Adam Isacson

Defense, security, borders, migration, and human rights in Latin America and the United States. May not reflect my employer’s consensus view.

Archives

Human Rights

Notes on our April 30 Enforced Disappearance Event

Here are notes and embedded video from our very well-attended 4/30 virtual panel, Lessons from Latin America as the United States Confronts Enforced Disappearance, hosted with the National Security Archive, with 3 longtime leaders in the fight against enforced disappearance in Latin America.

The below text is cross-posted from WOLA’s website.

Highlights and Conclusions from the April 30, 2025 WOLA–National Security Archive Webinar

This is enforced disappearance

Over the past two months, U.S. immigration and law‑enforcement agencies have been detaining migrants and asylum seekers without promptly disclosing their whereabouts, permitting contact with counsel, or even keeping them on U.S. soil where they are clearly within the reach of the rule of U.S. law. Veteran rights advocates warn that these detentions mirror a practice that Latin American societies know all too well: enforced disappearance.

That was the subject of a nearly two-hour discussion, hosted by the Washington Office on Latin America and the National Security Archive, featuring three renowned Latin American rights advocates who have devoted much of their careers fighting to end enforced disappearances and hold perpetrators accountable. The panel distilled four decades of hard‑won lessons—from Argentina’s military rule, Central America’s conflicts, and Mexico’s present‐day crisis—into guidance for a United States that has begun sliding onto the same dangerous slope.

Presentations

1. Carolina Jiménez Sandoval – President, WOLA

“Enforced disappearance is painful. It is a tragedy for families, but also for societies. And it’s not just a human rights violation… When a government takes citizens or others in their territory outside the protection of the law, this is a warning for democracy.”

In introductory remarks, Jiménez framed enforced disappearance as both a human‑rights atrocity and a democratic red flag. She invoked three mothers—Chilean, Mexican, Venezuelan—who are still looking for disappeared loved ones decades, years, or mere weeks later, to show that the pain transcends time and geography.

  • Definition matters. International law codifies disappearance as state custody, or deliberate state inaction, plus denial of the crime. There is no ambiguity.
  • Human impact is paramount. Technical debates must not obscure families’ anguish and the societal damage each disappearance inflicts.
  • U.S. exceptionalism is over. A webinar once unthinkable is now necessary because U.S. agencies are adopting tactics once associated with Latin American dictatorships.

2. Kate Doyle – Senior Analyst, National Security Archive

“We can’t help but connect what is happening in our country right now, today, to a long history in the Americas of the use by states of enforced disappearance to punish people considered dissidents.”

As moderator, Doyle noted chilling similarities between the Trump administration’s recent actions and the darker parts of Latin America’s recent history. She recalled, however, that Latin America “also has a proud and powerful tradition of fighting back” and inventing “strategies to protest the disappearances, demand information, hold hearings, fight in courts, create new laws, search for the missing, expose injustice, and tell the rest of the world what was happening.”

The three invited panelists, Doyle recalled, are emblematic of that experience. “We need to hear from them. We need to learn from their histories. We need to pull lessons from what they have to tell us about how to fight back here.”

3. Mercedes “Mimi” Doretti – Executive Director, Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF)

“When the state no longer respects the rule of law, we are all in danger. We can all be accused at any time of being a criminal, a terrorist, or any other name, since nothing needs to be verified. Back then and now, we all know that no one actually disappears. It’s just not an existential status. We are either dead or alive.”

Drawing on 40 years of exhuming clandestine graves and investigating atrocities region-wide, Doretti described how Argentina’s junta used disappearance to eliminate due process and sow terror. She traced EAAF’s birth: prosecutors needed science, families needed someone they could trust more than state institutions, and young anthropologists provided both.

  • State denial breeds confusion and a maddening sense of unreality. Early in the dictatorship, relatives were told the kidnappings they witnessed had never occurred or that the victims were somehow deserving. The goal was paralysis through lies and denials.
  • Families are partners, not witnesses. EAAF put relatives at the center of every investigation—sharing findings, co‑designing searches, putting evidence at the center and building trustful relationships.
  • An “ecosystem” approach works. Forensic experts, lawyers, journalists, archivists, and families formed “a human‑rights ecosystem” that can out‑investigate a hostile, dishonest state.

4. Juan E. Méndez – Former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture; survivor, lawyer, scholar

“Disappearances are torture as well. Because the person who is deprived of contact with a family, the person who doesn’t know what’s going to happen to him or her, the person who doesn’t know when this detention will end, the person who is in incommunicado detention, perhaps even in solitary confinement somewhere where nobody knows where they are, that person is being inflicted pain and suffering of a mental nature, even if no physical torture may be happening.”

Méndez blended personal testimony—he was disappeared for days and imprisoned for 18 months—with legal analysis. He helped win the Velásquez Rodríguez v. Honduras judgment, the Inter‑American Court’s landmark ruling that enforced disappearance is a crime against humanity.

  • Temporary disappearances count. Moving detainees between secret sites, denying them lawyers, or hiding them from families—even for days—meets international definitions of disappearance. In Argentina, these practices began even before the 1976 military dictatorship began, during a state of siege.
  • Four minimum state duties: Governments must register every detention immediately; forbid secret sites; notify courts about each detention; and guarantee the detained person contact with counsel and relatives.
  • Law needs mobilization. International norms matter only when civil society “makes the state pay a price” for violations. A very good legal framework like the one that exists today is not enough on its own: “We need every man and woman who cares for the fate and whereabouts of every other human being to have their voices heard, have their voices resonate.”

5. Marcela Turati – Mexican investigative journalist, co-founder of Quinto Elemento Lab and Periodistas de a Pie

“The people [must] understand that victims have rights… even if they were criminals, they have rights [including] not to be disappeared.”

Reporting on 127,000 disappearances in Mexico—mostly committed at a time of formal democracy, mostly by non-state actors with the government’s collusion, acquiescence, or deliberate inaction—Turati emphasized the battle for truth in real time.

  • Name the crime. The press once spoke euphemistically of people falling victim to levantones (“pick‑ups”); insisting on using the word “disappearance” forces the state to own its obligations. “You can talk about enforced disappearances when the public servants don’t prevent these disappearances, don’t investigate when the people present a denunciation… So it’s not only when the army abducts or makes detentions.”
  • From confusion to complexity. Networks of journalists, data scientists, and victim groups map patterns—routes, mass graves, bureaucratic gaps—to demystify the phenomenon and put the puzzle pieces together, especially when the state can’t be counted on to do that.
  • Tech with a human face. Turati’s team’s WhatsApp chatbot, SocorroBot, walks families through the first 24 hours after someone vanishes and connects them to local support.

Key conclusions

  1. Disappearance is a deliberate state strategy, not a bureaucratic accident. Whether permanent or “only” temporary, or whether committed by government or non-state actors, secrecy plus denial equals disappearance.
  2. Information—and its absence—is a battlefield. Dictatorships lied outright; today’s U.S. agencies exploit data opacity, shifting detainees among ICE and local jurisdictions’ detention facilities or foreign prisons. Documenting transfers, in this example, helps move from confusion to accountability. Sharing credible information means better communication and storytelling, beginning with spreading knowledge “about people’s rights as human beings.” Turati added: “Always look for the audiovisual support. I think that we have to find a way to go public, just to be massive with the public. And I can see the effects of the videos, photos, camera images, satellite images, I don’t know, trying to bring what we know the ‘influencers’ use.” This also requires clarity about who the intended audiences are.
  3. Families are catalysts. Argentine mothers in the Plaza de Mayo, Mexican search collectives with shovels and drones, Central American parents seeking to trace children who disappeared along the migration route—relatives sustain the search when institutions fail. “The most important thing in Mexico is, for me as a journalist, to stay close to the victims,” Turati said.
  4. Independent expertise matters. The Argentine forensic model showed why civil‑society science must fill gaps left by compromised state forensics. “Both Mimi and Juan have pointed to this sort of creating expertise in a field where there was none,” Doyle observed. “And that’s something that I think we need to think about here in the United States as well.”
  5. International law is usable. The United States is a party to the Convention Against Torture. While it shuns the International Convention to Protect All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, existing instruments still prohibit the Trump administration’s practices, offering advocacy hooks. “The public understands instinctively what we mean when we say there’s no due process,” Méndez noted.

