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‘Full-Blown Constitutional Crisis’ Deepens as Bukele Refuses to Release Maryland Resident

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Original article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

U.S. President Donald Trump meets with El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C. on April 14, 2025 (Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

“If this holds,” said one critic, “there is no law but Trump’s law.”

“Everyone here is pretending,” said immigration policy expert Aaron Reichlin-Melnick as a video of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele speaking in the Oval Office circulated on Monday.

Bukele, said the senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, was pretending “that he’s incapable of releasing” Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident whom the Trump administration expelled to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in March, while President Donald Trump continued to pretend he’s unable to demand Abrego Garcia’s release.

When reporters asked Bukele to weigh in on Abrego Garcia’s case, the Salvadoran leader scoffed.

“Of course you’re not suggesting that I smuggle a terrorist into the United States,” he said. “How can I return him to the United States, do I smuggle him into the United States? …I don’t have the power to return him to the United States.”

Abrego Garcia entered the U.S. as an undocumented immigrant in 2011. He was accused by a police informant of being a member of MS-13 in 2019, but he denied the allegations and was never charged with a crime. He was denied asylum in a hearing, but a judge determined that he should not be deported to his home country of El Salvador, where he had a credible fear of facing persecution and torture.

He had been working as a sheet metal worker and living in Maryland with his wife and children for several years when he was among hundreds of people accused of being criminals and rounded up to be expelled to El Salvador under a Trump administration deal with Bukele last month.

In the Oval Office on Monday, Bukele joined the Trump administration in claiming nothing can be done to return Abrego Garcia to his family in Maryland.

“The U.S. is pretending it doesn’t have the power,” said civil rights lawyer Patrick Jaicomo. “And Bukele is pretending he doesn’t have the power. So who has the power?”

The Supreme Court last week said the administration is responsible for “facilitating” Abrego Garcia’s release, and the Department of Justice claimed in a filing on Sunday that under that order, it is only liable for allowing the man to enter the U.S. once he is freed from the prison in El Salvador.

Trump’s treatment of the case represents “a full-blown constitutional crisis and possibly the watershed moment for what the near future looks like,” said one writer. “If this holds, there is no law but Trump’s law.”

In the Oval Office, said J.P. Hill, both leaders were “openly saying they’ll defy the Supreme Court and maybe even send American citizens to the prison camp in El Salvador. Nobody will be safe if we let this happen.”

As Bukele and Trump both denied responsibility for the hundreds of people they have sent to CECOT, Documentedreported on Merwil Gutiérrez, a 19-year-old Venezuelan immigrant who was also sent to El Salvador.

Gutiérrez has no criminal record in the U.S. or his home country, and was not a target of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s deportation operation. An ICE agent said, “He’s not the one,” when a group of officers came to make an arrest at Gutiérrez’s apartment building, but another replied, “Take him anyway.”

Gutiérrez’s story, said Reichlin-Melnick, “comes as Bukele today pretends that he has no power to release people held in his own prison.”

Original article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

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Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
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US and El Salvador Guilty of ‘Grave’ Crimes of Enforced Disappearance, Arbitrary Detention: HRW

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Original article by Eloise Goldsmith republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Relatives of Venezuelan migrants deported from the U.S. to a maximum security prison in El Salvador attend a vigil in front of El Salvador embassy in Caracas, Venezuela on April 2, 2025. (Photo: Juan Barreto / AFP via Getty Images)

“The cruelty of the U.S. and Salvadoran governments has put these people outside the protection of the law and caused immense pain to their families,” said one human rights advocate.

Human Rights Watch on Friday accused the governments of the United States and El Salvador of “a grave violation of international human rights law” over the deportation more than 230 Venezuelan nationals by the Trump administration to a megaprison in El Salvador last month.

The actions taken against the deportees constitute both enforced disappearances and arbitrary detention, according to a statement from the group released Friday.

“The cruelty of the U.S. and Salvadoran governments has put these people outside the protection of the law and caused immense pain to their families,” said Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch.

The group said that since their removal, the Venezuelans “have been held incommunicado” and that the United States and Salvadoran officials have not released a list of the people who were removed, though CBS News last month published a list of names the outlet obtained.

The administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act, a rarely used law that gives the president broad authority to detain or deport non-citizens during times of war, to justify dozens of the deportations—triggering a fierce legal battle.

The Trump administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act in response to an alleged “invasion” by “Tren de Aragua,” a Venezuelan gang, but the government has produced scant evidence that the people removed had ties to Tren de Aragua. One hundred and one of the deportees were removed under regular immigration procedures.

According to Human Rights Watch, the Salvadoran government has failed to offer a legal basis for detaining the Venezuelan deportees and has not indicated when or whether they will be released.

“It appears that their detention is wholly arbitrary and potentially indefinite; a grave violation of El Salvador’s human rights obligations,” the group said.

Enforced disappearance, according to Human Rights Watch, is when officials deprive someone of their liberty and then conceal the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person. The violation is “especially serious” because it means they are outside the protection of the law.

The group is calling on U.S. authorities to publicly identify the Venezuelans who were removed to El Salvador and is urging the Salvadoran government to “confirm their current whereabouts, disclose whether there is any legal basis for their detention, and allow them contact with the outside world.”

The statement from Human Rights Watch also detailed the struggle that family members of the deported individuals have faced getting information about them.

The group has interviewed 40 relatives of people “apparently” removed to El Salvador, and all of them told Human Rights Watch that U.S. immigration authorities initially informed their relatives, who were in U.S. immigration detention, that they would be sent to Venezuela. They were not told they would be sent to El Salvador.

“Nobody should be forced to piece together bits of information from the media or to read into the authorities’ silence to find out where their relatives are being held,” Goebertus said. “Salvadoran authorities should urgently disclose the names and locations of all detainees transferred from the US, and allow them to contact their families.”

In addition to the Venezuelans who were deported in March, the Trump administration also deported a smaller number of Salvadoran nationals. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has admitted that one of the men sent to El Salvador was deported in “error.” On Thursday, the Supreme Court instructed the Trump administration to take steps to retrieve the man it had wrongly deported.

Original article by Eloise Goldsmith republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

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Morning Star Editorial: Trump’s 90-day pause – 90 days of blackmail, bullying and looming war

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/editorial-trumps-90-day-pause-raises-not-reduces-us-threat-us-all

President Donald Trump listens to Jeff Crowe speak during an event on energy production in the East Room of the White House, April 8, 2025, in Washington

TRUMP’S 90-day tariff reprieve spells 90 days of geopolitical turbulence, US bullying and the threat of war.

All three have been constant features of the period of US “unipolar” power, especially since the beginning of what even US presidents have termed the “forever wars.” But Trump’s aggression is global.

That is not changed by the 90-day pause on tariffs (above a 10 per cent base line) on everyone except China, on whose products tariffs are now being hiked well above 100 per cent.

Yes, it identifies China as his main target. Yes, it is an affronted response to the one big country which has met his threats with defiance.

But the escalation against China and suspension — not removal — of threatened tariffs elsewhere are part of the same strategy. Trump is trying to browbeat the world into siding with the United States against China in a conflict the US, not China, has decided on.

Successive US governments have slapped sanctions (which, not being UN-authorised, have no international legal standing) on Chinese products.

But the universal tariff threat ratchets up the pressure. Align with our demands, the US says, or we have already identified the level of economic pain we are going to inflict on you.

Those demands are intended to force all markets open to whatever the US wants. Economist Michael Roberts points to the catch-all list of supposedly unfair practices the US objects to, including “currency manipulation, ‘opaque’ licensing, ‘discriminatory’ product standards, ‘burdensome’ customs procedures, data localisation and so-called ‘lawfare’ of taxes and regulation.”

This is the extraterritorial imposition of US power writ large. Other countries may not decide their own policies on procurement, the quality or safety of goods, tariffs (!), protecting their citizens’ data from US acquisition, or how to tax and regulate US companies operating on their territory. It is outrageous.

…

Article continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/editorial-trumps-90-day-pause-raises-not-reduces-us-threat-us-all

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Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
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Trump Signs ‘Breathlessly Stupid’ Orders to Boost Polluting Coal Industry

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Original article by Eloise Goldsmith republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks alongside coal and energy workers during an executive order signing ceremony in the East Room of the White House on April 8, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

“Coal is a disaster for our health, our wallets, and the planet,” said one environmental lawyer.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed multiple executive orders that aim to boost the coal industry, a move that critics denounced as “reckless” and “breathlessly stupid” even before the orders were officially unveiled.

