The president of the United States is disappearing people to a Salvadoran prison for terrorists: a prison built for disappearance, a prison where there is no education or remediation or recreation, a prison where the only way out, according to El Salvador’s justice minister, is in a coffin.The president says he wants to send “homegrown” Americans there next.This is the emergency. Like it or not, it’s here.Asha Rangappa is a former F.B.I. special agent and now an assistant dean and senior lecturer at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs, as well as a member of the board of editors for Just Security and the author of The Freedom Academy on Substack.Mentioned:“Abrego Garcia and MS-13: What Do We Know?” by Roger ParloffBook Recommendations:The Burning by Tim MadiganBreaking Twitter by Ben MezrichErasing History by Jason StanleyThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find the transcript and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.htmlThis episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Elias Isquith. Fact-checking by Rollin Hu, Jack McCordick, Kristin Lin and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Isaac Jones and Aman Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Aaron Reichlin-Melnick. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Chapter 1: What is the emergency involving U.S. citizens and Salvadoran prisons?
From New York Times Opinion, this is The Ezra Klein Show. The emergency is here. The crisis is now. It's not six months away. It's not another Supreme Court ruling from happening. It is happening now. Maybe not to you, not yet, but to others, to real people whose names we know, whose stories we know.
The president of the United States is disappearing people to an El Salvadoran prison for terrorists. A prison known by its initials, Seacott. A prison built for disappearance. A prison where there is no education or remediation or recreation because it is a prison that does not intend to release its inhabitants back out into the world.
It is a prison where the only way out, in the words of El Salvador's justice minister, is in a coffin. On Monday, President Trump said in the Oval Office, in front of the eye of the cameras, sitting next to El Salvador's president, that he would like to do this to U.S. citizens as well.
If it's a homegrown criminal, I have no problem. Now, we're studying the laws right now. Pam is studying. If we can do that, that's good. And I'm talking about violent people. I'm talking about really bad people. Really bad people. Every bit as bad as the ones coming in.
He told El Salvador's president, President Bukele, that he would need to build five more of these prisons because America has so many people Trump wants to send to them.
Why do you think there's a special category of person? They're as bad as anybody that comes in. We have bad ones too. And I'm all for it. Because we can do things with the president for less money and have great security.
Why do we need El Salvador's prisons? We have prisons here. But for the Trump administration, El Salvador's prisons are the answer to the problem of American law. The Trump administration holds a view that anyone they send to El Salvador is beyond the reach of American law. They've been disappeared not just from our country, but from our system.
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Chapter 2: Who is Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia and what is his story?
And from any protection or process that our system affords, in our prisons, prisoners can be reached by our lawyers, by our courts, by our mercy. In El Salvador, they cannot. Names, stories. Let me tell you one of their names. one of their stories, as best we know it. Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia is from El Salvador. His mother, Cecilia, ran a pupusaria in San Salvador.
A local gang, Barrio 18, began extorting the business, demanding monthly and then weekly payments. If the family didn't pay, Barrio 18 threatened to murder Kilmar's brother, Cesar, or rape their sisters. Eventually, Barrio 18 demanded Cesar join their gang, at which point the family sent Cesar to America. Then Baratine demanded the same of Kilmar, and Kilmar, at age 16, was sent to America too.
This was around 2011. This is what we mean when we say he entered illegally. A 16-year-old fleeing the only home he's ever known, afraid for his life. Abrego Garcia's life here just seems to have been a life, not an easy one. He lived in Maryland. He worked in construction. He met a woman. Her name is Jennifer, a U.S. citizen. She had two children from a past relationship.
One is epilepsy, the other autism. In 2019, they had a child together. That child, who's now five, is deaf in one year and also has autism. Jennifer was pregnant in 2019, on the day Abrego Garcia dropped one kid off at school, dropped the other off with a babysitter, and drove to Home Depot to try to find construction work.
He was arrested for loitering outside Home Depot, asked if he was a gang member. He said no, and he was put into ICE detention. The story gets stranger from here. About four hours after he's picked up, and that appears to be the first contact he's ever had with local police, a detective produces an allegation, citing a confidential informant, that Obrego Garcia is actually a gang member.
Obrego Garcia has no criminal record, not one here, not one in El Salvador. He was accused, strangely, of being part of a gang that operates in New York, a state that he has never lived in. Whoever produced the allegation, they were never cross-examined.
And when Abrego Garcia's attorney tried to get more information, he was told that the detective behind the accusation had been suspended and the officers in the gang unit would not speak to him. Abrego Garcia's partner, Jennifer, said she was, quote, shocked when the government said he should stay detained because Kilmar is an MS-13 gang member. Kilmar is not and has never been a gang member.
