal aliens, immigrants are being subjected to false accusations, denial of due process, and inhumane treatment. We take a closer look at how the administration has been carrying out its mass deportation campaign as it ensnares both those here illegally and legally. Join us.

Welcome to Forum. I'm Mina Kim. The Trump administration says the courts cannot order them to return Kilmar Abrego-Garcia, a Maryland father who they admit in a court filing was mistakenly deported to a prison in El Salvador due to a, quote, administrative error.

Atlantic staff writer Nick Miroff broke that story. It's one of several recent incidents, intensifying fear and panic in immigrant communities and raising alarms among legal experts about how the Trump administration is carrying out its mass deportation campaign. Listeners, how are ISIS recent actions affecting you or someone you know?

Nick Miroff joins me now. Really glad to have you with us today, Nick. Hey, Mina. Good to be with you again. So tell us more about how Abrego Garcia, who, as you report, had a protected status, is now locked up in a Salvadoran prison and unable to come back.

Yeah, that's right. Um, uh, Abrego Garcia, he's a 30 year old, uh, Maryland father. He basically, he came to the United States from El Salvador in, um, uh, as a 16 year old and, um, in 2011. And he was, um, you know, he was, he was, uh,

In 2019, he had this run-in. He was basically standing outside of a Home Depot looking for work when he was picked up with a couple other day laborers there. And one of them...

claimed, you know, that he was a gang member. That's what that's how he ended up in immigration custody in 2019. And, you know, ICE was trying to deport him then, but he he fought his case. The police were never able to substantiate that he was a gang member.

and he was granted the status called withholding of removal and that basically means that you know he's not on a legal path to residency or a green card but the government acknowledges that if he were returned to his home country he would more likely than not be harmed he had

you know run away from El Salvador as a teenager you know facing threats from gangs then and so basically the immigration judge at that point in 2019 decided that he was really more of a victim of the gangs and not a member and that authorities had never been able to substantiate that so since then he's been living his life in Maryland he has a you know a US citizen wife

a five-year-old U.S. citizen child who's disabled, and he was picking his son up from the boy's grandmother's house after work on March 12th.

when he was pulled over by ICE and taken into custody. And you know, what unfolded over the following few days is just quite, really frankly, quite stunning. Within two days, ICE had transferred him to Texas to basically a deportation flight staging facility. And the last time he spoke with his wife, he said he'd heard that he was being sent to El Salvador.

And, you know, two days later, when the president of El Salvador released those photos of the Venezuelans and other Salvadorans that the Trump administration had sent in those three flights on March 15th.

She recognized her husband in those pictures. His head had been shaved. Some masked prison guards were basically frog marching him into the prison with his head shoved down toward the floor. And so his family has filed a lawsuit in federal court in Maryland. And they're asking for, they want the US to ask for his return.

And, you know, what's what was really stunning was yesterday the government responded to the lawsuit for, you know, for the first time. And it was and it's the first time that we've seen the government admit to making a mistake. And they said that that he was deported from the United States as an administrative error.

But they will not ask for him back. And they're arguing that the federal court has no jurisdiction to order his return, that they don't have custody of him anymore. And today during the White House briefing, we saw

Press Secretary Carolyn Leavitt kind of double down on that and say well, you know, it was a mistake but this guy is really a gang member and You know we have We you know, I've seen the evidence that he's a gang member But you know that as reporters pointed out they didn't present that evidence in court and

And if they thought that he deserved to be stripped of his protected status, they could have reopened his case, presented the evidence that he's a gang member, and then deported him by normal channels. Yeah.

That's the whole case in a nutshell. It's an extraordinary case, but it's just one of what seemed like almost every day there's another one. Yeah. I've noticed that Vice President J.D. Vance is contradicting that court filing, saying it was a mistake, saying Abrego Garcia is a gang member. But as you point out, whether he is or not, you follow a process to figure that out right before you remove someone from

What has Abrego Garcia's lawyer said it would mean if the court doesn't act and try to get the Trump administration to return this man who they admit was deported on administrative error, that it was a mistake on their part?