Recommendations

Drawing directly from the speakers’ proposals and proven tactics, steps like these can guide U.S. advocates, policymakers, and communities:

  • Rapid, independent documentation: We need to closely document what is happening, both through direct information gathering and building public databases.
  • Put families at the center: Relatives need immediate notification and frequent accompaniment from experts, mirroring EAAF’s family-first methodology.
  • Legal safeguards and reform: Even as a U.S. ratification of the International Convention to Protect All Persons from Enforced Disappearance appears far off, it is urgent to prohibit incommunicado custody, denial of access to counsel, invocation of the Alien Enemies Act during peacetime, and failure to provide at least 30 days to bring habeas corpus challenges before being rendered to another country. Extrajudicial imprisonment, whether at home or in other nations, must never happen.
  • Civil society mobilization: U.S. civil society and philanthropy must strengthen coalitions of journalists, tech volunteers, faith groups, and academics to keep cases in the public eye, echoing the Latin American “human-rights ecosystem.” Put a strong emphasis on storytelling, using innumerable tools including podcasts, exhibitions, teach-ins, or webinars like this one, especially to spotlight disappeared migrants and citizens.
  • International pressure and solidarity: Work with international bodies like the Inter-American Commission and U.N. Working Group on Enforced Disappearance for emblematic U.S. cases. Tighten bonds with Latin American experts and search collectives for skill-sharing on investigation, trauma care, and public protest tactics.
  • Accountability pathways: Document chain-of-command responsibility within DHS and private contractors to preserve evidence for future accountability measures. Never yield on the supremacy of judicial decisions: “I would say that the most alarming aspect of the situation,” Méndez warned, “is the fact that high ranking officers, officials are hinting that they don’t need to pay attention to court orders.”

Conclusion

The event’s nearly 500 participants asked dozens of incisive questions: more than time would allow. Many of them could be the subject of future events, and our organizations plan to hold more soon.

Argentina’s dictatorship, Central America’s civil wars, or Mexico’s organized crime violence all once seemed distant tragedies to many in the United States. Yet, as the webinar’s speakers made clear, the mechanisms of disappearance are portable, and their first victims are often the marginalized—migrants, students, activists—long before the practice threatens society at large.

The good news is that Latin America also exports resilience: mothers who march, scientists who unearth truth, lawyers who codify new crimes, journalists who refuse to let the missing be forgotten. Those lessons’ arrival in the United States is timely and urgently needed. By acting now—documenting every vanished person, closing every legal loophole, and mobilizing the broadest possible coalition—we can ensure that enforced disappearance never becomes normalized on U.S. soil.

288 People Rendered to El Salvador’s Mega-Prison. We Only Know 258 of Their Names.

This is enforced disappearance.

The Trump administration’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had 288 Venezuelan and Salvadoran migrants in its custody. A vast majority, we now know, were not accused of committing crimes, and only a handful faced allegations of committing violent crimes (see CBS News, Bloomberg, the New York Times, and Cristosal).

Then, they disappeared from ICE’s locator system and have apparently ended up in El Salvador’s Center for the Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT) prison. But nothing is certain because neither the U.S. nor the Salvadoran governments has confirmed their names. What we know about these individuals’ identities is entirely from leaks to secondary sources. Even their loved ones have no official information, with the partial exception of Kilmar Abrego Garcia—and that is because a judge ordered it.

Disappearing from custody without any official acknowledgment of one’s identity, then being sent to a prison with no end date and no judicial process at all? That, right there, is the definition of enforced disappearance: a major, serious human rights violation that is tragically familiar in Latin America but rare—until now—in the United States.

Here is what we know about the people disappeared from the United States and apparently rendered to incommunicado prison in El Salvador:

Country Known Names Unknown Names Total
Venezuela 245 7 252
El Salvador 13 23 36
Total 258 30 288

Venezuela, 252 people. 137 rendered under the Alien Enemies Act, the rest with final removal orders:

  • 238 people rendered to El Salvador on March 15. Names leaked to CBS News on March 20.
  • 7 people rendered to El Salvador on March 30. Names leaked to Fox News on March 31.
  • 7 people rendered to El Salvador as part of a group of 10 on April 13. Names are unknown. We only know it was 7 people because El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, tweeted on April 20 that 252 Venezuelans are in Salvadoran custody, and 245 Venezuelans were already in El Salvador.

El Salvador, 31 people, all with final removal orders:

  • 23 people rendered to El Salvador on March 15. From much reporting, we know the identities of 3: Kilmar Abrego Garcia and credibly alleged MS-13 members César Humberto López Larios alias “Greñas” and César Eliseo Sorto Amaya. The other 20 remain unnamed.
  • 10 people rendered to El Salvador on March 30. Names leaked to Fox News on March 31.
  • 3 people rendered to El Salvador as part of a group of 10 on April 13. Names are unknown. We only know it was 3 people because El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, tweeted on April 20 that 252 Venezuelans are in Salvadoran custody. As 245 Venezuelans were already in El Salvador, that would mean that 7 of the 10 were Venezuelan, leaving 3 Salvadorans.

At MSNBC: “The frightening popularity of El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele’s authoritarianism”

Things were busy—and then I was traveling over the long weekend—so I completely forgot to post a link to my April 16 column at MSNBC’s website about Nayib Bukele’s high-approval-rating authoritarianism in El Salvador.

Imagine where U.S. democracy would be if President Donald Trump had an 80% approval rating, control of more than three-quarters of Congress, and the ability to blow past term limits with the Supreme Court’s blessing. Imagine if the 78-year-old Trump were 35 years younger; that is, not headed toward retirement, but poised to stick around for decades.

That’s El Salvador today. A country the size of New Jersey, with Indiana’s population and an economy smaller than that of any U.S. state, is now under the total political control of President Nayib Bukele.

Read the rest here.

Improbable, but no longer impossible

Maybe President Bukele will build a new wing at his mega-prison to hold all the Trump administration critics who get sent there as “no-takebacks mistakes,” as happened with supposedly non-deportable Salvadoran citizen Kilmar Ábrego García.

From this week’s WOLA Border Update:

“Although the Alien Enemies Act does not apply to American citizens, without due process, a citizen could be mistakenly deported to El Salvador, held indefinitely, and reliant on the same administration that deported them to realize the error and decide to retrieve them,” wrote Adam Serwer at the Atlantic. Greg Sargent echoed that at the New Republic, quoting Ábrego García’s attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg: “if the government can remove people in ‘error’ without recourse, then that logic could ‘apply with equal force to U.S. citizens.’”

If that plays out, by late 2025, two shaven-headed U.S. citizens in El Salvador’s Center for Confinement of Terrorism prison could have a conversation like this:

“What are you in for?”

“I complained about the tariffs on social media. You?”

“Tesla protest. But ICE said I was a Venezuelan gang member.”

