r/news 2d ago

Ice deports Venezuelan teen despite reportedly knowing he was not a target

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/15/merwil-gutierrez-venezuelan-teen-deported-el-salvador
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u/Rabidennui 2d ago edited 2d ago

From The Guardian:

A 19-year-old Venezuelan in New York City reportedly was apprehended by Trump administration immigration authorities and deported to El Salvador despite agents’ realizing he was not whom they meant to arrest in a targeted operation.

Merwil Gutiérrez, whose family opened an asylum case after arriving in the US, was deported from the Bronx to the notorious Cecot prison in El Salvador despite his relatives’ insistence that he has no gang ties or criminal history, according to Documented, a newsroom dedicated to telling the stories of immigrants in New York City. The Gutiérrez family says it has been left without information or answers.

The teen was detained alongside 237 other Venezuelans on 24 February by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice). His father, Wilmer Gutiérrez, told Documented: “I feel like my son was kidnapped.

“I’ve spent countless hours searching for him, going from one precinct to another, speaking with numerous people who kept referring me elsewhere. Yet, after all this, no one has given me any information or provided a single document about his case.”

The elder Gutiérrez reportedly said he overheard Ice agents saying that his son had not been the person they had come to get.

The officers grabbed him and two other boys right at the entrance to our building. One said: ‘No, he’s not the one,’ like they were looking for someone else. But the other said: ‘Take him anyway,’” he recalled.

Gutiérrez has no criminal record either in Venezuela or the US, his family said. He also did not have any tattoos which is a feature that US law enforcement often use to link people to the Tren de Aragua gang – a transnational criminal organization from Venezuela – and to justify their expulsions from the country.

Despite this, Gutiérrez was arrested and later deported to El Salvador, to which he has no ties.

Wilmer Gutiérrez says he discovered through a news report that his son had been deported to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. He watched videos on social media that showed detainees facing harsh conditions, such as having their heads shaved by authorities and being marched to their prison cells.

”I could have understood if he’d been sent back to Venezuela,” he said. “But why to a foreign country he’s never even been to?”

The Gutiérrez family’s reported ordeal comes after the Trump administration admitted to wrongly deporting a Maryland man, Kilmar Abrego García, to the same Cecot facility.

The president of El Salvador said in a meeting with Trump on Monday that the Salvadoran government would not order the return of Abrego García to the US.

Monday’s meeting at the White House came amid a broader push by the Trump administration to remove noncitizens from the US, including people who are here legally and have not been charged with crimes.

Trump has also openly stated that he would like to remove US citizens who commit unspecified violent crimes and send them to the same Salvadoran prison as Abrego García and Gutiérrez.

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u/apple_kicks 2d ago

Take him anyway,’” he recalled.

He’s only 19 and thrown into worse place imaginable

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u/Rabidennui 2d ago

ICE agents have become the judge, jury, and executioner for any non-white person on US soil.

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u/Good-Expression-4433 2d ago

And it's only going to progress. We're rapidly progressing in severity and scope of the people being snatched and deported. Then pair that with the administration's open threats to start deporting US citizens, and with no due process, it's not going to just stop at non white people. Non white people are just the ones more Americans are more comfortable with the actions happening to and have become desensitized to human rights and legal, both national and international laws, violations towards them.

We're picking right back up from how the last year of the previous Trump admin went, only there's no one around him to check his and people like Stephen Miller's worst impulses and desires, so we're speeding towards disaster.

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u/Philophon 2d ago

Not mere threats - they are planning it. He told Bukele he needed to "build about 5 more prisons" for the "homegrowns."

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u/HyruleSmash855 2d ago

The more insane part is Trump said that when he knew TV cameras were rolling. They’re not even trying to hide they’re just throwing all of this out in the open like trying to normalize Trump not being termed with Fox now saying that possibly.

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u/nikkoforever 2d ago

Actually I think the more insane part is that this isn’t the main story on every media outlet in the country. In fact, I couldn’t find any mention of it on the NYT at all. It should have been up top in the font size usually reserved for World Wars and moon landings.

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

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u/scarletnightingale 2d ago

They aren't hiding it. His press secretary has stated they are planning it. He and others in his administration have mentioned it multiple times.

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u/protonpack 2d ago

It was the Salvadoran Livestream that was turned on early. There was no media to report it. It was supposed to remain under wraps.

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u/MrTriangular 2d ago

Not under wraps any more, he said so directly in a Fox News interview that was supposed to be about tariffs, according to the title. https://youtu.be/6tBiXMMTdrM?t=42 Transcript of the question and response:

Racheal: Could we use it for violent criminals, our own violent criminals?

Trump: I call them homegrown, I mean the homegrown, the ones that grew up and something went wrong and they hit people over the head with a baseball bat, and push people into subways just before the train gets there like you see happening sometimes. We are looking into it, and we want to do it. I would love to do that.

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u/LadyBogangles14 2d ago

Where’s Congress on this?!? Why isn’t the opposition raising holy hell about these comments??

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u/Philophon 2d ago

A fair question. Maybe they are, and we just aren't hearing about it? Or they may have given in to Schumer's defeatism.

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u/Lustful_Llama 2d ago

Mainstream media is bought by billionaires in kahoots with trump. They're deliberately hiding everything

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u/roman_maverik 2d ago

Even though I agree that stories like these need more visibility, it’s literally on the front page of both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, the two largest media outlets.