Yeah, well, I mean, he is now locked up in this Salvadoran mega prison, the terrorism confinement center that has become, you know, the focus of so much of this attention. The Trump administration is really trying to use to scare, I think, a lot of people.

you know, immigrants and people and from, you know, scare them into leaving the United States. It's basically their, you know, extraterritorial, you know, kind of dungeon. And, you know, this is a guy who is, you know, the president of El Salvador said that he will take all of these detainees and that they will be there at least for a year doing hard labor. But, you know, is there any sort of due process for this guy to prove that he isn't part of

MS-13. I mean, he had convinced a U.S. court in 2019 that he wasn't a gang member. He doesn't have any criminal convictions in the United States. The government hasn't presented evidence that he is, in fact, an active gang member. And so if he has to remain in this Salvadoran prison complex,

You know, who knows what sort of fate awaits him. And, you know, the administration is basically saying that his lawyers haven't proven that he's likely to be harmed in that facility. But clearly an immigration judge in 2019, you know, agreed that he would face serious harm, more likely than not, if he were returned home. Right.

Listener Jerry writes, how is sending people to a prison in El Salvador really different from sending someone in Russia to a gulag? This seems to be a signal of a totalitarian regime happening in real time. And listeners, you can also weigh in, of course, with your reactions to what you're hearing at 866-733-6786 by posting on our social channels at KQED Forum or by emailing forum at kqed.org. Nick, I was so struck by this.

quote from a Rego Garcia's lawyer, Sandoval Motionberg, who'd said, if it's true that the court is powerless to order any relief, the immigration laws are meaningless, all of them, because the government can deport whoever they want, wherever they want, whenever they want, and no court can do anything about it.

Once it's done. I mean, they're basically trying to bypass the court in this case, right by invoking the Alien Enemies Act. Can you remind us, you know, what effectively that would allow the Trump administration to do if they were allowed to invoke it and where that currently stands right now? Sure. Well, so an important clarification here, they are using they tried to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.

on Venezuelans who were allegedly members of the Tren de Aragua gang. And so the Trump administration on March 15th came out and said, there's this invasion, it's a foreign invasion by this gang. And so these Venezuelans who we can't send back to Venezuela, you know, we don't need to give them due process. We're going to send them out to this prison in El Salvador. And so that's what it did with those Venezuelans. It got tied up in a separate court case,

And that's the one in which the D.C. Circuit Court basically issued a restraining order on the government, told them not to deport those Venezuelans without some kind of due process and told them to return the planes the government ordered.

essentially defied that order, deported them anyway. Now those were the Venezuelans. This Salvadoran man from Abrego Garcia was part of a separate group of Salvadorans who were deported on that same day back to their home country. They were deported under normal immigration laws.

What's extraordinary about his case is that he had protected legal status, right? He had withhold this withholding of removal status of the court had already said you can't deport him and so ice did it anyway And you know what they said yesterday in the court filing is that it was an error They didn't say we you know, we don't agree with the judge or we we're gonna disregard the judges to it their client They're saying well, we made a mistake

And we but we can't really do anything about it now that it's done. We were acting in good faith, sort of, you know, sorry. And, you know, the there I can tell you that Abrego Garcia's lawyer is skeptical of that argument. And as I, you know, I think plans to challenge that in this lawsuit, because he's saying, well, look, if you acknowledge that he had this protected status, why was he even, you know, sent to the staging facility? Why was he put on one of the flight manifests? You

The government seems to be trying to have it both ways and saying, well, we knew he had protected status, but then we made a mistake in deporting him and now it's too late. So...

You know, it's not, it isn't clear. I would say it's too early to tell right now if they're going to try to formulate some sort of broader argument around, you know, people with withholding of removal or something like that, or if they're going to just say that this was a mistake and, you know, too bad. Yeah. Noelle on Discord writes, tattoos and clothing are being used by immigration officials to decide whether Venezuelans belong to gangs and should be removed under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. Yeah.