Imagine Needing a Judge to Tell You to Undo a Mistake Like This

Based on the record before the Court, I find that this Court retains subject matter jurisdiction. I further find that: (1) Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits because Abrego Garcia was removed to El Salvador in violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act, specifically,&,U.S.C. § 1231(b)(3)(A), and without any legal process; (2) his continued presence TRUOS FISalyador for obvious reasons, constitutes irreparable harm; (3) the balance of equities and the public interest weigh in favor of returning him to the United States; and (4) issuance of a preliminary injunction without further delay is necessary to restore him to the status quo and to avoid ongoing irreparable harm resulting from Abrego Garcia's unlawful removal. For the reasons stated above, the Court hereby DIRECTS Defendants to return Abrego Garcia to the United States no later than 11:59 PM on April 7th, 2025. A memorandum opinion further setting forth the basis for this ruling will be issued in due course.

From the preliminary injunction granted today by Judge Paula Xinis in Maryland, requiring the Department of Homeland Security to bring back Kilmar Ábrego García from El Salvador’s Center for the Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT) prison, where the Trump administration put him on March 15.

How twisted do you have to be to need a court to tell you to do this basic thing? Ábrego García was here legally, convicted of nothing, and sent to El Salvador’s terror jail. ICE recognized the error. They should’ve asked Nayib Bukele to return him weeks ago.

Day 17 for the 238 Venezuelans Sent to El Salvador

His head shaved, unable to contact anyone, with no end date to his captivity, Andry Hernández Romero, a gay makeup artist from Venezuela whose tattoos commemorate his town’s Epiphany festival, is starting his 17th day deep inside El Salvador’s “Confinement of Terrorism” prison.

And the Trump administration put him there.

Jonathan Blitzer, at the New Yorker, just published a 5,000-word overview of what we know so far.

As part of the White House’s effort to invoke the Alien Enemies Act, ICE officers received a document called the “Alien Enemy Validation Guide,” which provided a point system based on different categories of incriminating behavior or associations. If an immigrant in custody scored six points or higher, according to the rubric, he “may be validated” as a gang member. Tattoos, which fall under the “Symbolism” category, constitute four points; social-media posts “displaying” gang symbols are two points. Using “open source material,” agents at the investigative arm of ICE compiled photos of tattoos considered suspicious: crowns, stars, the Michael Jordan Jumpman logo.

It is shaping up to be an “Abu Ghraib” or “family separation” level of stain on the United States, and there’s no resolution yet. On Thursday afternoon, the judge overseeing litigation about this use of the “Alien Enemies Act” will hold a hearing requiring the Trump administration “to show cause why they did not violate the Court’s Temporary Restraining Orders.”

Let’s Get Back To a Place Where This Is Wrong

A big majority of Americans want images like these to stay on the margins of society because they’re so extreme, harmful, divisive, abusive, violent, disqualifying, and wrong.

I refuse to believe otherwise, and so should you.

DHS Shuts Down Its Own Oversight

The New York Times was the first to report yesterday that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is firing nearly all staff at, or shuttering, three internal oversight agencies: its Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL), its Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman, and its Immigration Detention Ombudsman (OIDO).

It shouldn’t be this easy for one of the world’s largest law enforcement agencies, DHS, to obliterate its internal oversight. In fact, it isn’t, at least in the case of CRCL, read a March 13 letter from the ranking Democrats on the Senate Homeland Security and Judiciary Committees, Sen. Gary Peters (D-Michigan) and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois):

The DHS Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL) Office is fulfilling statutorily- required missions, and the CRCL Officer is a statutorily-required position that the Secretary must fully support with sufficient personnel and resources.

It appears that the Trump DHS is trying to get around this by keeping the position of the CRCL officer, but eliminating that officer’s staff and reassigning duties to less-empowered individuals elsewhere in the Department.

At WOLA we’d published criticisms of DHS Civil Rights/Civil Liberties for slowness, unresponsiveness, and a lack of “teeth” to improve abusive behavior. But as bad encounters with DHS personnel grow more likely, we’re all going to miss DHS CRCL when it is gone.

New York Times and other coverage of the mass firings, meanwhile, includes this chilling quote from Tricia McLaughlin, DHS’s new assistant secretary for public affairs, who is a regular source of chilling quotes.

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Homeland Security Department, said the decision was meant to “streamline oversight to remove roadblocks to enforcement.”

“These offices have obstructed immigration enforcement by adding bureaucratic hurdles and undermining D.H.S.’s mission,” Ms. McLaughlin said. “Rather than supporting law enforcement efforts, they often function as internal adversaries that slow down operations.”

In Latin America we’ve often seen quotes like this one from autocratic leaders and security forces. Defining basic oversight as adversarial or aligned with enemies.

This was constant In Colombia, where I worked a lot in the 90s and 00s. Álvaro Uribe even called human rights defenders “spokespeople for terrorism” while military-aligned paramilitaries were massacring communities and military “false positive” killings were worsening. Today, Colombians are still counting the dead.

WOLA Podcast: The Alien Enemies Act

Here’s a half-hour podcast with a slightly different format. Because it’s mostly about migration, which I work on at WOLA, I do most of the talking. WOLA, though, also has experts on Venezuela, Laura Dib, and El Salvador, Ana María Méndez Dardón, who answer some of my questions here.

Here is the text of the podcast landing page on WOLA’s website:

On March 15, 2025, President Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 for only the fourth time in U.S. history. The target, this time, is citizens of Venezuela. His administration sent hundreds out of the country, and into a Salvadoran prison, on mere suspicion of ties to a criminal organization, the Tren de Aragua.

In this explainer episode recorded on March 21, with help from WOLA’s Venezuela Director Laura Dib and Central America Director Ana María Méndez Dardón, Defense Oversight Director Adam Isacson walks through what has happened over the past six dark days in U.S. history.

  • The Alien Enemies Act did not use any standard of due process, and many of those sent out of the country, it is now very apparent, were documented in the United States and were not guilty of anything. All it took was for U.S. agents to decide that they did not like the way these young men looked.
  • The Trump administration ignored a clear order from a federal judge to turn the planes around and is now resisting that judge’s demands for information. The result is one of the most severe constitutional crises in U.S. history, which is unresolved as of March 21st.
  • Rather than simply deport them, the planes took 238 citizens of Venezuela straight to El Salvador, where authoritarian leader Nayib Bukele took them straight to a notorious mega-prison where those inside are cut off from the outside world and never seem to emerge.

This alarming story is far from over, but this episode lays out some of the most pertinent facts and context in half an hour.

Download this podcast episode’s .mp3 file here. Listen to WOLA’s Latin America Today podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or wherever you subscribe to podcasts. The main feed is here.

Who Did the Trump Administration Just Send to El Salvador’s Dungeons?

The list below is an excerpt from tomorrow’s Border Update, which I’m still drafting. But it deserves to be shared separately.

On March 20 CBS News obtained and published a full list of all 238 Venezuelan men whom the Trump administration sent to El Salvador on March 15, despite a judge’s orders. It appears that 137 had no due process at all—they were sent under the fourth-ever invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. The other 101 apparently had orders of removal.

But even though none committed any crimes in El Salvador, the government of Nayib Bukele sent them directly to the “Center for Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT),” a mega-jail built about two years ago to hold gang members, from which no prisoner is known to have been released.

For many of their loved ones, the CBS list was the first confirmation of their whereabouts. “Family members of the men say they’ve had no way to communicate with their loved ones,” noted Jonathan Lemire and Nick Miroff at the Atlantic, “So they study the [Salvadoran government’s] propaganda videos for glimpses of sons and spouses among the deportees.”

Here are profiles that I’ve seen of 15 of them, with links to sources. They really do not seem to be gang members at all.