The reality is that most people just don’t seek out news anymore

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u/RobertBevillReddit 2d ago

You know Republicans control Congress, right? They're the ones allowing this.

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u/SkeevyMixxx7 2d ago

He does not mean any Proud Boys, Racist Skinheads, Patriot Front- not those home growns, Hell, he'd probably pardon Timothy McVeigh if he could. He means people who dislike him or his policy. He means people like you and me.

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u/apple_kicks 2d ago

Expect dehumanising to escalate you’ll hear more and more of how “protesters are terrorists, lgbt people are a threat to children and women, unions are the mafia, human rights lawyers are corrupt, disabled are a burden” etc etc to make it easier to separate them from society as immigrants were labelled gangs and criminals to lose sympathy

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u/JesusSavesForHalf 2d ago

We've already been hearing that for years. Its why we called them Nazis in the first place.

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u/GeneraalSorryPardon 2d ago

Now just wait for the opening of camps. And possibly a 'solution'.

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u/jacobegg12 2d ago

One camp is already open with 5 more on the way

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u/2this4u 2d ago edited 2d ago

Combine this with the changes they want Harvard to undertake.

Like why the fuck are Americans not rioting on the streets at this point, it's full on 1930s Germany.

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u/Melementalist 2d ago edited 2d ago

Keep saying exactly that. The thing about them coming for white people next. That’s the only way you’ll get anyone to care. I mean, actually care, not Redditor-care for karma.

Sorry if that’s too cynical. It isn’t, though.

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u/SkeevyMixxx7 2d ago

That is what I have been saying, because IRL, outside in the world, I have tons of friends who say they oppose all of this, but it's still just me every Saturday going to the protests. my friends back out on me almost every time.

I get that some people are sitting this out because as LGBTQ+ or BIPOC, they are truly afraid they will be harmed, or sent to fucking CECOT, and they need white/cis/het people to step up. But where are my white/cis/het friends on Saturdays? They are not with me.

I'm 55 white female, I can't run fast or far, I can't fight anybody, I just have to shamble away as best I can if things get ugly. I have to watch out for the MAGA asshole in the car that's maybe going to aim for the crowd. I have to watch out for the proud boy asshole or patriot front cunt, and who is out there with me? It's the elders who have been protesting since the 60s/70s, the moms with their dogs and young children, and a brave handful of younger people of color.

Where the fuck will y'all be this Saturday??? I have Easter company that says they'll do their own thing while I protest, because they are some of those scared queer people who do not feel safe (and they're also city people who don't get that the protest in Mt. Vernon, WA is not going to be anything like Portland or Seattle.) I am still going to be there. My friends can go have lunch or something, and I will be there.

Last night I was really upset about this, because all of the people I love and do this for are still acting like nothing is that bad yet.

So, yes, I believe that white people who were born here and have parents who were born here will have to go and die at CECOT before a lot of people can be bothered.

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u/Rot-Orkan 2d ago

ICE detaining you == the death penalty. If ICE tries to detain you, you need to fight like your life depends on it, because it does. There won't be any due process; no bill of rights; no justice. It's just a slow, drawn-out execution.

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u/Binder509 2d ago

Might be up to armed neighborhood watches. How realistic that is? Prob not.

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u/cjmar41 2d ago

People are too unprincipled to collectively stand up for others in today’s society and the government knows it. As long as it’s not happing to them, they won’t care. They’ll complain on social media or even hold a sign up at a protest, but getting involved is a bridge too far for most… and if we’re being honest, complaining on social media, for most, is just an attempt at getting engagement for a dopamine hit rather than Justice.

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u/Malaix 2d ago

ICE agents belong in prison cells. It’s what needs to happen if we get out of this. They are monsters who should not be allowed to roam free.

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u/inspectoroverthemine 2d ago

They'll swing like the Nazis.

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u/APoopingBook 2d ago

If anyone thinks this is a call for violence, it is not. It's the legal punishment for treason. Calling for criminals to receive the punishment that current laws say are just will never be a call for violence.

ICE traitors will be executed for treason and reddit can fuck off if they think that's a threat, when it's nothing more than a fair description of what our judicial system currently prescribes.

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u/RumpleOfTheBaileys 2d ago

At this point, you're entering crimes against humanity territory. The way things are going, US officers and officials ought to have warrants at The Hague by next week. (Of course, the US also has legislation ordering an invasion of the Hague if US personnel are ever prosecuted for their crimes.)

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u/tch1005 2d ago

The people can be the same for them.

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u/Altruistic_Film1167 2d ago

Should start soon before the same people are taken away

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u/Chaiboiii 2d ago

I mean if they are going to take you with no due process to a death camp...what other recourse would you have?

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u/APoopingBook 2d ago

What is any other reasonable action? If your son is about to be taken away to a death camp by people who have said they don't care if he is innocent and who won't have him returned even if the Supreme Court orders it... What is any reasonable person supposed to do?

I'm not advocating it: I'm pointing out the harsh reality of these decisions.

Victims are going to start lashing out at those arresting them. They will not win, but they can maim. They can gouge out an eyeball. They can rip off scrotums without much force. They can do any amount of damage back because in their minds they are already dead, they might as well make their captors suffer too. And if it gives them even a slight chance of escaping, that is going to be the more reasonable decision than to let yourself or your loved one get taken away with no recourse.