Among the orders signed Tuesday, Trump directed U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum to acknowledge the end of a moratorium that had halted new coal leasing on public lands and to prioritize coal leasing and related activities, and also directed U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright to determine whether coal used in steel production can be considered a “critical material.” According to Reuters, permitting this classification would pave the way for the administration to use emergency powers to boost production.

Trump also paused environmental regulation imposed under former President Joe Biden that applied to certain coal-burning power plants thereby purportedly “safeguarding the nation’s energy grid and security, and saving coal plants from closure.”

Additionally, one order directed the “Energy Department to develop a process for using emergency powers to prevent unprofitable coal plants from shutting down in order to avert power outages,” according to The New York Times, a move that may face court challenges.

Jill Tauber, vice president of litigation for climate and energy at the green group Earthjustice, said Tuesday: “Coal is a disaster for our health, our wallets, and the planet. President Trump’s efforts to rescue failing coal plants and open our lands to destructive mining is another in a series of actions that sacrifices American lives for fossil fuel industry profit. Instead of investing in pollution, we should be leading the way on clean energy.”

“The only way to prop up coal is to deny reality, and the reality is that people no longer rely on coal because it’s expensive, unreliable, and devastating to public health,” said Julie McNamara, an associate policy director with the Union of Concerned Scientists, in a statement on Tuesday.

“Instead of supporting the economy-boosting clean energy transition that maintains widespread public support across the country, President Trump is relentlessly attempting to tear it down.”

Trump has vowed to support what he calls “beautiful, clean coal,” though the industry has been in decline for years. Coal-fired electricity generation has dropped from 38.5% of the country’s generation mix in 2014 to 14.7% in 2024, according to a 2025 factbook from BloombergNEF and the Business Council for Sustainable Energy. Coal is also the dirtiest fossil fuel.

The executive order builds on previous moves by the Trump administration. Last month, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin announced an effort to rollback a host of EPA regulations, including some that will impact coal producers.

On the first day of his second term, Trump declared a “national energy emergency” intended to help deliver on his campaign pledge to “drill, baby, drill.” That emergency defined energy to include oil, natural gas, uranium, coal, biofuels, geothermal, flowing water, and critical minerals—but it omitted solar and wind.

Reporting earlier Tuesday indicated that Trump would sign an order invoking presidential emergency authority to force coal-fired power plants to stay open.

In a statement released in response to that reporting, Tyson Slocum, energy program director at the watchdog Public Citizen, said: “Reviving or extending coal to power data centers would force working families to subsidize polluting coal on behalf of Big Tech billionaires and despoil our nation’s public lands.”

“Coal kills. In the last two decades, nearly half a million Americans have died from exposure to coal pollution,” said Ben Jealous, executive director of the environmental organization the Sierra Club in a statement on earlier on Tuesday, also in response to reports that executive orders were forthcoming.

In another move that generated swift criticism, Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday directing U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate state policies that are aimed at confronting the climate crisis and to take action to stop enforcement of those laws.

According to The Washington Post, it is unclear what authority would the agency would rely on. The order specifically calls out state climate superfund laws in New York and Vermont.

“President Trump’s executive order weaponizes the Justice Department against states that dare to make polluters pay for climate damage,” said Cassidy DiPaola, communications director of Make Polluters Pay—a campaign to build public support for climate litigation—in a statement on Wednesday.

“This is the fossil fuel industry’s desperation on full display—they’re so afraid of facing evidence of their deception in court that they’ve convinced the president to launch a federal assault on state sovereignty. We are watching corporate capture of government unfold in real time,” DiPaola added.

Original article by Eloise Goldsmith republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

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Trump Orders Nearly 1 Million Migrants Who Entered US Legally to Leave Now

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Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

A Venezuelan migrant tries in vain to access the CBP One app a day after the second inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump on January 21, 2025 in Nogales, Mexico. The incoming administration shut down the app which was created by the Biden administration to allow migrants to schedule appointments to gain entry into the United States. (Photo: John Moore/Getty Images)

“It was never about ‘legal’ immigration, but always about upholding white supremacy,” said one human rights lawyer.