  • Gustavo Adolfo Aguilera Agüero, 27, had been living in Dallas with his wife since December 2023, when they entered the United States with a CBP One appointment. In early February 2025, Aguilera was arrested while taking out the trash outside their home, his wife told the Miami Herald. He has a nine-month-old U.S. citizen son. His tattoos include his older, Venezuelan-born son’s name, his name and his mother’s name, and a reggaeton lyric. His mother says he has no criminal record.
  • ”JABV,” a 24-year-old who was abducted and beaten for carrying out campaign work on behalf of opposition leader María Corina Machado in 2024. His attorney stated that he has no criminal record in either the United States or Venezuela, no removal order, and “his tattoos are a Rose, a Clock and a Crown with his son’s name on it.”
  • Franco Caraballo, a 26-year-old barber detained in Dallas on February 3 when he reported to a regular check-in with ICE. His wife, Johanny Sánchez, insists he has no gang ties. “She struggles even to find logic in the accusation,” the Associated Press reported. Caraballo has several tattoos, including an image of a clock commemorating his daughter’s birthday. He had called Ms. Sánchez on the evening of March 14, Reuters reported, to tell her that he was probably being deported to Venezuela even though he had a pending asylum claim.
  • ”L.G.,” who has no removal order and a pending asylum claim. His attorney stated, “L.G. has three tattoos: one is a rosary, the other is his partner’s name, and the third is a rose and a clock.”
  • Edwuar Hernández, a 23-year-old man from Maracaibo, was arrested along with three friends at the Dallas townhouse they shared on March 13. Relatives tell the Washington Post that he had no gang ties and no criminal record in Venezuela. (See the narrative for Mervyn Yamarte below.)
  • Francisco Javier García Casique, a 24-year-old barber from Maracay, Venezuela, had a clean criminal record. He tried to make a living in Peru for four years before migrating to the United States. “He doesn’t belong to any criminal gang, either in the US or in Venezuela… he’s not a criminal,” his mother told the BBC. “My brother doesn’t belong to any criminal group, has no criminal history or record in any country and they have unjustly sent him to El Salvador simply because of his tattoos,” the Guardian reported that his brother wrote on Instagram.
  • Ali David Navas Vizcaya, who was detained in early 2024 when appearing for an appointment with ICE. His mother told AP “he has no criminal record and suspects he may have been mistakenly identified as a Tren de Aragua member because of several tattoos.”
  • Andy Javier Perozo, a 30-year-old father of five from Maracaibo who was doing food delivery gig work, was arrested along with three friends at the Dallas townhouse they shared on March 13. Relatives tell the Washington Post that he had no gang ties and no criminal record in Venezuela. (See the narrative for Mervyn Yamarte below.)
  • Jerce Reyes Barrios, a 36-year-old former professional soccer player who was imprisoned and tortured after marching in two early-2024 demonstrations against the Maduro regime. Reyes has a tattoo of the Real Madrid soccer team’s logo and had a picture of himself in his social media feed making a rock-and-roll hand gesture that DHS officials decided was a gang sign. He had already submitted a document showing he had no criminal record and a declaration from the tattoo artist, to no avail. He has two daughters, aged two and six.
  • Ringo Rincón, a 39-year-old man from Maracaibo, was arrested along with three friends at the Dallas townhouse they shared on March 13. Relatives tell the Washington Post that he had no gang ties and no criminal record in Venezuela. (See the narrative for Mervyn Yamarte below.)
  • Anyelo Jose Sarabia, age 19, is an asylum seeker detained during a scheduled January 31, 2025 check-in with ICE in Dallas. His brother’s statement reads, “The tattoo on his left hand is of a rose with money as petals. A picture of the tattoo is below. He had that tattoo done in August 2024 in Arlington, Texas, because he thought it looked cool.” (His sister said something similar to Reuters.) Another tattoo is the words “strength and courage,” and another is a bible verse; both were applied by Anyelo’s brother, who has no criminal record in the United States or Venezuela.
  • ”E.V.,” who fled Venezuela after being imprisoned and tortured for participating in a 2022 protest. His attorney said he “has only one arrest in the U.S., which resolved with a non-criminal disposition under New York state law and for which he received a sentence of a one-year conditional discharge.” He has “tattoos of anime, flowers, and animals.”
  • Henry Javier Vargas Lugo, a 32-year-old, had been living and working odd jobs in Aurora, Colorado after trying to make a living as a mechanic in Colombia for seven years. He entered the United States with his mother and daughter. “He has several tattoos, including crowns with his niece and mother’s name, a clock on his arm and a rosary,” the Miami Herald reported.
  • Mervyn Yamarte, a 29-year-old who entered the United States in 2023 after passing through the Darién Gap and lived in Dallas, is “‘a good, hardworking boy’ who had never been involved in crime,” his mother told the Guardian and the BBC. His wife said the same to the Washington Post, which reported that armed ICE officers showed up on March 13 at the townhouse where he and three friends from Maracaibo had been living, and hauled them away. Yamarte’s younger brother witnessed the arrest; he said that the agents asked whether he had tattoos. One of Mervyn Yamarte’s tattoos is his daughter’s name. Another reads, “strong like Mom.” Yamarte appears—shaved, wincing, but recognizable—in the video shared by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on March 16.
  • An unnamed client of Lindsay Toczylowski, an attorney at the Los Angeles-based Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef), is an LGBTQ+ artist and asylum seeker whose tattoos included a verse from the Book of Isaiah. “They’re fairly benign. Clearly not gang tattoos,” Toczylowski told Mother Jones. “In my 15 years of representing people in removal proceedings in the United States, this is the most shocking thing that I’ve ever seen happen to one of our clients,” she told the Guardian.

Plainclothes Border Patrol… in Southeast Washington

This video obtained by the Washington Post shows a Border Patrol agent arresting a Venezuelan father whose only crime was improperly crossing the border in October 2022 when he, his wife, and kids turned themselves in to ask for asylum.

You can’t tell the arresting officer is a Border Patrol agent because he’s wearing a sweatshirt featuring a gothic font popular with Salvadoran gangs. You’ll also be surprised that he’s a Border Patrol agent because the arrest happened in southeast Washington DC, far from an international border. (Because Washington is within 100 miles of a U.S. coastline, it is still an area where Border Patrol is allowed to operate.)

It’s also nearly unprecedented to see a Temporary Protected Status (TPS) holder arrested for “improper entry” more than two years ago. We’re in a new and scary era.

The arrested father and mother are currently free, thanks to the quick and aggressive action of attorneys and mutual aid networks.

That’s Not How This Works, Chief

You’ve probably seen it, but we should keep raising up what an ICE official actually wrote to a federal court on Monday:

Regarding all of the Venezuelan men shipped off to Nayib Bukele’s mega-prison without proof of criminal behavior: “The lack of a criminal record does not indicate they pose a limited threat. In fact, based upon their association with TdA, the lack of specific information about each individual actually highlights the risk they pose.”

“TdA” is the Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan organized crime group whose true strength and influence are a matter of debate. In his sworn statement to a federal court, the acting director of ICE’s Harlingen, Texas field office, Robert L. Cerna, is imputing individuals’ associations with Tren de Aragua without even bothering to prove them.

And the notion that “the less we know about you, the scarier you must be, so you have no rights” is as dangerous as it is unhinged.

Just a Monumental, Tragic, Stupid Screwup

Click on the photo to enlarge in a new window.

Here are photos of some of the young Venezuelan men whom the Trump administration sent to El Salvador’s terror prison on Saturday. With no chance to defend their good name. On the merest suspicion of membership in a criminal group.

Their relatives say it’s all false. It’s looking like a monumental, tragic screwup. Get them out and at least give them a hearing.

