Three years ago, in El Salvador, after the MS-13 gang killed eighty-seven people in a span of seventy-two hours, President Nayib Bukele called on his loyalists in the legislature to declare a “state of exception.” The government could arrest anyone it deemed suspicious, and those taken into custody lost their right to a legal defense. Since then, in a country of six million people, eighty-five thousand have been jailed, many without credible charges; according to the human-rights group Cristosal, three hundred and sixty-eight of them have died. The gangs have been decimated, but the “state of exception” remains in effect, something that has earned Bukele plaudits from the MAGA movement and, last week, an invitation to the White House.
The Trump Administration is now paying El Salvador six million dollars to hold deported immigrants—among them more than a hundred Venezuelans removed under the rarely invoked Alien Enemies Act of 1798—in a supermax prison that Bukele built for his crackdown. He has proudly advertised his services as “outsourcing.” He has also offered to house American citizens convicted of crimes, and Donald Trump appears to be considering it. “Sometimes they say that we imprisoned thousands,” Bukele told the President and members of his Cabinet in the Oval Office. “I like to say that we actually liberated millions.” “Who gave him that line?” Trump said. “Do you think I can use that?”
Right-wing ideologues have long fantasized about the prospect of mass self-deportation: the idea is that, if the government is sufficiently hostile to immigrants, they will feel that they have no choice but to leave the country. The Trump Administration is attempting something far more radical. In a campaign reminiscent of Bukele’s “state of exception,” it has moved to suspend the rule of law; this is as much an attack on immigrants as it is a fever dream of untrammelled power.
At the White House, Bukele and Trump flaunted their defiance of a unanimous ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Justices had instructed the Administration to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man who has lived in Maryland for nearly fifteen years and was deported last month to Bukele’s prison, owing to what government lawyers admit was an “administrative error.” Trump’s initial response was to say that he was powerless to bring Abrego Garcia back. Before long, top officials started calling him an MS-13 gangster and a terrorist, even though he’s never been convicted of a crime. Stephen Miller, a White House deputy chief of staff, simply asserted that the Court had ruled in Trump’s favor and that “nobody was mistakenly deported anywhere.” Last week, after Maryland’s senator Chris Van Hollen travelled to El Salvador and met with Abrego Garcia, who had been transferred to another facility, Bukele said, “Now that he’s been confirmed healthy, he gets the honor of staying in El Salvador’s custody.” The White House tagged Van Hollen on X, saying that Abrego Garcia is “NOT coming back.”
The premise appears to be that only the President can decide whether someone’s legal rights are legitimate. Earlier this month, the Administration began the process of cancelling the Social Security numbers of immigrants who were in the country lawfully. The Social Security Administration had already agreed to share the “last known addresses” of nearly a hundred thousand people with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Times reported, but this latest gambit involves adding immigrants to the so-called “death master file,” a list of deceased Americans. According to the government, immigrants’ “financial lives”—which could include assets such as homes and bank accounts—will be “terminated.”
Shortly before Tax Day, flouting privacy laws that protect taxpayers’ personal information, the Internal Revenue Service finalized a “memorandum of understanding” with ICE “for the exchange of information for non-tax criminal enforcement.” Trump’s Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, signed it, because I.R.S. officials refused to, according to CNN; several have since resigned. ICE said that it wanted to locate and deport some seven million people. Undocumented immigrants pay close to a hundred billion dollars each year in taxes, but the Administration’s move will almost certainly lead many of them to stop filing. An analysis by the Yale Budget Lab estimated that losses to the government could amount to three hundred and thirteen billion dollars in the next decade.
Trump has never been much deterred by either the human or the material consequences of his policies, as long as they send a political message. During Joe Biden’s Presidency, more than a million migrants came to the U.S. through a legal pathway called parole, which granted them temporary entry so that they could apply for a more lasting status. Trump has now tried to revoke their parole, plunging them into legal limbo and potentially creating a new population of people bound to become undocumented. Many have applied for asylum, but the Department of Homeland Security has been making arrests in spite of any pending legal claims. Most of the Venezuelans sent to El Salvador had hearings scheduled before immigration judges; at least one had Temporary Protected Status.
Legal permanent residents are being targeted, too. Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate, is currently detained and facing deportation because the Administration objected to his pro-Palestinian activism on campus. A current Columbia student, Yunseo Chung, who has lived in the U.S. since she was seven, was also identified for deportation and had to sue the Administration to get a federal judge to temporarily block it. Last week, Mohsen Mahdawi, a senior at the university and a student activist, was arrested by ICE when he showed up for his citizenship interview; he has held a green card for a decade.
When judges have challenged Bukele’s authority, he has had them fired. Trump would clearly like to do the same. He has already called for the impeachment of James Boasberg, the federal judge who ordered the first deportation flights to El Salvador to be turned around. On Wednesday, Boasberg announced that he had “probable cause” to believe that officials had deliberately disregarded that order and could be held in contempt of court. Another judge, who had issued an earlier order to return Abrego Garcia, may soon initiate a similar process. On Thursday, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled strongly against Trump’s latest appeal in the case. “It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter,” the judge, a Ronald Reagan appointee, wrote. “But in this case, it is not hard at all.” The Administration seemed determined to force a constitutional showdown and has now succeeded. It threatens everybody, citizens and non-citizens alike. ♦