According to the Venezuelans lawyers in a court filing, what are you hearing about this? And is that a reliable way? Yeah. I mean, you know, so in the separate lawsuit and I, you know, apologies to listeners because it gets confusing. There are so many ongoing separate legal challenges to what the administration is trying to do. But in the case of the Venezuelans and the Alien Enemies Act, you know, the the ACLU, which is representing these Venezuelan plaintiffs, was able to obtain, you know, evidence that

detailing the way ICE is making its determination about gang affiliation on the basis of tattoos. And so there's like a point system. And if the person has certain tattoos or certain gang insignia or dresses a certain way, then they're assessed a number of points. And that is enough to get you labeled a trained Air Agua member and an alien enemy and sent off to a Salvadoran prison. Hmm.

We're talking with Nick Miroff about what he's learning about how the Trump administration is carrying out its mass deportation efforts and immigration and customs enforcement. We'll have more with him and with you after the break. Stay with us, listeners. I'm Mina Kim.

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This is Forum. I'm Mina Kim. Nick Miroff is a staff writer who covers immigration, the Department of Homeland Security, and the U.S.-Mexico border for the Atlantic. And we're talking with him about the latest immigration news and legal battles as the Trump administration cracks down on immigrants. And you, our listeners, are invited to join the conversation. How are recent actions by the Trump administration by ICE affecting you or someone you know? Are you a visa holder, a green card holder, undocumented, a person with temporary protected status?

What are your questions or reactions to Trump's administration actions or how it's carrying out its mass deportation campaign? You can tell us by emailing forum at kqed.org, posting on Blue Sky, Facebook, Instagram, or threads at KQED Forum. You can call us at 866-733-6786, 866-733-6786. And let me go to Phil in Burlingame. Hi, Phil, you're on.

Right. So it's clear that United States citizens have full protection of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. And courts have ruled in the past that resident aliens, green card holders, and people coming in trying to get citizenship are afforded those protections.

But there is a legal theory where actually only U.S. citizens are protected under the Constitution and that no non-citizen is protected and doesn't get all of those. The 14th Amendment was for blacks that, you know, under...

you know, that were granted the right to vote to make them citizens. But it could be argued in a court that, you know, where it's an alien stone. And I'm pretty sure that's where this administration is going with the U.S. Supreme Court. Yeah. So is your point really, Nick Miroff, I mean, what Phil is saying, do you think that is the way they're interpreting this?

the immigration laws and who they really protect or at least really testing what those immigration laws protect. Well, you know, your caller, the caller is right to point out, I mean, let's not forget that the first thing the Trump administration did on day one was to challenge the idea of birthright citizenship, right?

And so they have attempted to issue an executive order that would change the way citizenship is bestowed under the 14th Amendment. They were almost immediately enjoined by multiple federal courts, but they are going to fight that all the way to the Supreme Court. That is on the one front. On another front, we've seen them, perhaps more aggressively than any other administration in recent memory, challenge the

legal status of individuals who are, you know, who have obtained a green card, who have legal permanent residency. And they're doing that by trying to, you know, strip someone of their legal permanent residency status on the basis that they made some sort of, you know, false claim or that they...

you know, misrepresented their past in seeking residency status. And most notably, we saw this in the arrest of the Palestinian student activists at Columbia University, Mahmoud Khalil, who, you know, had green card status. And they have invoked this very obscure provision that gives the Secretary of State the authority to revoke somebody's

residency if it's determined to be like in the, you know, to the detriment of U.S. foreign policy interests. So they're reaching way, way down deep into, you know, old, you know, laws and provisions to try to really aggressively go after these protections. Before we go deeper into the status of the case against Mahmoud Khalil, I do want to ask you about

the recent case of another student who has, I guess, co-wrote an op-ed that criticized Israel's actions in Gaza. This is the student from Turkey, Rumesa Ozturk, who was basically detained, a doctoral student at Tufts who was walking down the street when immigration and enforcement agents, immigration and customs enforcement agents, surrounded her, essentially. So can you just talk about...

That particular action, ICE's rationale for detaining her and what kind of recourse she may have as a student who's had her visa revoked, we find out later?

Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of, you know, listeners who saw that video were rightfully, you know, shocked to see plainclothes, you know, U.S. federal officers kind of grabbing somebody on the street. You know, it looked like something out of an authoritarian, out of authoritarian, you know, imagery, you know.

