By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan

In March, 2023, Donald Trump addressed CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, “In 2016 I declared, I am your voice. Today, I add I am your warrior. I am your justice, and for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”

Since taking office, Trump has kept up his promise to unleash retribution, like his promised mass deportations and his constant demonization of immigrants.

Take, for example, the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia who left El Salvador at the age of 16. His mother ran a successful food business, and a local gang had extorted the family and threatened to kill him. He fled to the US, and settled in Maryland, working as a day laborer. In 2019, during Trump’s first term as president, Abrego Garcia was arrested and accused without evidence of being an MS-13 gang member. In an immigration hearing held by Trump’s own Justice Department, Abrego Garcia was cleared of gang membership and granted asylum due to the threats he faced back in El Salvador.

Abrego Garcia was released with a work permit. He resumed his life in Maryland with his US citizen wife and their three children. He was working as a union sheet metal apprentice when, this past March 12th, he was again arrested by ICE with no warrant. He was taken to Baltimore, then, he told his wife over the phone, he thought he was in Louisiana. The last time he was able to contact anyone was March 15th, when he called his wife from Texas, and told her he was being sent to El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT. Kilmar Abrego Garcia hasn’t been heard from since.

His family is suing for his release. Judge Paula Xinis of the Federal District Court in Maryland questioned a career DOJ immigration attorney, Erez Reuveni, about Abrego Garcia’s detention in CECOT.

“Why is he [in CECOT] of all places,” the judge asked.

Mr. Reuveni: “I don’t know. That information has not been given to me.”

The Trump administration, after transferring Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, now says it can’t return him.

“Very practically, why can’t the United States get Mr. Abrego Garcia back,” Judge Xinis asked.

Attorney Erez Reuveni replied, “Your Honor, I will say, for the Court’s awareness, that when this case landed on my desk, the first thing I did was ask my clients that very question. I’ve not received, to date, an answer that I find satisfactory.”

Following that candid exchange, Todd Blanche, Trump’s former defense attorney who now serves as US Deputy Attorney General, suspended Reuveni from his career position as a top DOJ immigration lawyer.

Judge Xinis ordered the government to bring Abrego Garcia home, but the Trump administration claims it cannot – even though they are paying El Salvador $6 million to imprison immigrants. A federal appeals court agreed with Xinis. The Trump administration brought the case before the US Supreme Court, which promptly ordered the US to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release from Salvadoran custody and grant him due process.

“What’s different about this case is that we brought it to their attention, we filed a lawsuit, and there was just, essentially, no response whatsoever,” Abrego Garcia’s attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg said on the Democracy Now! news hour. “The posture of the administration has been, ‘Yeah, we made a mistake. No, we’re not going to do anything whatsoever to fix it, and, no, court can order us to fix it.’ That’s really what’s remarkable.”

There are hundreds more who have been removed to CECOT, all of them accused without evidence by Trump and his subordinates of being dangerous gang members. An estimated 90% of them have no criminal records. Most of them were rounded up and shipped to El Salvador under the authority claimed by Trump using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a law that has only been used a handful of times in US history, most recently during WWII.

International students at universities across the nation are also being targeted, having their visas revoked if suspected of engaging in Palestine solidarity protests. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that any student that creates a “ruckus” while in the US will have their visa revoked. So far, an estimated 300 students have been stripped of their visas. Several have been arrested.

“What is Trump doing?” Constitutional law scholar and Georgetown professor David Cole asked on Democracy Now! “He’s targeting the most vulnerable, immigrants, dissidents, transgender folks, people of color. But he’s also seeking to neutralize any place where there might be opposition, the checks and balances, so removing heads of agencies, removing inspectors general, targeting the press and punishing them if they disagree, targeting law firms and punishing them if they disagree, and now also targeting universities and punishing them in totally unlawful ways.”

There is a force more powerful than authoritarians: the power of people, organized in solidarity and resistance.