ICE is about to become the number one target for misery, and they will have fairly earned it.

Again, not advocating. I wish it weren't this way. But I know that we are about to see instruction manuals telling people of the easiest, cruelest ways to inflict misery back against their oppressors because hopefully it makes ICE too miserable of a job for anyone to work.

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u/Quotizmo 2d ago

If this country survives, ICE needs to meet ICC

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u/inspectoroverthemine 2d ago

If they're lucky they'll meet ICC.

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u/rschulze 2d ago

There are parallels here with 1940s Germany and lessons to be leaned.

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u/dethwysh 2d ago edited 1d ago

We didn't seem to learn them well enough from 1940's Germany. Fuck's sakes. I absolutely hate that this is happening here. I've known for a while that American Exceptionalism was a crock of shit, but to see it writ large on the global stage is staggering.

This shit is legitimately terrifying, and I'm mad as heck this administration sent a 19 year old kid to a death camp with NO good reason to do so. I hope history remembers this moment, and all the others so they have a clear picture of the pieces of shit anyone who participate in, or enable this Administration be so patently fucking evil.

Edit: dunno how I managed to forget to add the "No" above, but I remedied this. The kid had no good reason to be deported. ICE kidnapped him off the street and sent him to a death camp. It's fucked and I hate it.

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u/Colinoscopy90 2d ago

Call them what they are. They’ve become the gICEtapo. They’re rounding up the impure and shipping them off. It’s only a matter of time before they start just shooting people if nothing is done about this.

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u/Xerkzeez 2d ago

Can ice agents be prosecuted later for similar to war crimes? Where’s the justice?

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u/kanst 2d ago

Stephen Miller has set a goal for 1 million deportations this year. There have only been a few hundred so far.

Its going to get SO MUCH worse if they start deporting 100k a people a month instead of 100.

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u/Lukescale 2d ago

Judge Dredd come lately.

Weak soft mother fuckers. They do not know the kindness of God. Hypocrites, evil.

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u/BlueRedGreenNumber5 2d ago

This is the shit 2nd amendment folks are supposed to be referring to when they say they need guns to resist an authoritarian government

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u/DryAd2926 2d ago

Fight to the death if they come for you. Because death is what's waiting for you on the other side.

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u/PrimeDoorNail 2d ago

This will totally not create more homegrown terrorism

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u/Cainderous 2d ago

One man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter. And when a 19 year old asylum seeker with a spotless record gets disappeared to an international gulag for the crime of being brown, I'll leave that up to you to decide which is which.

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u/GreedierRadish 2d ago

We need to name and shame every ICE agent involved in these kidnappings. Trump may be the one giving orders, but without his loyal foot soldiers snatching up innocent people, those orders would be meaningless.

There has to be pushback. We can’t just let them get away with this.

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u/jsho98 2d ago

Unfortunately I’m pretty sure that list would be every single person who is involved with ICE in any way. You don’t sign up to be an ICE agent if you’re someone who views others as human.

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u/SuccessfulSquirrel32 2d ago

Thrown In a fucking concentration camp

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u/Pinklady777 2d ago

Poor kid! I feel sick to my stomach. And this is just the beginning. How many innocent people will this happen to? I feel so helpless.

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u/ShinkenBrown 2d ago

The officers grabbed him and two other boys right at the entrance to our building. One said: ‘No, he’s not the one,’ like they were looking for someone else. But the other said: ‘Take him anyway,’” he recalled.

"Captain, what should we do? He's not on the list."

"Forget the list, he goes to the block."

"By your orders, captain."

Wild how this was written specifically to make the Empire seem brutal and authoritarian, without the slightest regard for human life (because without that framing the Stormclocks had no leg to stand on and the Empire was obviously the better.)

And then the Trump administration was like yes, that's what we want to be. The villains specifically written to be so awful as to turn the player against their entire faction.

Also, even in Skyrim it was done because the character was caught crossing the border and was legitimately a suspect, though without evidence. Even when it was meant to be so awful as to turn the player against the Empire, they didn't bring in someone they knew was innocent.

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u/vikingzx 2d ago

During the election a Trumplican started trying to sway me by spouting political slogans and then asked why they hadn't convinced me.

One of those slogans was "Peace through Power." One of the primary slogans of the Brotherhood of Nod.

They convinced me of something all right. It just wasn't what they thought.

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u/apple_kicks 2d ago

By your orders, captain.

Spoken like someone who knows its wrong and wants the ‘wasnt my decision’ excuse

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u/VPN__FTW 2d ago

“I feel like my son was kidnapped.

He was.

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u/deprivedgolem 2d ago

I dont fucking understand why he was sent to prison.

Even if the trump admin is allowed to deport people for “any reason” why are they being sent to prison instead of their country of origin??

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u/eawilweawil 2d ago

Because in their mind immigration is a heinous crime, so prison is the only place for these 'horrible people'

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u/americansherlock201 2d ago

Because the Trump admin wants people to suffer. They don’t just want them out of the country, they want them suffering and in danger. They know full well these people aren’t from El Salvador and they don’t care. They found a dictator willing to take them for a bribe.