It was you know my first response to it was that you know this is basically the way that ICE officers do these types of at-large arrests. I mean this is this is the kind of this is the way that they pick up targets throughout the United States on any given day. What was different about her was that you know she was walking down the streets of Cambridge. She was a student. It was on camera and you know she had a student visa and

But I think you have to pay close attention to what Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said recently about the administration's plans to cancel or revoke the visas of hundreds of foreign students in the United States. And the argument that they're essentially making is that if you come to the United States to study, you can't engage in political activism or

you know, any kind of, you know, protest. What's unclear at this point is sort of what is the line for them. You know, this particular student at Tufts University had been a co-author on an op-ed, right? So it's not like she was some sort of student leader or was

blocking the entrance to a campus building or something like that. She simply wrote an op-ed, and they seem to be determined to be as aggressive as possible in going after almost anybody who they want. I think the campus issue for this administration hits a lot of sweet spots. It's a way to

to to kind of chastise universities that they think um you know are their enemies in the kind of broader culture war and um you know threaten their funding intimidate their their faculty and administration um while also going after student visa programs that they think have been you know too lax in letting foreign students into the united states and allowing them to exercise you know many of the rights that you know u.s students would

under our Constitution. How is the State Department determining which students to revoke their visas from?

That's a great question, Mina, and it's something that I think a lot of us on this beat are trying to break some news on. It's very opaque at this point. We know that they are getting tips from pro-Israel, Zionist activist groups and others who have identified students that they want to

the government to go after. So there are outside groups that are generating lists with targets for the government. And what's unclear is what is the government's process for determining who should land on the target list, who should have their visa revoked. It's notable that

Even if they did decide to revoke some of these visas, they could just inform that person, right, that your visas are revoked, you have 30 days to leave the country, the kind of thing that they would do under normal circumstances. But they're really, I think, trying to send a message with these very visible and intimidating arrest tactics where they, you know, grab somebody on the street. You know, I think they really want to cast a chilling effect across U.S. campuses.

What legal recourse do student visa holders have as compared, say, to Mahmoud Khalil, who has a green card, who has a legal permanent residency?

they really don't have much recourse. My understanding is that if you have a student status, which is a very weak immigration status, you're really here kind of at the whim of the government. And so once your status is canceled and you don't have another way to remain in the country, you're sort of screwed.

So with Mahmoud, you were saying that they were basically trying to invoke their ability to strip him of his legal permanent residency based on the idea that he is interfering with the U.S.'s foreign policy interests. Is that a common justification? No, it's not. It's not common. It's way down deep in the Immigration and Nationality Act and

it's basically this obscure and and you know seldom used provision that gives the secretary of state the authority to say this you know this person's presence in the united states is detrimental to u.s foreign policy interests um and so uh their their their legal permanent residency their green card can be revoked and they can be deported the immigration attorneys and experts i spoke to could own

only think of one previous example from 1999 when there was like a senior Mexican

official who was in New Jersey and the Mexican government wanted his extradition to face corruption charges and he had legal permanent residency and the US decided to strip him of his protection to give him back to Mexico. That was a pretty clear-cut case of someone who was high profile and who had criminal charges abroad and it was like weighing on bilateral relations with a major US

trading partner. This case of Mahmoud Khalil and potentially others is much different. It's about political activism on campus. Why also are enforcement agents sending Khalil and Ostrich to Louisiana? In Ostrich's case, I think a judge even said you cannot take her out of Massachusetts, but they took her to Louisiana anyway.

Yeah, I mean, there are two interpretations of that. One is logistical, which is that ICE, Immigration Customs Enforcement, has far more detention space in the South, and a lot of it's

It holds its detainees down there. ICE hasn't been able to really build or expand its detention network in New England and in blue states, in California, that type of thing. And so it's got much of its detention infrastructure in the South already. And then the second part of it is essentially judicial form shopping

the administration knows that if a court challenge is going to go to a federal court in a place like Louisiana, you know, in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the country's most conservative, the government is far more likely to prevail in litigation.