In yet another Trump administration attack on migrants, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Monday announced that nearly 1 million migrants who entered the country legally using a Customs and Border Protection mobile application must leave “immediately” or face consequences including potential criminal prosecution.

DHS notified migrants who were granted temporary parole protection after entering the country using the CBP One app—which was launched by the Biden administration in 2020 and upgraded in 2023—that “it is time for you to leave the United States.”

The department “mis now exercising its discretion to terminate your parole,” the agency said in an email to affected—and more than 200,000 unaffected—migrants. “Unless it expires sooner, your parole will terminate seven days from the date of this notice.”

“If you do not deport from the United States immediately you will be subject to potential law enforcement actions that will result in your removal,” the notice continues. “You will be subject to potential criminal prosecution, civil fines, and penalties, and any other lawful options available to the federal government.”

“DHS encourages you to leave immediately on your own,” the notice stresses, providing a link to a new app—called CBP Home—containing “a self-deportation reporting feature for aliens illegally in the country.”

“Do not attempt to remain in the United States. The federal government will find you,” DHS ominously added.

Approximately 985,000 migrants used the problem-plagued CBP One app to schedule appointments with U.S. immigration officials when arriving at ports of entry and were generally permitted to remain in the country for two years with work authorization.

However, DHS claimed Monday that “the Biden administration abused the parole authority to allow millions of illegal aliens into the U.S. which further fueled the worst border crisis in U.S. history.”

“Canceling these paroles is a promise kept to the American people to secure our borders and protect national security,” the agency added.

President Donald Trumpended new CBP One entries on January 20, his first day in office, via executive order, a move that left thousands of vulnerable migrants stranded in Mexico after their immigration appointments were canceled.

Monday’s announcement does not affect people who entered the U.S. under Operation Allies Welcome for Afghans or the Uniting for Ukraine program—although more than 200,000 Ukrainian beneficiaries last week received a separate jarring email mistakenly informing them that their status had been revoked.

The new policy also “should not immediately affect migrants who entered via CBP One and applied for asylum and have pending cases in immigration court,” according to CBS News immigration and politics reporter Camilo Montoya-Galvez, who noted that “the government generally has to wait for those cases to be adjudicated or terminated before moving to deport.”

More than 500,000 Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan migrants who entered the country via the CBP One app with U.S.-based financial sponsors are also bracing for the loss of their protected status on April 24. Additionally, the Trump administration announced the revocation of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for over 1 million Haitian and Venezuelan migrants.

However, on March 31 a federal judge in San Francisco blocked the administration’s effort to expel 350,000 Venezuelan TPS recipients, finding that the deportations were “motivated by unconstitutional animus” and would “inflict irreparable harm” upon affected migrants.

Critics have accused the Trump administration and its supporters of reveling in the cruelty inherent in forcibly removing migrants.

Proponents, meanwhile, say Trump is keeping his promise to carry out the largest mass deportation campaign in U.S. history—even as statistics show that the Biden administration deported people at a faster rate last year.

Migrants and other immigrants, including those who legally sought asylum in the United States—at least one of whom was wrongfully expelled—are being sent by the Trump administration to destinations including a camp in the Panamanian jungle and an ultra-high security prison in El Salvador.

Advocacy groups argue that such deportations are unlawful and violate deportees’ rights. Human Rights Watch has documented cases of “torture, ill-treatment, incommunicado detention, severe violations of due process, and inhumane conditions, such as lack of access to adequate healthcare and food” in Salvadoran prisons.

Responding to Monday’s DHS announcement, U.S. human rights attorney Qasim Rashid noted on social media that “985K migrants entered [the] USA through legal means during the previous administration.”

“Trump just unilaterally revoked their legal status,” Rashid added. “It was never about ‘legal’ immigration, but always about upholding white supremacy. This man is a fascist.”

Allen Orr Jr., a Washington, D.C.-based immigration lawyer, lamented Tuesday that “migrants who followed the rules and entered legally through CBP One are now being punished.”

“Not because they broke the law, but because of who granted them the benefit,” he added. “This isn’t about security; it’s about revenge.”

Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an insane, xenophobic Fascist.
Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an insane, xenophobic Fascist.
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
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