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Category: Human rights/civil liberties

Team Trump is gaming out how to send American citizens to prison in El Salvador

Team Trump is gaming out how to send American citizens to prison in El Salvador

Rolling Stone reports: Donald Trump and his White House have moved to deport green-card holders for espousing pro-Palestinian views, shipped hundreds of migrants to a notorious Salvadoran mega-prison without due process (in defiance of a judge’s order), and are now publicly musing about sending United States citizens to prison in El Salvador. Trump said last weekend he would “love” to send American criminals there — and would even be “honored” to, depending on “what the law says.” White House Press…

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Will Trump defy the Supreme Court?

Will Trump defy the Supreme Court?

Adam Serwer writes: America has reached a very dangerous moment, as the Supreme Court’s indulgence of President Donald Trump’s belief in his own untrammeled authority collides with the justices’ expectation that he will abide by their decisions. This evening, the Supreme Court upheld part of a lower-court decision ordering the Trump administration to seek to retrieve Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom—as The Atlantic first reported—the administration has acknowledged it mistakenly dispatched to El Salvador’s notorious Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or…

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Migrants are being placed on a financial death list to pressure them to ‘self deport’

Migrants are being placed on a financial death list to pressure them to ‘self deport’

The New York Times reports: Since taking office, the Trump administration has moved aggressively to revoke the temporary legal status of hundreds of thousands of immigrants who were allowed into the country under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Now, the administration is taking drastic steps to pressure some of those immigrants and others who had legal status to “self-deport” by effectively canceling the Social Security numbers they had lawfully obtained, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times and…

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Immigration judge allows government to continue effort to deport Mahmoud Khalil

Immigration judge allows government to continue effort to deport Mahmoud Khalil

CBS News reports: An immigration judge in Louisiana on Friday allowed the Trump administration to move forward with its effort to deport Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil, upholding one of the deportation grounds cited by the government. Assistant Chief Immigration Judge Jamee Comans ruled that the administration’s determination that Khalil poses “adverse foreign policy consequences” for the U.S. is “facially reasonable” and makes Khalil deportable. The judge gave Khalil’s lawyers until April 23 to file applications for relief to stop…

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Pressed for evidence against Mahmoud Khalil, government claims power to deport people for beliefs

Pressed for evidence against Mahmoud Khalil, government claims power to deport people for beliefs

The Associated Press reports: Facing a deadline from an immigration judge to turn over evidence for its attempted deportation of Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil, the federal government has instead submitted a brief memo, signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, citing the Trump administration’s authority to expel noncitizens whose presence in the country damages U.S. foreign policy interests. The two-page memo, which was obtained by The Associated Press, does not allege any criminal conduct by Khalil, a legal permanent…

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Court tells government to provide evidence justifying deportation of Mahmoud Khalil or case is over

Court tells government to provide evidence justifying deportation of Mahmoud Khalil or case is over

The Associated Press reports: An immigration judge in Louisiana said she would terminate the case against Mahmoud Khalil if the government does not provide evidence this week justifying their attempted deportation of the Columbia University student activist. At a hearing Tuesday in Louisiana, Judge Jamee Comans gave the government 24 hours to provide evidence showing that Khalil, a 30-year-old legal permanent resident, should be expelled from the country for his role in campus protests against Israel and the war in…

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Trump, Musk, and the Christian right are waging war on empathy

Trump, Musk, and the Christian right are waging war on empathy

Julia Carrie Wong writes: Just over an hour into Elon Musk’s last appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, the billionaire brought up the latest existential threat to trouble him. “We’ve got civilizational suicidal empathy going on,” Musk said. “And it’s like, I believe in empathy. Like, I think you should care about other people, but you need to have empathy for civilization as a whole and not commit to a civilizational suicide.” The idea that caring about others could end civilization…

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‘They’ll kill us all’: Gazans plead for intervention as Israeli attacks intensify

‘They’ll kill us all’: Gazans plead for intervention as Israeli attacks intensify

Ruwaida Amer and Ahmed Ahmed report: Since Israel shattered the ceasefire in Gaza last month, Palestinians have been facing horrors reminiscent of the first days of Israel’s genocidal onslaught. According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, the Israeli military has killed over 1,300 people and wounded more than 3,000 in the past three weeks, in which time the overall death toll in the enclave has surpassed 50,000. Over 280,000 people have been displaced as Israel corrals Gaza’s population into ever-shrinking “humanitarian zones” which it continues to bomb. Nearly two-thirds of the…