So this listener pushes back and writes,

I think, Nick, that is a broader question, right? Is, okay, even if you were for, you know, being more aggressive on immigration or the border, is this what form you voted for? I want to ask you about reporting you did on the pace of deportation. So the pace of arrests, entertainments, and so on by immigration and customs enforcement have gone up. But the pace of deportations is,

That has not. What role is that playing in driving sort of the aggressive actions that we've been hearing about, the ones we've been discussing today, Nick? It's a great question. I would say, you know...

you gotta we gotta remember that trump had came into office promising to deport you know he had millions of criminals and and to carry out the largest mass deportation campaign in u.s history right and so he has set this almost you know impossible to attain um objective given that the the personnel and the and the funding for ice for immigration customs enforcement

hasn't really changed from the Biden administration. They don't have a massive increase in detention space or in officers or in attorneys that can execute this plan for a mass deportation campaign. What we have seen so far

is that arrests by ICE in US cities and communities have gone up significantly from the Biden administration. They're arresting about three times as many people.

But the number of people that they're actually deporting from the United States has not significantly increased. And why is that? Well, that's partly because far fewer people are coming across the southern border. The southern border with Mexico is as locked down right now as it has been in more than 60 years. It was already, you know, illegal border crossings were declining during Biden's last year due to a crackdown by Biden officials.

as they were getting ready for last year's election. And since Trump has come in and ordered thousands of troops to the border and flown people to Guantanamo and to this prison in El Salvador, the kind of chilling effect that has had has really...

completely changed the border. And so with far fewer sort of easy-to-deport migrants coming across the southern border, that has kind of made ICE turn to the interior of the United States, to U.S. cities and communities, to find potential deportees. So that's why arrests are going up in these communities. That's why listeners are hearing about the presence of ICE here.

So despite all that, you know, more intense activity, we're still not going to get, you know, I mean, there aren't going to be a million deportations this year. And Trump isn't going to be able to claim the largest mass deportation campaign. He's on pace right now to sort of match the numbers that we saw during his first term when they also ramped up deportations. And similarly, he promised millions of deportations and then couldn't deliver that.

But it sounds like, as you're saying, that immigration officials are feeling the pressure to meet those numbers. So they're going inland, I guess, a lot more. I'm hearing they're even arresting people who show up for their check-ins as required by their provisional immigration status. That's right. I mean, you know, we've already seen, you know, turnover at the upper ranks of ICE leadership, you

I can tell you that officers are under a huge amount of pressure to meet quotas. And so they're...

You know, they're experiencing this pressure from the White House and they're looking for the kind of lowest hanging fruit, essentially, for potential deportees. And so they're in cases where there are people who are going to dutifully check in as required by an immigration court to check in with ICE.

every six months or every year or something, they're looking at those people and trying to figure out ways to arrest them and deport them even though they've been in compliance with their court orders.

This listener writes,

You know, part of the reason that we're hearing that also even the processing of deportations once the arrests are made is so slow is because they've fired immigration judges and so on and much of that kind of legal infrastructure. They also don't have as much money as they're seeking. Can you just and we're coming up on a break and I'm sorry about that, Nick. But if the Trump administration gets the money it's seeking for ICE and the budget reconciliation bill, I mean, what could that mean?

Well, that's the potential game changer right there because they are seeking $175 billion for immigration enforcement. And just to give...

you know, an idea of what that would mean. ICE's entire annual budget is about $10 billion. So they would potentially, you know, receive many times worth, you know, many times the amount of their annual budget, and they would be able to use that money to pay, you know, county sheriffs, deputies, police departments around the country that are sympathetic to Trump's goals and enlist them in a broader deportation effort that could really dramatically increase those deportation numbers.

Wow, $175 billion from 10. And as you say, a potential game changer. We're talking with Nick Miroff about the Trump administration's deportation efforts as it ensnares both those here illegally and legally. More after the break. I'm Mina Kim. At Sierra, discover great deals on top-brand workout gear, like high-quality walking shoes, which might lead to another discovery. 40,000 steps, baby!

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You're listening to Forum. I'm Mina Kim.