The captions and sources, clockwise from top left:

  • Mervin Jose Yamarte Fernandez, 29, is one of 238 Venezuelans accused by the Trump administration of gang affiliation and sent over the weekend to El Salvador’s Terrorist Confinement Center. His sister recognized him in a video shared on social media, where masked guards shaved the detainees’ heads and escorted them into cells at the maximum-security facility. As the camera panned across the scene, Yamarte slowly turned his gaze toward it. (Yamarte’s family / Miami Herald)
  • Gustavo Adolfo Aguilera Agüero, 26, from the Venezuelan Andes in Táchira, had been living in Dallas with his wife since December 2023. In early February, Aguilera Agüero was detained by authorities while taking out the trash, according to his wife. Authorities were actually searching for someone else, but Aguilera Agüero spent several weeks in detention, awaiting deportation to Venezuela. Now, his mother, Miriam Aguilera, fears her son may be among the Venezuelans deported to El Salvador. (Aguilera’s family / Miami Herald)
  • Franco Caraballo, 26, a Venezuelan migrant whose family believes he was sent from the United States to a prison in El Salvador, takes a selfie with his wife Johanny Sanchez, in this undated handout picture provided by his family. (Franco Caraballo’s Family/Handout via REUTERS)
  • Henry Javier Vargas, 32, originally from Vargas state on Venezuela’s coast, had been living in Aurora, Colorado, for nearly a year when he was detained on January 29. Prior to migrating to the U.S., Vargas spent seven years in Colombia, working as a mechanic in Bogotá. Vargas’s family was able to identify him in a video posted by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, showing the detainees arriving in El Salvador. In the footage, his hands are shackled, and his head is bowed in a moment of despair (Vargas’s family / Miami Herald)
  • Ringo Rincón was living in Dallas when he was arrested. His girlfriend says she believes he has been taken to a prison in El Salvador with his roommates. (Roslyany Caamaño / The Washington Post)
  • Francisco García, a barber, with one of his customers. (Photo courtesy of Sebastián García / El Estímulo).
  • Andy Javier Perozo with his mom, Erkia Palencia, and a note wishing her happy birthday. (Courtesy of Erkia Palencia / The Washington Post)

Arrested at Home in Dallas on Thursday. In a Salvadoran Gulag by Saturday.

Four men from Maracaibo, Venezuela “were eking out a new life in Dallas, where they worked long hours and shared a townhouse. Then, on Thursday, armed officers showed up at their home, arrested them and took them to a Texas detention center,” reads a startling report from Silvia Foster-Frau in today’s Washington Post.

Mervin’s younger brother, Jonferson Yamarte, had arrived in Texas. He witnessed the arrests but was not detained and described them to The Post.

He said armed immigration officers were in his living room when he woke up. They asked him to sit down, requested his name and then inquired whether he had tattoos. Scholars and journalists who have studied Tren de Aragua say tattoos are not a reliable indicator of membership in the gang. Relatives of several Venezuelan men whom the Trump administration described as Tren de Aragua members sent to Guantánamo in February also said immigration agents had focused on tattoos. Their relatives denied that their loved ones had ties to the gang.

For four Venezuelan friends, Alien Enemies Act cuts short an American dream

Forced Disappearances in New Mexico

From an ACLU of New Mexico complaint, covered in Source NM:

ICE has not identified any of the 48 individuals apprehended in the “enhanced enforcement operation” centered on Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and Roswell. ICE has not indicated where any of them are being detained, whether they have access to counsel, in what conditions they are being held, or even which agency is holding them. These individuals have been effectively forcibly disappeared from our communities.

Timeline of What Appears to be Defiance of a Judicial Order: Applying the Alien Enemies Act to Venezuelans Sent to El Salvador’s Prisons Without Due Process

On social media this morning I underwent a messy process of trying to piece together the timeline of what happened yesterday, as the Trump administration raced to get 238 Venezuelan citizens on planes headed straight for El Salvador President Nayib Bukele’s prison system before a federal judge could stop them from using the Alien Enemies Act for that purpose.

The timeline does show that the planes landed well after Washington DC Federal District Judge James E. Boasberg issued a temporary restraining order to stop that from happening. Social media is not a great place to explain that as new information emerges, because one can’t edit earlier posts.

Here is a timeline, last edited at 1:30PM Eastern on Tuesday, March 18. (I’ll change that time if I make further updates.)

  • Sometime Friday March 14: President Trump issues an executive order invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, for the fourth time in US history, to allow the swift removal of Venezuelan citizens, regardless of migratory status, accused of membership in the Tren de Aragua criminal group. The Alien Enemies Act is meant to be a wartime jurisdiction, to be invoked at times of declared war, foreign invasion, or foreign “predatory incursion.” It includes no due process rights for those detained or deported, and the U.S. government is not required to prove a tie to Tren de Aragua. The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, who has imprisoned nearly 3 percent of his country’s male population, offered on February 3 to jail non-Salvadorans whom the Trump administration sent to El Salvador.
  • Saturday, March 15: The American Civil Liberties Union and Democracy Forward seek a temporary restraining order to halt invocation of the Alien Enemies Act. The case is docketed as J.G.G. vs. Donald Trump.
  • Saturday, March 15 at 3:10pm and 3:40pm Eastern: Two ICE charter flights flown by contractor GlobalX are to leave Harlingen, Texas for San Salvador. These will be delayed. These weekend ICE flights are unusual.

  • Saturday, March 15 at 3:51pm Eastern: according to the page’s timestamp, the White House posts the executive order to its website.

  • Saturday, March 15 at 4:13pm Eastern: A third ICE charter flight flown by GlobalX is to leave Harlingen, Texas for Comayagua, Honduras. It, too, will be delayed.

  • Saturday, March 15 at 5:00pm Eastern: Judge Boasberg convenes a hearing in the J.G.G. vs. Trump case.
  • Saturday, March 15 at ~5:20pm Eastern: Judge Boasberg adjourns the hearing until 6:00pm to give the Department of Justice time to confirm whether flights carrying people under the Alien Enemies Act are underway or may depart soon.
  • Saturday, March 15 at 5:26pm Eastern: GlobalX flight 6143 departs Harlingen, Texas but its destination has changed to Comayagua, Honduras.

  • Saturday, March 15 at 5:45pm Eastern: GlobalX flight 6145 departs Harlingen, Texas; while the FlightAware app said it was heading for San Salvador, there is an alternate flight plan for Comayagua, Honduras. Subsequent reporting shows that this and the two other planes went to Comayagua: none flew directly to San Salvador. It is not clear why they made this stop en route.

  • Saturday, March 15 at ~6:05 Eastern: In a private aside, the Department of Justice apparently fails to confirm anything about flights to Judge Boasberg.
  • Saturday, March 15 at ~6:47pm Eastern: Judge Boasberg issues a temporary restraining order blocking application of the Alien Enemies Act. The New York Times reported: “Judge Boasberg said he was ordering the government to turn flights around given ‘information, unrebutted by the government, that flights are actively departing.’”
  • Saturday, March 15 at 7:26pm Eastern: A March 16 Justice Department notice refers to a “7:26 PM minute order” from Judge Boasberg.

At this point, all flights should have stopped or turned around.


  • Saturday, March 15 at 7:36pm Eastern: GlobalX Flight 6143 did not turn around: it lands in Comayagua, Honduras.
  • Saturday, March 15 at 7:37pm Eastern: GlobalX Flight 6122 departs Harlingen for Comayagua, Honduras.

  • Saturday, March 15 at 8:07pm Eastern: There are two flight plans filed for GlobalX Flight 6145. The one that turned out to be correct listed the plane landing at this time in Comayagua, Honduras.

  • Saturday, March 15 at 9:46pm Eastern: GlobalX Flight 6122 lands in Comayagua, Honduras.
  • Saturday, March 15 at 11:39pm Eastern: A Washington Post timeline shows a plane departing Comayagua, Honduras at 11:39pm.
  • Saturday, March 15 at 11:41pm Eastern: GlobalX Flight 6144 departs Comayagua, Honduras for San Salvador, El Salvador.