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The prisoners: What records show about the migrants sent to Salvadoran mega-prison

The prisoners: What records show about the migrants sent to Salvadoran mega-prison

  60 Minutes reports: Three weeks ago, 238 Venezuelan migrants were flown from Texas to a maximum security prison in El Salvador. That country’s president offered to take them and the Trump administration used a law not invoked since World War II to send them — claiming they are all terrorists and violent gang members. The government has released very little information about the men. But through internal government documents, we have obtained a list of their identities and found…

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Why this U.S. historian is leaving Trump’s America

Why this U.S. historian is leaving Trump’s America

  Amid the drama and turmoil created by Donald Trump’s second presidency, U.S. historian and author Marci Shore last week announced that she — along with her husband, historian Timothy Snyder, and colleague Jason Stanley — would be leaving their posts at Yale University and moving to Canada to teach at the University of Toronto. Shore, Snyder, and Stanley have all been vocal pro-Ukraine advocates, particularly throughout Russia’s full-scale invasion, visiting the country multiple times between them and educating audiences…

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Judge says deportation of Maryland man to an El Salvador prison was ‘wholly lawless’

Judge says deportation of Maryland man to an El Salvador prison was ‘wholly lawless’

The Associated Press reports: The U.S. government’s decision to arrest a Maryland man and send him to a notorious prison in El Salvador appears to be “wholly lawless,” a federal judge wrote Sunday in a legal opinion explaining why she had ordered the Trump administration to bring him back to the United States. There is little to no evidence to support a “vague, uncorroborated” allegation that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was once in the MS-13 street gang, U.S. District Judge Paula…

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Detained Tufts student suffering serious health issues and denied medication while in DHS custody

Detained Tufts student suffering serious health issues and denied medication while in DHS custody

The New Republic reports: Rümeysa Öztürk, the Tufts University student brazenly abducted by masked immigration agents on a public street in Massachusetts, is suffering serious health issues in Homeland Security custody. Representative Ayanna Pressley, whose district includes the university, posted on Bluesky Thursday night that Öztürk has had three separate asthma attacks in custody while being denied access to her required medications, “a violation of her fundamental right to medical care.” “This is cruelty, it is neglect, and it is…

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In Israel, calls for genocide have migrated from the margins to the mainstream

In Israel, calls for genocide have migrated from the margins to the mainstream

A Palestinian woman cries while sitting on the rubble of her home, which was destroyed in an Israeli strike on March 18, 2025. Eyad Baba/AFP via Getty Images By Tamir Sorek, Penn State Thirty years ago in Israel, advocating for genocide could land you in prison. In April 1994, an Israeli rabbi named Ido Alba published an article that read, in part, “In war, as long as the war has not been decided, it is a commandment to kill every…

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Trump administration accidentally tells Ukrainian refugees they must leave U.S. immediately

Trump administration accidentally tells Ukrainian refugees they must leave U.S. immediately

CBS News reports: The Trump administration on Friday said it accidentally told some Ukrainian refugees they needed to leave the U.S. immediately because their legal status was being revoked, telling CBS News the message was sent by mistake. Some Ukrainians who had entered the U.S. under the Biden administration following Russia’s invasion of their homeland received emails this week telling them that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security would be terminating their legal protections, according to advocates and a notice…

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Our aid workers were brutally killed and thrown into a mass grave in Gaza. This must never happen again

Our aid workers were brutally killed and thrown into a mass grave in Gaza. This must never happen again

Jagan Chapagain writes: Which was most horrific? The agonising week-long wait – silence after our colleagues went missing, as we suspected the worst but hoped for something different? Or the confirmation, seven days later, that bodies had been found? Or, since, the ghastly details of how they were found, and killed? Their ambulances were crushed and partly buried. Nearby were their bodies – also buried, en masse, in the sand. Our dead colleagues were still wearing their Red Crescent vests….

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This is what a police state looks like

This is what a police state looks like

Masha Gessen writes: “It’s the unmarked cars,” a friend who grew up under an Argentine dictatorship said. He had watched the video of the Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil’s abduction. In the video, which Khalil’s wife recorded, she asks for the names of the men in plainclothes who handcuffed her husband. “We don’t give our name,” one responds. “Can you please specify what agency is taking him?” she pleads. No response. We know now that Khalil was detained by Immigration…

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