I'm certain of that. In June of 2019, while Obrego Garcia was still detained, he and Jennifer got married, exchanging rings from an officer separated by a pane of glass. Later that year, a judge ruled that Obrego Garcia could not be deported back to El Salvador because he might be murdered by Barrio 18, that his fear was credible. Obrego Garcia was then set free.
Each year since then, he has checked in with immigration authorities. He's been employed as a sheet metal apprentice. He's a member of the local union. He was studying for a vocational license at University of Maryland. His last check-in with immigration authorities was on January 2nd. No incident.
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Chapter 3: What legal issues surround the deportation of Abrego Garcia to El Salvador?
Well, I...
And standing next to Donald Trump, President Bukele says he can also not send him back.
Of course, I'm not going to do it. The question is preposterous. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? I don't have the power to return him to the United States.
Again, I want to quote the National Review. You don't have to take it from me, which writes... This is a ridiculous pretense, because the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, will clearly do anything we ask.
If the deputy assistant secretary of state for Latin America requested that he ride a unicycle wrapped in an American flag in San Salvador's Central Square, Bukele would probably ask whether it should be a Betsy Ross flag or the traditional stars and stripes. If nothing else, if nothing else, Trump could slap those tariffs he is so fond of on El Salvador. But we are not angry at Bukele here.
We, the government of America, are paying Bukele to imprison Abrego Garcia and others. Bukele is not doing this against Donald Trump's wishes. He is Donald Trump's subcontractor. That Oval Office meeting between Trump and Bukele was a moment when the mask fully slipped off. I thought Jon Stewart pinpointed part of its horror well.
Can I honestly tell you, like, this isn't even... The thing that's... Like, they're f***ing enjoying this.
It came through so clearly how much they were loving it. Each of them declaring that there was nothing they could do for Rego Garcia. No way to allow him his day in court. No way to allow the American legal system to do its job and assess whether he's a danger. No way to follow the clear order of the Supreme Court. And from their perspective, maybe they're right.
Because here's a scary thing that I think sits, at least partially, beneath their calculus. Politically, they cannot let Abrego Garcia out, nor any of the other people they sent to Seacott without due process. Because what if he was released? What if he returned to the United States? What if he could tell his own story?
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Chapter 4: How does the Trump administration justify its deportation policies?
This is international matters, foreign affairs. If they wanted to return him, we would facilitate it, meaning provide a plane.
Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.
But President Trump, his policy is foreign terrorists that are here illegally get expelled from the country, which, by the way, is a 90-10 issue.
Chapter 5: What constitutional crises and court challenges are involved in these deportations?
Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem.
Mr. President, you wanted people to know that there was consequences if you break our laws and harm our people and endanger families. And this is a clear consequence for the worst of the worst that we have somewhere to put them.
Thank you very much.
If President Donald Trump decides that you are to rot in a foreign prison, then that is his right. And you, you have no rights. We are not even 100 days into this administration, and we are already faced with this level of horror. And I can feel the desire to look away from it, even in me. What all this demands is too inconvenient, too disruptive. But Trump has said it all plainly and publicly.
He intends to send those he hates to foreign prisons beyond the reach of U.S. law. He does not care. He will not even seek to discover if those he is sending into these foreign hells are guilty of what he claims. Because this is not about their guilt. It is about his power. And if he is capable of that, if he wants that, then what else is he capable of? What else does he want?
And if the people who serve him are willing to give him that, to defend his right to do that, what else will they give him? What else will they defend? This is the emergency. Like it or not, it's here. My guest today is Asha Rangappa. Rangappa is a former FBI special agent and now the assistant dean at the Yale University's Jackson School of Global Affairs.
She's also the author of the sub stack, The Freedom Academy. Asha Rangappa, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me, Ezra.
So I want to begin in the somewhat dark place that we're in. It looks to me that the administration is pretty directly disobeying Supreme Court orders in at least the Kilmar-Abrego-Garcia case. What recourse is available to the courts or to the system?
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Chapter 6: How does the Trump administration's approach compare to Bush-era policies?
They can't tell him what to do in terms of the negotiations and the dealings with the foreign power, but they need to do everything in their power to make it easier for this person to return. But I think to zoom out, this is by design.
In all of these contexts, whether it's in these deportations, whether it's in the visa revocations, whether it's even in the tariff context, you hear these buzzwords, foreign affairs, terrorism, national security, national emergency. All of these are arenas that are core executive branch authorities that are given great deference by the courts.
And so when they frame all of these issues in those terms, they're already carving out A huge swath of authority that they can essentially exercise without much oversight. And when you layer the court's absolute immunity ruling from last year on top of that, which, again, protects these core functions from any kind of liability issue.
