It looked like a scene from a very different period of history: US Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, standing in front of a prison pen filled with gaunt, shirtless men, their heads shaved, staring silently at the cameras. 

The footage is from El Salvador, where the US government had whisked away over 200 Venezuelan migrants to be held in the notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT). 

It’s just one of the surreal propaganda posts the Trump administration has released, bragging about imprisoning men they deemed murderous gang-affiliated terrorists.  

But looking at these images, one woman saw not a terrorist, but her husband. 

In his investigation into these deportations, Mother Jones reporter Noah Lanard found that ordinary men, with no gang affiliations, had been targeted because they had tattoos.

Today, Noah Lanard on the people America is disappearing and what the spectacle of deportations says about Trump’s immigration agenda.

 

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Guest: Mother Jones reporter, Noah Lanard

Background Reading: What the Hundreds of Venezuelans Trump Sent to El Salvador Are Up Against

Photo: AP Photo/Alex Brandon

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