| President Donald Trump meets with President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador at the InterContinental Barclay New York hotel during the United Nations General Assembly, in New York, Sept. 25, 2019 (AP photo by Evan Vucci). |
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United States: The administration of President Donald Trump ignored a federal judge’s order Saturday temporarily barring the president’s use of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members. The judge also ordered any planes that had already taken off carrying immigrants under the act turn around. |
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However, flight records show that at least one plane took off after the judge had already made his order, while two more that were already in the air at the time continued, although it remains unclear which of the planes were carrying immigrants deported under the act. All three planes landed in El Salvador, where the deported migrants were taken to the country’s infamously brutal “Terrorism Confinement Center.” (Washington Post) |
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Our Take: White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt made two arguments in her statement yesterday denying that the Trump administration had refused to comply with the judge’s order. The first is that the immigrants deported under the Alien Enemies Act were already outside U.S. territory when the order was issued, suggesting that the order did not apply to them. The second argument is that federal courts “have no jurisdiction over the President’s conduct of foreign affairs.” |
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Though the circumstances surrounding the deportations and the administration’s justification for them have yet to be clarified, both arguments defy legal precedent and the U.S. Constitution. And if it turns out that the administration did in fact expressly defy a federal court order, it would mean that the constitutional crisis that many observers anticipated prior to Trump’s return to the White House will have arrived just eight weeks into his second term. |
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From a foreign policy perspective, though, the fact that the detainees were deported to El Salvador is no less concerning, even if it is unsurprising. It highlights the parallels between Trump’s announced plans for mass deportations from the U.S. and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s “war on gangs,” which has led to the suspension of civil rights and the mass imprisonment of tens of thousands of men—amounting to 1 percent of the country’s population—without due process. |
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While the Trump administration’s deportations have not been on that scale so far, the goal—to deport all estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants from the U.S.—would make Bukele’s unprecedented, yearslong crackdown on criminal organizations pale in comparison. And the administration’s use of an obscure wartime power to deport for foreign imprisonment people who have not been publicly identified, much less convicted of or even charged with a crime, as well its disregard of a court order forbidding it from doing so suggest it is willing to exercise a similar disregard for civil liberties and rule of law as Bukele unless it is restrained from doing so. |
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Over the past few years, Bukele has also used his inflammatory social media presence to mock his critics and post dehumanizing photos and videos of the men arrested under the anti-gang crackdown. Yesterday on X, for instance, he posted a screenshot of an article about the U.S. judge’s order with the caption, “Oopsie… Too late,” which U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio promptly reposted on his personal account. That same inflammatory and mocking tone has been on display in the Trump administration’s public communications, including on social media, regarding its deportation scheme over the past eight weeks. |
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It is not a coincidence, then, that the Trump administration is partnering with El Salvador for deporting and detaining migrants. Bukele is in many ways a model for the Trump administration’s plan, even as the partnership allows the U.S. to distance itself—for now—from the most brutal human rights abuses it entails. |
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Perhaps most dangerous is that for many observers in El Salvador and the broader region, Bukele’s approach is popular because it is considered “effective,” despite the high costs and questions about sustainability. |
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Of course, that has alarming implications for human rights in the U.S., El Salvador and other partner countries. But it is also reminiscent of Washington’s historical legacy during the Cold War and before of emboldening repression, corruption and undemocratic governance throughout Central and South America—a legacy the U.S. was just beginning to outrun, as James Bosworth noted in a recent WPR column. With Trump appearing to push U.S. foreign policy toward a “spheres of influence” approach in the coming years, that will have serious, and dangerous, consequences for Latin America, but also for the United States. |