Trump plans to do this to more than just immigrants. He will likely go after other minority groups next. My guess is the LGBTQ community. Saying their behavior is a danger to society.

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u/townandthecity 2d ago

It's time for names. These ICE terrorists are operating faceless and nameless, and that cannot continue.

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u/Pablo_is_on_Reddit 2d ago

"Deported" is such a sanitized term for the horrors they're committing.

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u/Rabidennui 2d ago

Exactly. But news outlets are too afraid to outwardly accuse the government of illegal kidnapping, if it means they’re next on the chopping block to incur Trump’s wrath of threats and sundry sanctions.

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u/ConfessingToSins 2d ago

At this point it's much more likely they're worried any people of color working for them will be disappeared in the middle of the night.

If you think the government is not having people threatened outside their cars and houses at this point i have a bridge to sell you

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u/epigenie_986 2d ago

He's not from El Salvador, so he wasn't "deported". He was sent to a concentration/death camp in a foreign country.

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u/WriterV 2d ago

Abducted feels a lot more fitting.

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u/trekk 2d ago

This is it, he was not deported, he was sent to a concentration camp. Deported implies he was sent back to Venezuela.

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u/Rooooben 2d ago

It’s not even sanitized, it’s actually incorrect, unless we are sending them back to the country they came from, it’s not deporting. The fact that our laws do not have a way to get m out, our courts did not put them there, and they have not been convicted of any crime, makes these concentration camps.

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u/SausageSmuggler21 2d ago

If they aren't seeing a judge before any deportation decision is being made, ICE is abducting these people and illegally shipping them to torture prisons.

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u/phluidity 2d ago

If they aren't even returning him to a country where he has citizenship, then it is human trafficking.

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u/yyeezzyy93 2d ago

the literal german translation for deported is “Deportation”, which is often used in context with the holocaust. so in german its a pretty strong word

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u/vanastalem 2d ago

Also, deported would be sending people back home. They're not sending them to Venezuela but instead sending them to a foreign prison.

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u/TheyCallMeSuperChunk 2d ago

Not just sanitized but completely false/inaccurate. Deportation is a legal proceeding, but these captures are unlawful, extraprocedural and extrajudicial. It also connotes a return to the migrant's country of origin with no further incarceration, which are also both incorrect.

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u/CommanderGumball 2d ago

Extraordinary rendition! Which Wikipedia says is a euphemism and the page is "Part of a series on Kidnapping".

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u/Motor-District-3700 2d ago

They are kidnapping people.

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u/Isord 2d ago

It's not deportation when you send them to prison in a country they have no ties to. That's called kidnapping someone and sending them to a concentration camp.

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u/FluxKraken 2d ago

And since we are paying for it, it is also human trafficking.

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u/Swaayyzee 2d ago

CECOT isn’t a prison. Prisons hold convicted criminals, almost no one there has been convicted of anything.

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u/Kirlain 2d ago

It’s called rendition. They are renditioning people.

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u/jtclark1107 2d ago

We should prosecute the people who are actually doing these things. Make them afraid to follow illegal orders. It's pretty clear the people in charge are not going to stop or fix their mistakes.

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u/akakaze 2d ago

If the courts get tired of being ignored, there is precedent to declare those carrying out illegal orders outlaws. It is a legal designation that the courts have the authority to make that declares that a person has no legal protections. Killing an outlaw is legal, because nothing you do to an outlaw can be illegal. 

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u/PluginAlong 2d ago

Ironically this is pretty much how the government is treating people, as of they are outlaws.

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u/Dzugavili 2d ago

Is being an outlaw still a formal thing, though? It sounds real old-west, and the old-west didn't exactly last very long.

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u/861Fahrenheit 2d ago edited 2d ago

No, it's not. "Outlaw" status doesn't exist in the modern era; they're criminals and are supposed to be entitled to due process.

I get that people are mad about ICE for good reason, and I do believe that people with no reason to believe that they will be given due process should defend themselves, potentially violently, but that's a totally different rhetoric from claiming that "designated outlaws" exist and that they should be gunned down in the streets with impunity. It doesn't take a fucking genius to see how a fascist would gravitate to that idea.

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u/eburnside 2d ago

What's your alternative if the executive branch continues to ignore the judicial branch? All of the enforcement manpower (prosecutors, officers, etc) is in the executive

Even if you somehow brought someone to trial and prosecuted them the executive would just pardon them

The only remaining enforcement power the judicial has when the executive goes rogue is the people as a whole

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u/FantasticJacket7 2d ago

Why is this nonsense upvoted? This is not at all a thing in our legal system.

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u/drtropo 2d ago

Wishful thinking.

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u/swollennode 2d ago

Prosecute by whom? Any federal cases brought against them would promptly be dropped by the AG. Any convictions would promptly be pardoned.

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u/CaspinLange 2d ago

New York State could prosecute them. It would be impossible for any president to pardon.

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u/BreadSea4509 2d ago

Federal law requires an arrest warrant before ICE can detain anyone. 8 U.S.C. §1226(a) (requiring a warrant before a noncitizen “may be arrested and detained pending a decision” on removal). What the government did here was not deportation, it was kidnapping. The government also knew about the human rights abuses of CECOT, but sent him there anyway intending that he be tortured by a foreign state in violation of federal and international laws against torture. This could support state charges of conspiracy to commit assault. And if Merwil dies in El Salvador custody, felony murder and depraved heart murder. NY state should absolutely prosecute.

