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JOHN,
The Trump administration is drastically escalating its fascist mass detention/deportation agenda.
Trump is defying an order from the Supreme Court to return a Maryland father to his family. Kilmar Abrego Garcia is among hundreds of U.S. residents abducted without due process and sent to El Salvador’s mega-prison, which is notorious for torturing the people trapped there. Most of these U.S. residents haven’t even been charged with a crime.1
Now, Trump says he wants to deport and jail U.S. citizens overseas. When meeting El Salvador’s self-described dictator at the White House this week, Trump asked him to build more prisons for “homegrowns.”2
We should take him at his word. This is the time to speak up and resist.
Sign on now to tell state and federal elected officials: Stop the kidnapping and disappearing of U.S. residents!
Unfortunately, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority recently ruled that Trump can use the Alien Enemies Act to send people to El Salvador. This racist policy was used during World II to forcibly displace thousands of U.S. citizens of Japanese descent to internment camps. Trump could weaponize it against any of us.
And now, multiple U.S. citizens who serve as immigration attorneys have gotten emails saying they need to leave the country.
The emails, which mention revoking asylum-seekers’ temporary protected status, are possibly intended for the lawyers’ clients, but they demonstrate “a true recklessness coming from the government,” said one of the email’s recipients.3
Yesterday was a Communities Not Cages National Day of Action, and ongoing action is urgently needed. At ICE field offices and detention centers around the country, people demanded to release folks from immigrant detention, shut down detention centers, and stop deportations.4 We must all join this call and demand our elected leaders listen.
Sign to demand federal and state officials stop the kidnappings, detentions, and deportations!
Right now, the Trump administration is continuing to kidnap international students and revoke their visas without notice. They’ve revoked more than 800 students’ visas, which has impacted at least 70 Michigan students so far.5
Among these students are Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Ozturk, who were kidnapped without due process, sent from their Northeast U.S. campuses all the way to Louisiana—where presumably more judges will rule to deport them. Now in separate for-profit detention centers, these students weren’t even accused of a crime.
Even the State Department recommended not to revoke Ozturk’s student visa, with a leaked memo affirming that “Secretary of State Marco Rubio did not have sufficient grounds for revoking Ozturk’s visa.”6
Just this week, legal permanent resident Mohsen Mahdawi, a Columbia University student and president of the Buddhist club, was kidnapped after arriving at an ICE office for what he thought was a citizenship interview.7
This fascist regime is starting with kidnapping advocates for Palestinian human rights, our Latino neighbors, international university students, and some tourists. They won't stop there. They want to drastically increase the number of people locked up in detention centers.
Trump plans to spend $45 billion of our taxpayer dollars to build more private, for-profit, detention facilities.8 A new report from ProPublica shows that just one corporation got a $3.8 billion contract from ICE to operate a detention facility on a U.S. military base in Texas.9 This is yet another way to profit off mass misery.
This taxpayer money should be going to our communities’ needs, like clean drinking water, housing, and healthcare. But the Acting Director of ICE wants to use it for human trafficking. He told a crowd of military and tech corporations that he wants to treat deportation “like a business,” envisioning similarities with Amazon “Prime, but with human beings.”10
And Elon Musk—who keeps trying to steal from the American people even though he’s the richest person in the world by hundreds of billions of dollars—has a DOGE immigration task force embedded in the Department of Homeland Security.11
They’re systematically revoking visas and protected statuses en masse.
We must speak up now to defend the constitutional rights we’re all owed. Sign on to demand your elected leaders stop the mass kidnappings and deportations.
Thank you for taking action. I will continue doing all I can to defend our rights and hold Musk, Trump, and the administration accountable. But this moment requires masses of people taking a stand.
Please keep speaking up about our shared rights and shared humanity. As activist Kelly Hayes writes: “we are going to have to refuse characterizations that deem some of us disposable—because that’s how fascist politics actually function.”12
With you in the fight against fascism,
Rashida
1. U.S. sent 238 migrants to Salvadoran mega-prison; documents indicate most have no apparent criminal records, About 90% of migrants sent to El Salvador lacked U.S. criminal record
2. 'Homegrowns are next': Trump hopes to deport and jail U.S. citizens abroad
3. Tucson lawyer receives letter from DHS, telling her to leave the United States, Homeland Security Email Tells a U.S. Citizen to ‘Immediately’ Self-Deport
4. Communities Not Cages campaign
5. 70 international students face deportation in Michigan. Trump won't say why
6. State Department Memo on Abducted Tufts Student Exposes Rubio’s Lies, No evidence linking Tufts student to antisemitism or terrorism, State Dept. office found
7. “How can I take anyone seriously talking about Mohsen being antisemitic?”
8. Congress must stop Trump’s exorbitant spending on new contracts for ICE detention & arrests
9. From Lollapalooza to Detention Camps: Meet the Tent Company Making a Fortune Off Trump’s Deportation Plans
10. For-profit immigration detention expands as Trump accelerates his deportation plans, ICE director envisions Amazon-like mass deportation system: ‘Prime, but with human beings’
11. Inside the DOGE immigration task force
12. Must-Reads and Some Thoughts on Deportations and the Rule of Law
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