Listeners, how are recent actions by the Trump administration with regards to immigration affecting you, ICE actions affecting you as a visa holder, maybe a green card holder or somebody with temporary protected status or someone who is undocumented? What are your questions or reactions to Trump's actions?

Immigration, Actions, and Mass Deportation Campaign. We've got Nick Miroff with us today, a staff writer who covers immigration and the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S.-Mexico border for the Atlantic. Join the conversation at 866-733-6786, 866-733-6786, at the email address forum at kqed.org or post on our social channels. Nick, talk about why...

The administration, the White House has been able to do much more, like so many different things. As we were talking about, there are so many legal battles going on right now, so many incidents that are unprecedented going on right now, you know, this term.

Yeah. Well, as we've written about here at The Atlantic, there's a major difference I've noticed between Trump's first term and this one. I attribute that mostly to the broader immigration enforcement strategy and political strategy of Trump's

most important and influential advisor, Stephen Miller. And that is that, you know, what we saw during the first administration was an attempt to kind of control the border that played out, you know, according to sort of one policy, one enforcement policy attempt at a time. And so, you know, we saw the Trump administration try to crack down by, you know, by separating children, you know, migrant children from their parents during the

the zero tolerance family separation episode. Then we saw them, you know, when that was, you know, broke down, they turned to the remain in Mexico policy and made asylum seekers go back to Mexico. You know, they tried various asylum bans that were blocked in federal court before eventually kind of settling on this emergency public health law known as Title 42 during the pandemic.

And so it was sort of this kind of one-at-a-time approach. And what we've seen with this time around is that Miller has teed up a whole suite of enforcement

policies, many of them quite extreme, many of them ideas that were almost kind of, you know, ridiculed during Trump's first term. And he is trying to implement them all at once to overwhelm both, you know, political opponents and the court system. They have been pretty transparent about how they plan to do this. And the

The justification for it is essentially almost like a military one. Just as we saw Trump on the campaign trail claiming that the United States had been invaded and that criminals were running amok in the United States, I think a lot of people heard that and understood that just to be kind of typical Trumpian campaign exaggerated rhetoric.

well now they're they're actually making policy, you know on that basis and Trying to use some of the most, you know extreme extraordinary authorities under the law like the alien enemies act and and you know, basically pretending that there is some kind of You know foreign invasion underway that justifies these extraordinary measures yeah, and

I think you also noted that the idea with just the incredible pace and volume is to grind down opponents and basically break institutional resistance. They've certainly tried to paint a picture of a judicial system that is...

you know, basically interpreting law based on a political bias against Trump as well, which seems like it's been relatively effective. Rachel writes, I lost more than 50 family members in Auschwitz. And I was appalled by some of the anti-Semitic language used in anti-Israel protests at Columbia.

I am even more appalled by these ICE deportations without due process. This is beyond my worst nightmares. No one deserves this treatment. Thank you for such important and meticulous reporting. And I second that, Rachel, for Nick as well. I mean, I do think, as I mentioned before, America needs to ask itself, you know,

if this is what it wants and whether it should allow itself to be swayed by what may be seen as less sympathetic cases, right? And to broadly essentially curb rights and freedoms. But how is this polling with Americans? Do you know, Nick? I've been covering immigration enforcement on the southern border for more than a decade. And one thing that I have noticed, especially from, you know, Trump's

Trump to Biden and back to Trump is that, you know, that the broader public has real apprehensions about chaos on the southern border. They want to see

They don't like imagery of people pouring across the southern border in a chaotic way. They don't like images of, you know, people arriving in U.S. cities and overwhelming shelters. And so a lot of the things that occurred during the Biden administration during, you know, and let's be honest here, you know, that was the largest event.

you know wave of illegal migration into the United States in history and you know to the to the great political benefit of President Trump You know they while they're there I think Generally supportive of tough measures to control the southern border People get very uneasily and very uneasy quickly with the site of immigration enforcement in US cities and communities by ice They do not like

you know, secret police in plain clothes, arresting people in the night, you know, images of families being split up, people being picked up on the streets. All of those kinds of tactics are, you know, I think are,

are deeply unnerving to many, many voters and many independent voters and even some who are otherwise sympathetic to the president's immigration agenda. And so I think this administration knows that on some level has to be aware that this kind of imagery is going to be politically damaging. And yet they're barreling full speed ahead.