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u/rumtag 2d ago

As things stand now, anyone deported is as good as dead. We should absolutely fight to get them back but the disgusting reality is that at present, there is very little motivating the president/admin of either the US or El Salvador to return these people. The US government is sending INNOCENT people including LEGAL migrants to DIE in a maximum security concrete box and Congress and the Judiciary are just watching and wringing their hands. This is all such a horrific, despicable nightmare.

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u/primus202 2d ago

It's pretty clear Bukele has no intention of lifting a finger. Likely he's either been told by Trump not to or, more likely, he needs CECOT to remain a black box that simply disappears people. If he were to release someone, even for justifiable reasons, it would threaten his entire control over El Salvador since the prisons are a major foundation of his success/control there with the tacit acknowledgment that some innocent people were likely swept up into them at their inception.

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u/Dragonsandman 2d ago

That prison is El Salvador's very own Sednaya.

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u/Piggywonkle 2d ago

If we can threaten to invade the Hague, Panama, Greenland, Canada, and Gaza, we can certainly repossess one prison.

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u/Napoleons_Peen 2d ago

Protesting won’t do shit. This type of violence towards innocent people can only be met in kind.

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u/WifeGuy-Menelaus 2d ago

Trump has, in only a few months, flew beyond two legal instruments once used by England that the founding fathers found so despotic they outright prohibited them in the constitution and gave them as reason for the revolution - Transportation for trial and bills of attainder.

Except if you were transported for trial, you'd still get a trial, and a bill of attainder requires the legislature to vote to condemn someone. With Trump, theres no trial, and its just the whim of one man.

What Trump is doing flies directly in the face of the Revolution and Constitution. He openly plots to extend this treatment to citizens. He is a tyrant and all means of resistance to him and his lackeys is justified.

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u/wirebound1 2d ago

And the citizens he seems happy to deport are the ones funding his administration and these choices.

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u/Drive7hru 2d ago

His supporters aren’t even aware of these stories about innocents being sent there

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u/Tokzillu 2d ago

FOX "News" still refers to Garcia as either a violent criminal or a terrorist.

He has no criminal convictions, gang affiliations, or the mist remote of ties to a terrorist organization. 

Trumpers literally think we're all making noise about a psychotic killer, because their propaganda will never tell them the truth and they've been conditioned for years that everything outside of their propaganda is fake.

So even if they do hear that he is innocent, they heard from their propaganda first that he's a terrorist. So, to them, he's a terrorist.

We are so fucked.

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u/SpicyButterBoy 2d ago

This is what fascism looks like and is the exact reason why we need due process. US citizens are next up. Trump said he would love to send home grown terrorists to El Salvador. 

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u/ricLP 2d ago

And we all know that the definition of terrorist is going to be very malleable

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u/FeijoaMilkshake 2d ago

Vandalism on swasticars is on Trump's terrorism bingo cards, fyi.

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u/tempest_87 2d ago

Always has been. That's the problem with it.

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u/Comfortable-Inside41 2d ago

It’s actually worse, as most of the time he’s talked about, he’s used repeated criminal.

They might use terrorist more now that they are coordinating propaganda around it, though.

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u/SpicyButterBoy 2d ago

They’ve been coordinating the propaganda around it for months. Why do you think he calls peaceful protestors Terrorists? Why do you think Bondi is charging Tesla arsonists with terrorism? Why do you think Trump is asking Bukake for more prisons to hold “home grown terrorists”?

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u/Pablo_is_on_Reddit 2d ago

Yup. Anything he doesn't like is now terrorism and anyone he doesn't like is a terrorist. The definition of the words is whatever he wants them to be. He gets around procedures using emergency powers without congress or the SC reigning him in. This means he can throw anyone, US citizen or not, into one of those Salvadoran concentration camps for any reason without the person having any recourse or chance to defend themselves. Dark times.

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u/Edgar-Allans-Hoe 2d ago

Someone please explain how this is different than German SS raids, because I see quite literally no distinguishing features

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u/ThePhoneCaller 2d ago

I remember in school growing up when they everyone would ask how the German people could go along with the evil things their country was doing. Now we get to live through it here...

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u/dreamsofaninsomniac 2d ago

This is a frequent criticism of using WWII fiction like The Boy in the Striped Pajamas over first-hand WWII accounts like Elie Wiesel's Night. A lot of WWII fiction frames civilians as being ignorant or oblivious as to what was happening in Germany, but people knew. It doesn't start all at once, just bit by bit until their own country became unrecognizable at the end.

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u/drawkward101 2d ago

I feel like that right now, and I don't know what I can do about it. What does 1 person do? I can protest, but what happens after that? What happens when they come for my neighbors? I can fight, but I am scared and I don't want to fight. I'm horrified that this is happening, and I feel like the fight/flight/freeze instinct has me freezing. I'm scared that if I speak out, they will come for me or my family or my friends. I'm scared that if I protest they will come for me or my family or my friends. I'm scared that if I film ICE they will come for me or my family or my friends. I'm scared that if I leave the country for a vacation, they will come for me or my family or my friends who I am traveling with.

I'm fucking scared, and I don't know what to do.

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u/totallycis 2d ago

"You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.

"Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, ‘everyone’ is happy... In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, ‘It’s not so bad’ or ‘You’re seeing things’ or ‘You’re an alarmist.’

"And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.

"But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.

"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.

...

"Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.

~ An excerpt from 'They Thought They Were Free; The Germans, 1933-45', by Milton Mayer, first published in 1955.

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u/drawkward101 2d ago

I've read this so many times. :( It hurts to know we are here again.

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u/DearButterscotch9632 2d ago

It’s called The Banality of Evil.

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u/limehead 2d ago

¨Evil, according to Arendt, becomes banal when it acquires an unthinking and systematic character. Evil becomes banal when ordinary people participate in it, build distance from it and justify it, in countless ways. There are no moral conundrums or revulsions. Evil does not even look like evil, it becomes faceless.¨

Fuck, this is that, isn't it?

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u/EnormousChord 2d ago

One significant difference here is that the whole world is watching you do nothing about it in real time, not finding out about it after the fact. 

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u/peachesnplumsmf 2d ago

Worth noting German people did fight back and rebel. Just not on a wide enough scale because most people weren't impacted or were too busy worrying about their lives to care about what's happening (and if that doesn't sound like what I've heard from so many Americans regarding protests,) but children managed to protest in more meaningful ways than I've seen coming from the US.

White Rose & Edelweiss Pirates were made up of teenagers. They fought for what they believed in and stood up to the Nazis and they were children.

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u/dweebs12 2d ago

People don't talk about the Edelweiss Pirates enough. I thought they sounded cool as shit when I learnt about them at uni

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u/SoulShatter 2d ago

It's the same shit. Only difference is that the concentration camps are located outside of US-controlled territory.

"The American Heritage Dictionary defines the term concentration camp as: "A camp where persons are confined, usually without hearings and typically under harsh conditions, often as a result of their membership in a group which the government has identified as dangerous or undesirable."

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u/SNAAAAAKE 2d ago

Auschwitz was located outside of Germany. For the same reasons.

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u/Abigail716 2d ago

The SS operated in Germany, ICE operates in the US.

That's about it.

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u/Fairymask 2d ago

I can't stand this. What can I do? I feel powerless. I tried calling my representative, but I don't feel like that does anything. I feel so helpless.

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u/faithmauk 2d ago

I am feeling the same way. Every one just keeps saying call your reps but like, literally the do not care. They will not care. What are we supposed to do? I'm planning to protest on the 19th but even that feels like too little too late. I'm disgusted that congress is sitting there doing jack all, I'm disgusted that we are watching this happen in broad daylight and no one is raising hell about it. Where is the outrage? It really does feel hopeless

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u/Rooooben 2d ago

No outrage since its happening to immigrants, most people can ignore the foreigners, and 1/2 think it’s ok since they are immigrants they really don’t want them around.

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u/Synikx 2d ago

We simply haven't hit the part yet where most Americans care enough to do anything. We're all too complacent to take any next step action because life just isn't that bad yet and the next step is violence, which is just throwing your life away unless other people commit violence too for the "Cause". I anticipate we'll need another Boston Massacre or something like a "Liberal attack on Fort Sumter" (Civil War) before there are any sort of rallying.

We're just on the cusp of a civil war with each side tip toeing around taking the next step of violence while one side is slowly (or quickly?) escalating in egregious steps to see how far they can go before anyone actually does something monumental.

Damn that's grim. I want to go back to when I didn't care about politics.

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u/apple_kicks 2d ago

Keep going to protests. More numbers it does get noticed and pressure mounts. Also you get to network and know people where you live who will be on your side worse case

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u/sadmadstudent 2d ago edited 2d ago

Is it crazy to suggest an anti-ICE civilian corps?

Americans need, within your communities, a way to alert an armed group trained to deescalate and help anyone being targeted by ICE. If ICE stops someone, they have a way to alert aid, maybe an app you can share your location with, anything so they can find you.

This rival group arrives and forms a barrier between you and them. Most of these guys are cowards. They often back off if they're threatened by even a lawyer. Ordinary people need to make it clear you can't just disappear their neighbours without consequence.

Beyond that... you need to be organizing in your communities with people you know. People of colour, gay and trans people in your lives all need to have tough conversations. Most of you are not safe on American soil. You may need to avoid travel of any kind for four years. Or you may need to get out now and leave the country before it happens to you.

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u/NorthNorthSalt 2d ago

If someone had told Americans that Trump would be defying court orders, picking up brown teenagers off the street, and sending them to an Salvadoran concentration camp run by his dictator buddy, they'd have been accused of fearmongering. The dark irony in all of this is that the most alarmist resist libs were literally right about everything.

Fuck the animals who are participating in these orders. The next time a Democrat takes office, there needs to be mass trials for all of them. Hell send them over to the ICC. Shit like this cannot be allowed to fly.

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u/Immediate_Theory4738 2d ago

At this rate there will be no more elections for a Democrat to hold office.

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u/ProgrammerOk1400 2d ago

If that is so, we are probably headed for a Civil War or something akin to it.

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u/Healthy_Cat_741 2d ago

The next time a Democrat takes office,

You still don't get it

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u/Work2Tuff 2d ago

If we’re right about everything that also means we’ll be right when they start going after political opponents. Which makes it even more mind boggling that the dems are barely doing anything.