  • Sunday, March 16 at 12:06am Eastern: GlobalX Flight 6144 lands in San Salvador.
  • Sunday, March 16 at 12:10am Eastern: A Washington Post timeline shows a flight from Comayagua landing in San Salvador.
  • Sunday, March 16 at 12:41am Eastern: GlobalX Flight 6123 departs Comayagua, Honduras for San Salvador, El Salvador.

  • Sunday, March 16 at 1:04am Eastern: GlobalX Flight 6123 lands in San Salvador.
  • Sunday, March 16 at 7:46am Eastern: Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele tweets a screenshotted New York Post headline, “Fed judge orders deportation flights carrying alleged Venezuelan gangbangers to return to US” with the comment “Oopsie… Too late 😂.” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio retweets this. (This timeline indicates that the judge was not, in fact, “too late.”)
  • Sunday, March 16 at 8:13am Eastern: Bukele posts footage of people arriving and being dragged off of planes by security forces in riot gear, then roughly herded into his government’s giant Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) prison. “Today,” Bukele writes, “the first 238 members of the Venezuelan criminal organization, Tren de Aragua, arrived in our country. They were immediately transferred to CECOT, the Terrorism Confinement Center, for a period of one year (renewable). The United States will pay a very low fee for them, but a high one for us.”
Salvadoran government handout photo reproduced at the Washington Post.

  • Sunday, March 16 at 8:39am Eastern: U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio tweets, “Thank you for your assistance and friendship, President Bukele.”
  • Sunday, March 16 at 3:46 PM Eastern: An Axios article by Marc Caputo reports that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem chose not to turn the planes around. Officials claimed to Caputo that they could ignore Judge Boasberg’s order because the planes were already over international waters. A correction added to the story reads, “This story was updated with the White House official’s claim that the administration had ignored the ruling but not defied it, because it came too late.” (This timeline makes clear that the order did not come too late.
  • Monday, March 17 during the 5:00PM hour, Eastern: Appearing before Judge Boasburg, Department of Justice attorneys refuse to answer basic questions about the flights detailed in this timeline.
  • Tuesday, March 18 mid-day: Acting ICE Harlingen Field Office Director Robert L. Cerna submits a statement to the court affirming that two of the flights were carrying all of the Venezuelans removed under the Alien Enemies Act proclamation, and that both were in the air by 7:25 PM on March 16, a minute before Judge Boasberg’s temporary restraining order appeared in writing. The statement seems to assume that the planes could not be called back once in the air, once over international waters, or once on the ground in Honduras—not their final destination—while still carrying out an ICE contract. These assumptions are far from settled.

WOLA Podcast: “They Didn’t Take Our Strength”: The Border Under Trump, Viewed from Nogales

I appreciated this opportunity to spend an hour with three colleagues at the border, with the Kino Border Initiative in Nogales, five weeks into the Trump administration. Karen, Bernie, and Diana provide a moving account of what they’re seeing, and what migrants are facing, at this very difficult moment. Here’s the language of the podcast episode landing page at WOLA’s website.

KBI’s facility in Nogales, Sonora.

In the five weeks since Donald Trump’s inauguration, the landscape for migrants and asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border has shifted dramatically. The new administration is pursuing an aggressive crackdown on asylum seekers, closing legal pathways and ramping up deportations. Migrants who had secured appointments through the CBP One app under the Biden administration found those suddenly canceled. Many are now stranded in Mexico, left in legal limbo and vulnerable to exploitation and danger. The administration is meanwhile increasing its deportations into Mexico of thousands of migrants from Mexico and elsewhere.

This episode takes a deep dive into the current situation in Nogales, Sonora, where asylum seekers and deported individuals are facing increasing hardship and uncertainty. We speak with three frontline experts from the Kino Border Initiative (KBI), an organization providing humanitarian aid, advocacy, and psychosocial support to migrants in crisis.

Our guests—Karen Hernández, KBI’s advocacy coordinator; Bernie Eguia, coordinator of psychosocial support; and Diana Fajardo, a psychologist working with recently deported individuals—share firsthand accounts of the humanitarian crisis. They describe:

  • The immediate impact of Trump’s policies, including the January 20 mass cancellation of CBP One asylum appointments and a coming surge in deportations.
  • How migrants from Haiti, Venezuela, Mexico, and elsewhere are left with dwindling options inside Mexico, facing threats from organized crime, unsafe conditions, and legal roadblocks to seeking refuge.
  • The role of the Mexican government, which is now receiving deportees under an opaque and militarized process, keeping humanitarian groups at arm’s length.
  • The psychological toll of displacement, uncertainty, and family separation—and how organizations like KBI are working to provide support amid shrinking resources.

Despite the bleak reality, our guests emphasize the resilience of the people they serve. Even in desperate moments, migrants are holding onto hope and searching for ways to protect themselves and their families. But without systemic change, there is only so much that can be done to relieve suffering.

While recalling the urgent need for humane policies that prioritize protection over deterrence, this conversation underscores the crucial role of organizations like KBI in providing aid and advocating for migrants’ rights.

Download this podcast episode’s .mp3 file here. Listen to WOLA’s Latin America Today podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or wherever you subscribe to podcasts. The main feed is here.

48 Percent

Take a moment today and sit with the fact that 48 percent of our fellow Americans favor taking any category of people and “establishing large detention centers, where people would be sent and held.”

 CBS News Poll – February 5-7, 2025
Adults in the U.S.
31. Creating Large Detention Centers
Would you avor or oppose the U.S. government establishing large detention centers, where people would be sent and held, while the government determinedwhether or not they should be deported?
Gender Age Ideology
Total Male Female Under 30 30-44 45-64 65+ Liberal Moderate ConservativeFavor
 48% 53% 43% 50% 43% 49% 49% 18% 48% 73%
Oppose
 52% 47% 57% 50% 57% 51% 51% 82% 52% 27%
Totals
 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
Weighted N (2,159) (1,053) (1,106) (449) (547) (703) (460) (559) (747) (658)
Party ID Race White by Education
Total Dem Ind Rep White Black Hispanic No Degree 4yr Degree+Favor
 48% 24% 43% 74% 50% 42% 47% 55% 41%
Oppose
 52% 76% 57% 26% 50% 58% 53% 45% 59%
Totals
 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
Weighted N (2,159) (665) (671) (719) (1,361) (269) (344) (845) (516)

Source is a CBS News poll.

Trump’s Executive Orders and Latin America: Key Things to Know

Here’s an explainer WOLA posted on Friday, sounding alarms about the likely impact of these changes from the second Trump administration’s first few days. This is all before the feud with Colombia and the effort to halt a huge amount of federal spending.

It covers the following changes that will, if implemented, gravely harm Latin America:

  • Ending asylum and other legal pathways
  • The “invasion” justification and dangerous domestic use of the U.S. military
  • Mass deportation
  • Placing criminal groups on the “terrorist list”
  • Ending all federal diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility programs and mandating the recognition of only two sexes
  • Pausing U.S. Foreign Assistance
  • Exiting the Paris Climate Change Agreement

Read the whole thing here.

Notes on Trump’s Pick to Head CBP

President-Elect Trump has nominated Rodney Scott as the next commissioner of Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the U.S. government’s leading border security agency, which includes Border Patrol and runs official border crossings from the Mexico border to ports and airports. Scott, a career Border Patrol agent, was chief of the Patrol during the last year of the Trump administration and the first few months of the Biden administration, which dismissed him.

In 2023, I launched a website that tracks allegations of abuse, corruption, and misconduct at U.S. border agencies through an online database. (This project has fallen out of date because it lacks funding—a grant ran out in early 2024. I’m working to convince philanthropic organizations to back the 10-12 expert person-hours per week that its upkeep would require, but I’ve had no luck so far.)