Let me go to Sri in Belmont. Hi, Sri, you're on. Yeah, hi. I think I want to make a comment around my frank disappointment, honestly, around folks that are either recent immigrants or maybe long-time immigrants who have legal status and have been through the system and don't seem to have as much empathy or support for some of the folks going through the challenges right now around the

administration's approach to immigration and ICE. I'll speak a little bit from personal experience, unfortunately, with my parents, especially my father, who's moved whiteward as he ages. And it's shocking to me to hear what he talks about. I mean, we had a

pretty rough experience coming to this country originally and kind of working his way through the system. And I don't know if it's a, I had to go through it, so you should have to go through it attitude or what it is. But, you know, we saw in the election more support for Trump and the right from people of color, from the Latino population, but also from the Indian population. We see more integration of Indian administration and more people on the right. And it's just surprising to me. I would expect and

just see more empathy. And I'm disappointed by the lack of empathy and lack of support for recent immigrants from people who have kind of made it through the system. Sri, thanks for sharing your experience. And I mean, one has to admit that Miller and Trump did change American discourse around immigration, probably in a way that maybe is reflected in Sri's parent, Nick.

Yeah, Sri makes an absolutely spot-on point there. And I think one thing that we've seen that explains the shift toward Trump among voters with immigrant backgrounds, particularly Hispanic male voters, is this perception that the most recent wave of immigrants who arrived under Biden were somehow entitled or were undervalued

unfairly benefiting, that they were on the dole from the government, that they were more criminal. And where did those images come from? A lot of them came from New York City, Denver, Chicago, the cities where shelters were

absolutely overwhelmed with migrants, particularly migrants from Venezuela, who arrived without the kind of traditional immigrant, you know, migrant networks to support them and therefore became kind of more dependent on public benefits.

So, you know, I think that this administration, particularly on the campaign trail, really rode that perception and fueled that perception successfully. And what we're seeing is a kind of, you know, resentment to the most recent arrivals and, you know, with the idea that they are not as self-sufficient as previous waves of immigrants who had to do it themselves.

Let me go to Jim in San Anselmo. Hi, Jim, you're on. Hi, thanks for the question. I'm not sure if this is a fair question, more of a legal question, but I'd like to understand, maybe your reporting or your investigation has kind of covered some of this. I'd like to understand what the legal basis is.

Well, Jim, I think we're losing you there. But my understanding is you're going to ask about the legal basis for the El Salvador prison not to return the migrants. Isn't the prison under contract with the U.S.? Nick, similarly, David has a question. Why can't the court order the government to return Kilmar Obrego Garcia? If they have the authority to put him in a foreign prison, they certainly have the power to bring him back. Where are the lawsuits? Do you know?

That is what Abrego Garcia's attorney is going to argue to the court, that if the U.S. is going to pay the Salvadoran government $6 million a year to house these detainees, well, then it can ask for Abrego Garcia's return. The Trump administration so far has not indicated any sympathy or inclination to do that, even while admitting that it made a mistake. And so I guess we have to see what the judge is going to say.

This listener writes, we have an upcoming family trip. My husband is a green card holder, but all of his resources, all of his sources are telling him it's not safe to travel through ports of entry. We don't want to live in fear, but we don't want to risk breaking up our family either. He's here legally, and my Republican brothers will tell me I have nothing to fear, but he won't be going with us on vacation.

The Trip. Another listener on Discord writes, when the courts decide to finally uphold basic human rights and reverse some or many of these deportations, who will end up paying the damages and court fines? It will be us, taxpayers.

The courts have pushed back in some recent decisions, right? I understand a federal judge in San Francisco has blocked the Trump administration from removing the temporary protected status of some 350,000 Venezuelans in the U.S. And I also heard that a different judge on Friday issued a temporary emergency order saying,

blocking the administration from sending anyone with a final deportation order to a country where they are not a citizen. A third country, I believe, is what it's called. Can you talk about the, you know, how meaningful this pushback by the courts will be against these mass deportation efforts?