There is a large arena in which they can act with impunity if they can move fast enough, as they are in this case.
So when the president says it is about national security, that means it's not illegal to twist the old Nixon line.
I wouldn't say that it's not illegal. It means that he's going to be given a lot of deference. He'll be given a lot of deference in terms of factual determinations, for example, factual determinations that we're in a national emergency, perhaps his factual determinations that we're being invaded. or that somebody's actions are intruding on his foreign policy prerogatives.
All of these things are given great latitude. And this is discretion that's been afforded to the executive branch in all of these contexts so far with delegated authority from Congress. So these are actually Congress's authorities that it has given to the executive branch with the understanding that there might be
actual quick decision-making needed by the executive branch in certain circumstances to exercise this kind of authority. It presumes that somebody is going to be acting in the nation's interests and in good faith.
So before we move to Congress, I want to just make sure I understand what you were saying and that the level of alarm rising in me as you say it is merited, which is what I hear you saying is that there is no check from the courts on this.
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Chapter 7: What powers does the Alien Enemies Act grant and how is it applied today?
Because every one of those people, if they come back and it becomes clear the administration made not just a terrible mistake, but deported somebody into a hell for no reason at all, that it's actually a political imperative for them that that story cannot be told, that Bukele keeps them in Seacott functionally forever.
I think that's true. My only point is yes, I think there would be a downside to bringing someone back. But I think if they were operating in a paradigm where they want to be in compliance with the court, they would do that.
So during the George W. Bush administration, there was famously the removal, the shipping of people who were deemed threats to Black sites, to prisons in other places that were not bound by our laws. How similar is the theory and the powers of what we're seeing to what was being invoked and used there?
It's similar. I think that it's more similar to the Bush administration sending people to Guantanamo. So the black sites were instrumental. It was for extracting information that they believed that these detainees had using methods that would be illegal under our law.
I'm not excusing it, but I'm saying that there was a, you know, I think they thought there was going to be some output that they were going to get that would be legal. useful intelligence.
But in terms of evading actual court authority, what the Bush administration did is that they looked at some World War II precedents that said that enemy combatants who were imprisoned in a location over which the U.S. had no control, that those people did not have the right to petition for habeas corpus. And the Bush administration thought, hey, that's great.
We can put people in Guantanamo Bay because that's, you know, under the sovereign control of Cuba. And we can basically have this convenient location where we can house all these people. But it will be out of reach of the courts. And this led to a pretty robust jurisprudence after 9-11 where the courts didn't really like getting cut out of the equation necessarily.
And so they began to have these decisions where they said, no, we actually do have the right to look at what you're doing there.
And all of this results, by the way, Ezra, in this irony that Guantanamo detainees who were captured abroad, who never stepped foot on American soil, had the ability to petition for a writ of habeas corpus, due process rights, the ability to contest their enemy combatant status, and were protected by the the Geneva Conventions.
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Chapter 8: What are the broader implications of these policies for American democracy?
There's a reason this particular case is broken through. And certainly the decision they have made on the other side of that, whether or not they intended to be here or not, is that if they can win on that, then that truly does expand the power. If they don't have to choose who they are sending to Bukele's hellhole...
Carefully, if it does not have to be the absolute worst, most bulletproof confirmation of this person is a horror who you do not want in the United States, if it can just be Donald Trump said so. Then what you have is a disappearance power, not just a national security power, the capability to remove almost any kind of person at any kind of time.
And when he begins to then, on top of the criticism he is getting, have Bukele there in the Oval Office, yucking it up with him, tell him he's going to need to build more prisons, saying maybe the homegrowns are next. What do you think, American citizens are a special kind of people? Wasn't that what he said? Yeah. Then it feels to me like we've tipped into another world.
Whether they're being legally savvy, this is not the narrowly tailored test cases they're sticking to. These are, I mean, the kinds of cases that the Supreme Court is already telling them you can't do this. And functionally, the response is, yes, we can.
Right. I was going to say, I think the only change I would make to what you said is it's not if we can win on this, then we can do everything else. It's if we can defy this, then we're home free.
Yeah. I mean, win not legally, but just in power. Exactly.
In power. And this is the difference, I think, between what the Trump administration is doing and what the Bush administration is doing. The Bush administration didn't want the Supreme Court to end up ruling on something that wasn't going to go its way. So...
When they thought that maybe they did not have the best legal case, they would move the detainee out or they would put them into criminal proceedings to avoid having the question actually answered. Because it's sort of, then they're still sort of acting in some gray zone. The Trump administration is willing to take, as you mentioned, these bad cases.
Bad cases make bad law, especially for the executive branch. Right. But they seem to not care. And I think that is the scary part because it does evince a predisposition to disregarding as we're seeing it happen right now.
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