McKenna Howenstine|Marlin Chronicle
Uncomfortable times
Aiden is a sophomore studying Media & Communication. They are the Community Editor for The Marlin Chronicle.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), under the direction of the Trump Administration, is now deporting migrants to a prison in El Salvador for alleged membership in MS-13, an international gang, among other reasons. Deportees are allowed no due process from our court system, and after they are deported, the U.S. has essentially no control over what happens. The U.S. Courts have ruled many of these deportations illegal, including one Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who the Supreme Court has ruled that the U.S. must facilitate the release of. The Salvadoran President has refused to return him and the Trump Admin. insists that the deportation was correct, despite U.S. courts ruling in 2019 that he could not be deported to El Salvador, according to the BBC. Government documents initially confirmed this deportation as an “administrative error” but now the Trump Admin. has walked back on this claim, with Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security advisor, saying that, “the right person was sent to the right place.”
Trump and his team are now looking at the possibility of deporting criminals who are full U.S. citizens after a suggestion from the Salvadoran president, according to NPR. Doing this would be a blatant violation of constitutional rights, and it’s truly sickening that a president would even suggest this. Once you’ve been placed in another country, if their officials won’t let you go, the U.S. wouldn’t be able to bring you back without military action, and Trump doesn’t seem to even want this. In fact, he is currently paying the Salvadoran government $6 million to keep the prisoners there. U.S. citizen Jose Hermosillo was also recently detained by ICE, and was granted due process and released according to Arizona Public Media, but had he not been allowed his day in court, like Abrego Garcia wasn’t, then he could’ve been deported incorrectly without a way for the U.S. to legally retrieve him. This notion of disappearing those that the government considers “undesirable” in a prison camp in a foreign country is eerily similar to actions of the Nazi party during the 1930s and ‘40s, so I say to you reading this, take action, protest, inform your friends and family of updates, especially those at risk, and keep your community safe.
“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.”
— Martin Niemöller
By Aiden Croghan