Yeah, I mean, it really feels like there's a major showdown building around the administration's immigration enforcement policies. It's almost every day that we see a new ruling against the White House from a district court on pretty much all of its policy attempts. The blocking of the Alien Enemies Act,

this most recent ruling in the Ninth Circuit on the Trump administration's attempt to end temporary protected status for 600,000 Venezuelans. I mean, it's just sort of one thing after another, and that's why we're seeing, you know, you're seeing this, you know, buildup in rhetoric from Trump officials saying that the courts have overstepped their boundaries, that they're outside the law, and that

All of it is potentially building towards some kind of Supreme Court intervention in a lot of these policies. But it's very hard to tell how that's going to go, where this particular court is going to come down on many of these questions. Let me remind listeners, we're talking with Nick Miroff and you're listening to Forum. I'm Mina Kim. Let me go to caller Colby in San Francisco. Hi, Colby, you're on.

Yeah, just you kind of already said going into it, but I'm just like I'm not myself an immigrant, but I've worked with DACA students through the community college circuit and the university level. And back then, it didn't seem like there was any fear around like being undocumented, like everybody, you know,

you know, just kind of rallied around people. But it's kind of scary now, especially with movements on housing and being potentially arrested for helping unhousing people. I just wanted to know, like, do y'all see, you know, helping undocumented people, you know, being illegal? It's just, I feel like it's a scary time.

Colby, thanks for sharing how you're feeling. You reported that Borders are Tom Holman said something along the lines of how the Trump administration is going to widen its aperture. Does Colby have a legitimate concern here?

Yeah, I think he does. And I, you know, in particular, Homan has talked about sanctuary cities like San Francisco and really attempting to sort of take the law as far as possible toward sanctuary.

threatening city officials with harboring illegal immigrants. I think they're very eager to get into court and to use the law as aggressively as possible to try to break the sanctuary policies that are a major impediment to this administration's mass deportation goals. One of the big reasons it's so hard for them to get

big numbers, um, is that they can't, uh, you know, work with a lot of the U.S., you know, the largest U.S. cities. They can't get into their, into their jails. They struggle, you know, a place like, say, Rikers Island and, you know, the main New York City jail. Um, you know, they can't, uh,

They don't have a presence there anymore. And so those sort of easy deportations for ICE just, you know, in major U.S. cities aren't available. Well, that is one of their top priorities. And I think they're going to try to use some of these harboring laws to go after cities and even, you know, individual public officials.

Patty writes, we have to step up and fight for our freedoms right now. I don't believe that there is a whole lot that any party or any politician can do to stop Trump, but I'm heartened by how my town of Santa Rosa is holding rallies and meetings. If we continue to organize and act in collective ways, both locally and nationally, I think we may have a fighting chance to save our democracy. Nick, what chance do you think Abrego Garcia has of being reunited with his family here in the U.S.?

It's hard to say. I think we need to see how the judge rules and then whether or not the Trump administration...

um, is willing to do, you know, anything. I, you know, I think that the, the tweets that we've seen from vice president Vance just over the last, you know, few hours really kind of doubling down on Abrego Garcia's deportation suggests that, that it's going to be very hard for him to get back here. Um, that they, they want to make another kind of political statement about removing somebody like this. Um,

And they're going to insist that he's a gang member, even if ICE didn't try to prove that in court.

We're talking with Nick Miroff, a staff writer covering immigration for The Atlantic. His latest piece is on the things we've been discussing. An administrative error sends a Maryland father to a Salvadoran prison. Another one, Stephen Miller has a plan. A third that Nick wrote on March 11th, ICE isn't delivering the mass deportations Trump wants. Nick, thank you so much for your reporting and thank you so much for talking with us today.

My pleasure, Mina. Anytime. And thank you, listeners, for your questions and also sharing the experiences that you're going through with regard to the impact of this mass deportation effort by the Trump administration. My thanks as well to Caroline Smith for producing today's segment. You've been listening to Forum. I'm Mina Kim.

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