Rodney Scott comes up four times in this database. The often troubling events and allegations are below.

Late November 2021: Rodney Scott, the Trump administration’s last Border Patrol chief who exited his position in August, faced a San Diego Superior Court judge for a September tweet in which he advised former Border Patrol agent turned activist Jenn Budd, who has recounted being raped at the Border Patrol academy, to “lean back, close your eyes, and just enjoy the show.” [On December 6, 2024 Budd wrote on BlueSky, “The judge found that he did make the rape threat, he admitted to hav[ing] CBP open an investigation on me, & I still lost the case.”] Budd also posted screenshots on Twitter showing Scott among those on private CBP and Border Patrol agents’ Facebook groups sharing images of Border Patrol shoulder patches reading “Let’s Go Brandon,” a right-wing euphemism for “F— Joe Biden.”

October 25, 2021: A strongly (and explicitly) worded report from the House of Representatives’ Committee on Oversight and Reform, issued on October 25, detailed the disciplinary process following 2019 revelations of a secret Facebook page at which CBP personnel posted racist, violent, and lewd content (original link). The Committee discovered that for most involved, consequences were light: they “had their discipline significantly reduced and continued to work with migrants” (original link)… “CBP knew about Border Patrol agents’ inappropriate posts on ‘I’m 10-15’ since 2016, three years before it was reported publicly,” the House Committee found. Among the Facebook group’s members were Border Patrol’s last two chiefs, Carla Provost (2018-2020) and Rodney Scott (2020-August 2021). Both indicated that they followed the group in order to monitor agents’ attitudes and complaints.

September 29, 2021: A letter to Justice Department leadership and the DHS Inspector-General from Alliance San Diego alleged that former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott, who left his post in August 2021, had violated the Ethics in Government Act. Scott established a consulting firm in July 2021, while still working for Border Patrol. On September 18, he issued a Facebook request for active-duty CBP and ICE personnel to provide information, possibly including restricted information, “to counter the lies and missinformation [sic.] that the DHS Secretary and Biden officials spew everytime they speak about the border.”

January 27, 2021: Relatives of Anastasio Hernández Rojas filed a brief before the OAS Inter-American Human Rights Commission, contending that Border Patrol covered up, and improperly interfered with the investigation of, agents’ role in Hernández’s 2010 death. Video showed numerous Border Patrol agents and CBP officers beating and tasing a hogtied and handcuffed Hernández to death. The brief contended that the acting deputy chief patrol agent in Border Patrol’s San Diego Sector at the time, Rodney Scott, signed a potentially illegal subpoena to obtain Hernández’s autopsy. (Scott went on to be Border Patrol chief from 2020 to 2021.)

In a thread on BlueSky, the CBP Watch coalition posted links to news coverage of additional allegations:

  • In June 2018, during the height of the uproar over the Trump administration’s separations of migrant parents and children, Scott told Politico, “I would like to remind people too, when we look at a child in the United States and say, ‘Oh, that 14-year-old young man,’ or, ‘That’s an adult in a lot of other countries. That kid’s been working for years, may or may not have been associated with gangs.’ A lot of times, especially if there’s any kind of a use of force or a violent encounter with law enforcement, and the person’s under 18, people get this picture in their head that it’s like the kid that lives next door to you, and it’s not. Some of these kids are hardened adults, and I’m not going to say that that’s all of them. But look into it, pull the layers of the onion back a little bit more, and you’ll find out most of these stories just are not true. They’re exaggerations.”
  • “Scott was chief of Border Patrol when the agency deployed BORTAC”—the agency’s elite, SWAT team-like force—“against protestors in Portland” after the killing of George Floyd in 2020.
  • “Scott was also directly implicated in expelling 13,000 unaccompanied children during title 42”—the 2020-2023 policy of removing asylum seekers without an opportunity to seek protection, in the name of pandemic response—“a policy that never got the press scrutiny it deserved (with some honorable exceptions).”

There was no reason not to expect Donald Trump to nominate someone with extremely hardline views to head CBP, someone who may worsen the climate for human rights abuse at an agency that already exhibits serious institutional culture problems. That’s what has happened—and as a career official and a known quantity among the Republican senators who will hold a majority next year, Rodney Scott will probably win confirmation.

I’ll be watching the confirmation closely, along with others in the human rights and government oversight communities. We’ll note how senators vote, and expect at least some to take their oversight role seriously by raising these allegations during the confirmation process. That’s why I’m gathering them all here, to make them available in one place.

CNN Español: “Estados Unidos prohíbe la entrada del General retirado colombiano Mario Montoya”

Here’s a CNN Español segment I recorded at the studio (which is one neighborhood away from home) on Monday evening. It’s about State Department sanctioning, for serious human rights allegations, a general who was a key U.S. “partner” at the outset of Plan Colombia in the early 2000s. Also, the Colombian government’s request to pardon a FARC leader currently in the federal Supermax prison in Colorado after being extradited in 2005.

Listen to Human Rights Defenders

That’s quite a turnabout for Colombian Army Gen. Mario Montoya. In the early years of the “Plan Colombia” security buildup, Montoya was the “can-do” general whom the U.S. and Colombian governments frequently featured when they gave reporters access to military operations supported by big U.S. aid packages starting in 2000.

We now know that Montoya had a darker side of collusion with death squads, tacit backing of right-wing paramilitary groups, and—later, as Army commander—overseeing a spike in murders of civilians through relentless encouragement of high body counts. The State Department sanctions announced today further confirm this.

None of this is news to Colombia’s human rights defenders, who had been warning about Montoya’s record, and the rising number of extrajudicial killings, for years before either government began to respond.

This is yet another reminder of the importance of listening to human rights defenders.

A “Border Czar”

Thomas Homan was the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during Donald Trump’s last administration. He’s an extreme pro-deportation hardliner and was a key proponent of the 2017-2018 policy of separating migrant families at the border.

In October, CBS’s 60 Minutes asked Homan, “Is there a way to carry out mass deportation without separating families?”

He replied, “Of course there is. Families can be deported together.”

“I got a message to the millions of illegal aliens that Joe Biden’s released in our country. You better start packing now,” Homan told the Republican National Convention in July.

Donald Trump just announced that Tom Homan will be his administration’s “border czar,” a made-up position, presumably in the White House, that doesn’t require Senate approval. Homan will have responsibilities “including, but not limited to, the Southern Border, the Northern Border, all Maritime, and Aviation Security” and “will be in charge of all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin.”

“I will run the biggest deportation force this country has ever seen,” he told a July conference of so-called “National Conservatives,” adding, “They ain’t seen sh*t yet. Wait until 2025.”

WOLA Podcast: What Trump’s Return Means for Latin America

I recorded this late Friday with WOLA’s president, Carolina Jiménez, and our vice president for programs, Maureen Meyer. We walk through some of what that awaits us in Latin America during the second Trump administration: democratic backsliding, closing civic space, brutal crackdowns on migrants, old-school war on drugs, a collision course with Mexico.

We don’t have the blueprint yet for opposing the “authoritarian playbook” in the Americas. But if there’s a central message to this first-days conversation, it’s that the path back to democracy runs through a robust, creative, inclusive civil society. WOLA has been defending civil society partners throughout the region since 1974, and we’re going to continue doing that—now, here at home, too—during the coming storm that is no longer coming, it’s here.

Here’s the text of the podcast landing page at WOLA’s website:

We recorded this episode three days after Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election. It brings together WOLA’s president, Carolina Jiménez Sandoval, Vice President for Programs Maureen Meyer, and Director for Defense Oversight Adam Isacson. Together, they possess a combined seven decades of experience working on human rights, democracy, and U.S. policy toward Latin America. All worked on these issues, plus borders and migration, through the first Trump administration.