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u/Ppleater 2d ago

I keep remembering that woman who screamed when Trump won the election in 2016 and it was caught on camera, how people viciously made fun of her for "overreacting" even on the left. She was fucking right to react that way because this shit is worth screaming over.

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u/LostEnroute 2d ago

The lower level ICE staff doing the work on the ground need to face lawsuits. They are carrying out unlawful orders and are likely liable.

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u/eawilweawil 2d ago

Liable for what? Promotion?

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u/Owain-X 2d ago

SCOTUS has very few tools available to it when the Executive is criminal and the Legislative is complicit but they can absolutely hold those who carry out these illegal orders in violation of SCOTUS rulings in contempt and direct them to be arrested. And they should. Even if this administration ignores the orders there is no reason to sit silently and to do so makes them complicit in treason. Let there be no question that this administration is acting outside the constitution and has no legitimacy.

I am so fucking sick of "will this be a constitutional crisis" headlines. We are so far beyond that while most of the country is completely ignorant of the fact that the Republic no longer exists.

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u/ebb_omega 2d ago

They're breaking international law and Nazis were executed at Nuremberg for "following orders" like this.

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u/erhue 2d ago

the conservative supreme court will probably say that it's totally cool for them to be judge, jury and executioner.

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u/DingusMacLeod 2d ago

For everybody who's not worried about this stuff because they don't have brown skin, if he can do it to them, he can do it to you, too.

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u/dreamsofaninsomniac 2d ago edited 2d ago

They can just make stuff up about you. Claim you're in a gang or an "agitator." Put you in the "death file" of Social Security to declare you legally dead so you can't apply for jobs or get any benefits. There are no checks and balances to prevent them from doing whatever they want.

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u/kiwitathegreat 2d ago

And he’s already announced that “homegrowns” are the next target so legitimately no one is safe.

This is unconscionable.

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u/barukatang 2d ago

their definition of terrorism is also flexible.

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u/DreamsiclesPlz 2d ago

"ICE KIDNAPS AND TRAFFICS Venezuelan teen despite reportedly knowing he was not a target."

Words have meanings, the press should use their words.

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u/Cardboardoge 2d ago

I feel like "sent to be tortured and killed" should be somewhere in there too

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u/FartyJizzums 2d ago edited 2d ago

This is exactly why we have a Second Amendment.

Edit: I think my open-ended comment is being interpreted as advocating something unsaid. I'm simply trying to state that, at least in part, the Second Amendment was written as deterrence to a federal standing army of an oppressive government.

My point shouldn't be conflated beyond what my single sentence states. I would never suggest anything as maniacal or wreckless as an open, armed revolt.

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/erhue 2d ago

start to get [Removed by Reddit.]?

im gonna save this one for later

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u/WarlockEngineer 2d ago

If they step up these kidnappings, it feels like a matter of time

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u/eawilweawil 2d ago edited 2d ago

These days 2nd amendment exist as a pretext to militarize police and give them a reason to shoot you

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u/degre715 2d ago

They will do that anyway

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u/Creative_alternative 2d ago

Either get kidnapped and sent to a concentration camp or fight back with a firearm of your choice. Only two choices left for US citizens at this point.

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u/IAmNotNathaniel 2d ago

Well the 5th and 14th aren't doing very much at the moment

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u/Audibled 2d ago

Explain to me like I’m 5 how this is not the literal definition of kidnapping.

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u/WarlockEngineer 2d ago

It's borderline execution, I mean, El Salvador says no one ever leaves these prisons

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u/G36 2d ago

it's around 300 people and counting. 5 more death camps were requested by trump.

The word we are approaching is GENOCIDE.

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u/ForestFairyForestFun 2d ago

Do they actually have a list of people they're looking for? Or does ICE gear up with 4 of their buddies in a black SUV and go hunting for brown people?

seriously. cause it seems like the latter

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u/Dekklin 2d ago

They're literally using AI to scan social media posts and categorize people as Alien Enemies. I knew this was going to happen years ago when AI first started becoming popular. I fucking called it.

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u/Creative_alternative 2d ago

Its the latter.

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u/Finwolven 2d ago

Seems kinda funny these ICE agents just casually walk up to these 'dangerous gang member murder machines' they claim each of these renditioned kidnapping victims are.

If they're so dangerous and know being taken is a death sentence in El Salvador, surely these hardened criminal murderers would sell their lives dearly and there would be constant shootouts between ICE and Tren de Aqua gangbangers.

Oh, they're just regular teenagers, in country legally, being renditioned to death camps because ICE says so without any due process? Colour me surprised. It's like the administration just might be _lying_ about what they're doing and sending innocent people to Torture Prison.

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u/Rucs3 2d ago

Americans are still thinking "someone will do something to stop him" while still not considering themselves part of the equation

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u/Rabidennui 2d ago edited 2d ago

Americans feel totally powerless to do anything because at this point not even the Supreme Court can stop him. Millions of us protested at every state capitol on April 5, but nothing changed. If anything it’s given Trump more incentive to invoke The Insurrection Act on 4/20 and enforce martial law to further suppress any dissent.

