Attention to the Unseen

Sen. Edward J. Markey, Rep. Jim McGovern and Rep. Ayanna Pressley write: A young woman walked casually down a public street only to find herself suddenly surrounded by masked law enforcement officers in plain clothes. Without explanation — and in the absence of criminal charges and any due process — she was forced into a waiting vehicle and vanished into the labyrinth of the state security system. Sound familiar? You’d be forgiven for thinking we’re recounting what happened to the…

Read More Read More

Nader Hashemi writes: In March, Badar Khan Suri, an Indian postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University, was arrested by federal agents. The nature and circumstances of his detention parallel the cases of Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia University and Rumeysa Ozturk at Tufts. I am the academic director of the center at Georgetown that hosted Badar Khan Suri as a postdoctoral fellow — the Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. I recently went to visit him at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement…

Read More Read More

The Miami Herald reports: A Venezuelan man has disappeared into the U.S. immigration system. His family is looking for answers. Where is their brother? Where is her boyfriend? Neiyerver Adrian Leon Rengel, 27, was admitted into the U.S. in June 2023, after crossing the southern border through a scheduled appointment with immigration authorities — part of a digital portal created under the Biden administration to manage the flow of migrants entering from Mexico. In his hand, he carried a phone….

Read More Read More

I went to El Salvador hoping to meet with Kilmar & check on his well-being, and I had the chance to do that last night. Our courts have been clear: this was an ILLEGAL abduction. I’m speaking now about my meeting with Kilmar & our work to bring him home: https://t.co/0tZjVonkUF — Senator Chris Van Hollen (@ChrisVanHollen) April 18, 2025 Politico reports: Chris Van Hollen has spent nearly a decade as an under-the-radar lawmaker. But the Maryland Democrat, who gave…

Read More Read More

The New York Times reports: A federal appeals court in Virginia reaffirmed on Thursday that the White House needed to play a more active role in seeking the release of a Maryland man who was deported last month to a prison in El Salvador, despite a court order expressly forbidding that he be sent there. In a sternly worded ruling, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit expressed exasperation at the Trump administration’s continued…

Read More Read More

Roger Parloff reports: In multiple filings, the government has conceded that it wrongfully removed Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia from the United States to a notorious prison for terrorists in El Salvador on March 15. On April 7, accordingly, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered—with no recorded dissents—that the government “facilitate” his return. But rather than try to right its wrong, the Trump administration has, for weeks, been resisting bringing him back and downplaying the gravity of its error. Both strategies have hinged on the administration’s dubious…

Read More Read More

The New York Times reports: In August 2018, during President Trump’s first term, an Iraqi immigrant named Muneer Subaihani went missing. A refugee who had been living in the United States for nearly 25 years, Mr. Subaihani was among hundreds of Iraqis who had been protected from deportation under a federal court order. His lawyers figured he was still in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, where he had been placed after he was swept up in an ICE…

Read More Read More

Politico reports: Former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince and a team of defense contractors are pitching the White House on a plan to vastly expand deportations to El Salvador — transporting thousands of immigrants from U.S. holding facilities to a sprawling maximum security prison in Central America. The proposal, exclusively obtained by POLITICO, says it would target “criminal illegal aliens” and would attempt to avoid legal challenges by designating part of the prison — which has drawn accusations of violence and…

Read More Read More

Politico reports: The Trump administration confirmed Saturday that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man illegally deported to El Salvador, is alive but confined in a notorious anti-terrorism prison under the control of the Salvadoran government. “He is alive and secure in that facility. He is detained pursuant to the sovereign, domestic authority of El Salvador,” Michael Kozak, a top State Department official, said in a two-page, written declaration submitted to a judge under penalty of perjury. Kozak’s submission came shortly…

Read More Read More