Maureen, Carolina, and Adam discuss what Trump’s win means for democratic backsliding and relationships with authoritarian governments region-wide, as well as for migration policy, drug policy, cooperation with Mexico, and U.S. foreign aid and security programs.

Both Maureen and Carolina emphasize the importance of journalists, human rights defenders, advocacy groups, and other elements of civil society. Their role in protecting checks and balances and promoting accountability has never been more crucial. The civic space that they need to do their work is at great risk of closure amid attacks on independent media, disinformation, and threats of retribution emanating from the president-elect and his allies.

They note that a Trump presidency will probably reverse the U.S. government’s uneven but improving record as a force helping to shore up democratic rule, which has been eroding in the region and worldwide. Guatemala—where the presence or absence of U.S. support has been crucial for fair elections and anti-corruption efforts—is a key example. The incoming administration’s transactional, ideological stance risks withdrawing support for democratic rule, empowering autocrats with severe consequences for basic rights.

While the Biden administration curtailed access to asylum and did little to improve accountability for U.S. border forces’ human rights abuses, Maureen, Carolina, and Adam warn that Trump’s plans for the border and immigration could indelibly stain the United States. The president-elect’s proposed policies—closing migration pathways, “mass deportation,” militarization of border security—threaten to cause mass suffering and greatly complicate U.S. relations with Mexico and other regional governments.

Humanitarian organizations on the border, migrant shelters, and legal service providers, they point out, are especially in need of solidarity as they are now at risk of being targeted on a federal level, as Texas’s government has sought to do at the state level.

Carolina recalls that “WOLA has survived for over 50 years because we are part of an ecosystem that is under threat but resilient… It’s time to stick together and support each other and to do our work with more commitment and more energy than ever.”

Adam adds, “Times like these are the reason we exist… Stay with us.”

Thank you for listening, and take care of yourself and your community.

Download this podcast episode’s .mp3 file here. Listen to WOLA’s Latin America Today podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or wherever you subscribe to podcasts. The main feed is here.

The Helpers Need Help

If the fascism playbook calls for scapegoating a vulnerable minority, it also means heaping scorn and derision—or worse—on people who serve and defend that vulnerable minority.

I’ve had lots of conversations this week, both one on one and in coalition, with people assisting the migrant population that Donald Trump calls “animals” who are “poisoning the blood of our country.” I’ll have more conversations today.

They’re not doing well, and they’re preparing for retrenchment.

Shelter operators, pro bono attorneys, and rights defenders, at the U.S.-Mexico border and elsewhere, are bracing for the scale of suffering they’re about to see, and desolate about their limited power to do anything about it.

They’re also worried about themselves: Will they be able to operate? Will they be fending off legal challenges? Will their communications and relationships be subject to surveillance? Is their personal safety at stake, threatened by both aggressive security personnel and self-styled vigilantes?

They also feel alone and undefended. And that’s with good reason.

Will anyone in the political establishment defend them? An important sector of the Democratic Party absolutely will defend them, and defend the rights of immigrants in general. But will a majority of the Democratic Party step up? The Party that just spent an election season triangulating itself away from the migrant rights’ defense community and tacking rightward (with absolutely nothing to show for it)?

Will traditional legacy media step up, after hedging their endorsements and issuing incessant “Trump Pursues Ambitious Immigration Agenda” headlines?

It’s really not clear.

Helpers don’t deserve to be made to feel like this. If you know someone who does this work, please send them a message today and let them know you appreciate them and that you’ll stick up for them. They need it now, and they’re really going to need it soon.

New at WOLA – Soldiers Confronting Migrants: Texas’s Dangerous Precedent

Here’s a new commentary at WOLA’s website about an especially alarming part of what Texas’s state government is up to at the U.S.-Mexico border right now.

Since March 2021 the state government of Texas, under Gov. Greg Abbott (R), has carried out “Operation Lone Star” (OLS), a crackdown on migration along the state’s border with Mexico. While this operation’s political, financial, and legal aspects have received much attention, an equally alarming issue has been relatively overlooked: the use of excessive force by Texas police and national guardsmen against civilians at the borderline.

Actions committed along the Rio Grande, which range from firing projectiles at unarmed migrants to physically pushing them back across the border, violate nearly any democratic law enforcement agency’s standards and set a dangerous precedent for civil-military relations on U.S. soil.

We detail a series of often outrageous incidents involving Texas National Guard personnel at the borderline. We sound the alarms, and call for federal intervention, for four reasons:

  1. What’s happening goes way beyond virtually all U.S. law enforcement agencies’ use-of-force standards.
  2. It is illegal to push someone out of the country who is petitioning for asylum on U.S. soil.
  3. Texas is ignoring decades of lessons and policing best practices for managing crowds and de-escalating potential disturbances.
  4. When people whose uniform patches say “U.S. Army” on them violently confront civilians on U.S. soil, the precedent for U.S. civil-military relations is grave.

Read the whole thing here.

“Cold Anger”

From the Washington Post’s obituary of Eddie Canales—who passed away on July 31 and whom I knew to be indefatigably cheerful—check out this quote from Nancy Vera, his colleague at the South Texas Human Rights Center in Falfurrias, Texas.

“In organizing, we have something we call ‘cold anger,’” Vera said in a phone interview, describing a feeling of quiet frustration that, held inward, becomes a source of fuel. “It’s an anger that helps you do the work, makes you more caring and dedicated to the work. That’s what Eddie had,” she added. “He manifested cold anger.”

I posted this thread to Twitter, with a couple of photos, upon learning of Eddie’s passing on July 31. He saved a lot of lives and was incredibly well loved.

Tim Walz’s Thin, But Good, Record on Latin American Rights and Democracy

I’m personally pleased by the choice of Tim Walz as Kamala Harris’s running mate. In a July 27 post, I wrote about Democrats’ need to stop triangulating and calibrating, and to stand up aggressively for core values when they’re under threat as never before in our lifetimes. Walz will do that.

But how is he on human rights and democracy in Latin America?

The record is thin: this is not Tim Walz’s domain. As governor of Minnesota, his most pressing foreign policy concern has probably been relations with Ontario and Manitoba. Before that, during 12 years in the House of Representatives, Walz did not serve on committees with foreign policy responsibilities.

However, we can get a sense from the legislation he voted for and co-sponsored. And here, the outlook is very good for his view of human rights and democracy in the Americas.

Due to labor rights concerns, Walz was a “no” vote on free-trade deals with Colombia (2011) and Peru (2007).

On human rights and democracy, Walz was one of 51 co-sponsors of a 2009 resolution condemning the military coup in Honduras, and one of 103 co-sponsors of the Latin America Military Training Review Act, a bill spearheaded by Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Massachusetts) in 2009.

As a representative of a farm district, Walz supported opening economic relations with Cuba, a market for agricultural products. The Alliance for Cuba Engagement and Respect notes that he voted in the Agriculture Committee for a 2010 bill that would have ended travel restrictions and allowed direct farm sales to the island. He was one of 32 co-sponsors, in 2015, of the “Free Trade With Cuba Act”—a misnomer, as it eased the embargo on Cuba but was far from a free trade deal.

On immigration, both in the House and as a governor Walz has adopted standard liberal positions without making it a signature issue. In 2018, at the lowest point of the Trump administration’s family separations policy, he was one of 195 House members who co-sponsored the “Keep Families Together Act.”

In 2015 he supported legislation backing stricter screening of refugees, but the New York Times reported that he has since changed this position. In 2008, following a visit to El Paso, he called “on Congress to increase funding for more Border Patrol agents, security cameras, technology and K-9 training,” MPR News reported; these are also common positions among Democratic legislators.

All in all, Walz has a solid record on Latin American human rights and democracy issues, though not one of leadership or deep engagement.

Older Posts
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.