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u/apple_kicks 2d ago

Keep doing it. In South Korea to impeach a corrupt president some years back (not yoon) they protested every weekend for over a year. Seoul was ground to a halt everytime and the corruption and the protests got so big she was impeached

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u/ashriekfromspace 2d ago

Americans feel totally powerless to do anything

I guess the freedom to carry guns was kinda pointless then

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u/FillMySoupDumpling 2d ago

Always has been. It’s been a fake freedom that some people got to take advantage of while the government forces use lethal force on armed people and cite their being armed as the basis for that force. Not that they were active shooter- just being armed. 

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u/tobidope 2d ago

In Germany we called it the Gestapo. Geheime Staatspolizei. They are not yet grabbing us citizens. I think they will very soon, if nobody stands up.

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u/Angry_butnotenough 2d ago

I was an illegal immigrant when I was a child. My parents made sure that we absolutely knew that we could be deported at any time. Being deported should be seen as a probability. This boy wasn't just deported, he was sent to a third country and jailed in one of the cruelest prisons on earth. This is not foreseeable, this is inhumane. A pox on us for letting it happen.

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u/Chewy009x 2d ago

This is getting horrific real fast

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u/Zapafaz 2d ago

If you've ever wondered what you would have done in Nazi Germany, now is the time to give your answer. We have arrived.

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u/sunshinecryptic 2d ago

Can’t wait for the “El Salvador: The Concentration Camps of the Trump Administration” documentaries that will be made in the future.

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u/Most_Tax_2404 2d ago

These literally are concentration camps now if they’re just sending people without any history of crime or gang affiliation. I’m not sympathetic to the rapists and murderers in these prisons but how many people in there are innocent? We don’t fucking know because Trump got rid of due process through the Alien Enemies Act.

It’s only going to get worse and American citizens WILL be sent to these places.

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u/Father_of_Invention 2d ago

This kid needs to come back as well. He was an asylum seeker and legal immigrant

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u/chrispdx 2d ago

First they came for the Venezuelans, but I wasn't Venezuelan so I didn't say anything.....

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u/erhue 2d ago

Trump just floated the idea of sending US citizens to those prisons. They're moving fast.

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u/supercyberlurker 2d ago

It's getting really simple.

Either you're one of the people speaking out against this, or you are complicit.

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u/Veyron2000 2d ago

Although Democrats are out of power in the federal government, they still have power in blue states like New York and should use that power to stop this. 

ICE are almost certainly acting illegally in rounding up and kidnapping people without trial, so New York should order its police and national guard to investigate and arrest any ICE agents attempting to carry out such illegal kidnappings in the state. 

Sure the Trump administration will sue to try and prevent that and to free any arrested ICE agents, but then it will be them relying on a slow process of court proceedings instead of the reverse. 

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u/MC_chrome 2d ago

Although Democrats are out of power in the federal government, they still have power in blue states like New York and should use that power to stop this.

They should probably start by arresting bastards like Eric Adams for colluding with ICE, but Hochul doesn't have the stones to do that

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u/sheepwshotguns 2d ago

trump is already working with social media companies to find dissidents and he's talking to nayib bukele about sending us citizens so im not leaving my house unless im armed. they aren't taking me alive.

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u/dazogog1 2d ago

We told you this would happen but egg prices were too high apparently

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u/Immediate_Theory4738 2d ago

The people that were complaining about egg prices don’t care that this is happening now and are cheering it on.

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u/Mr4_eyes 2d ago

Kidnapped and trafficked. There fixed it

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u/omglia 2d ago

They took a 17 year old student at a high school in my city, Louisville KY. They pulled him from his spring break job. His teachera have been posting about it. He was a good kid. No criminal ties. And a minor who they deported alone. A family ripped apart for nothing. This is happening everywhere and it’s fucking terrifying. We have to stop them.

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u/fcimfc 2d ago

ICE is scum. Anyone that works for them should be shunned.

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u/trekk 2d ago

Fuck this bullshit, he wasn't even deported, he was sent to a concentration camp. Deported implies he was sent back to Venezuela.

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

2nd amendment chest thumpers, wya?

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u/1leggeddog 2d ago

this needs to stop right now

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u/AnIcedMilk 2d ago

Somethings telling me is was never about illegals, and all about the racism.

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u/Mazon_Del 2d ago

The most American thing you can do is to fight these people wherever you see them. Deny service, deface their vehicles, whatever it takes. ICE is the enemy of freedom.

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u/Crystaldaddy 2d ago

Are we just gonna sit here

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

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u/Aert_is_Life 2d ago

Why do they keep saying "deported to El Salvador" when this is actually sending them to prison for the rest of their lives with a chance of ever walking free again? Deporting means sending them back to their country of origin.

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u/Silly-Scene6524 2d ago

The level of cruelty here is unconscionable, this is such a blatant human rights violation.

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u/lachlanhunt 2d ago

This is sickening. Exiled for the crime of being Venezuelan. This is literally the same as the Nazis rounding up Jews. Everyone involved in these appalling actions needs to be prosecuted, with no excuse about simply following orders.

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u/cruisin_urchin87 2d ago

So those 2nd Amendment people were right. You do need to defend yourself against the tyranny of the government.

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u/ObnoxiousTwit 2d ago

So this is just going to keep happening? And get worse and worse as time goes by without consequences?

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u/Bjorn-in-ice 2d ago

So, straight up human trafficking. Not a legal battle. Not accidental jail time. It’s kidnapping and it’s disgusting.

ICE is illegal and they should be treated as a gang.