April 6, 2025 • 15 mins
It looked like a scene from a very different period of history: US Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, standing in front of a prison pen filled with gaunt, shirtless men, their heads shaved, staring silently at the cameras.
The footage is from El Salvador, where the US government had whisked away over 200 Venezuelan migrants to be held in the notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT).
It’s just one of the surreal propaganda posts the Trump administration has released, bragging about imprisoning men they deemed murderous gang-affiliated terrorists.
But looking at these images, one woman saw not a terrorist, but her husband.
In his investigation into these deportations, Mother Jones reporter Noah Lanard found that ordinary men, with no gang affiliations, had been targeted because they had tattoos.
Today, Noah Lanard on the people America is disappearing and what the spectacle of deportations says about Trump’s immigration agenda.
If you enjoy 7am, the best way you can support us is by making a contribution at 7ampodcast.com.au/support.
Socials: Stay in touch with us on Instagram
Guest: Mother Jones reporter, Noah Lanard
Background Reading: What the Hundreds of Venezuelans Trump Sent to El Salvador Are Up Against
Photo: AP Photo/Alex Brandon
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
And first of all, I want to thank El Salvador
and their president for their partnership with the United States
of America to bring our terrorists here and to incarcerate them.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
And it looks like a scene from a very different
period of history. US Secretary of Homeland Security Christine Noam
standing in front of a prison pen filled with gaunt,
shirtless men, their head shaved, staring silently at the cameras.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
First of all, do not come to our country illegally.
You will be removed and you will be prosecuted.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
But the footage is from Ol Salvador, where the US
government has whisked away over two hundred Venezuelan migrants to
be held in a notorious prison. It's just one of
the surreal propaganda post that Trump administration has put out,
bragging about imprisoning men they deemed murderous gang affiliated terrorists.
But looking at these images, one woman saw not a
(00:50):
terrorist but her husband.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
And she recognizes a tattoo on his neck of a hummingbird,
and she said, he got it because it signolizes kind
of good vibes energy. So she recognized that and she
was like, that's my husband.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Another person who viewed the footage is reported Noel Leonard,
who said at the fond who was taken and why?
Speaker 3 (01:10):
So the way that we want to go about finding
this is it's quite bleak in a lot of ways.
In my colleague Isabella and I were on Facebook and TikTok,
you know, googling things like who's tcl Salvador or Venezuela,
like justice El Salvador, and you would see these videos
from families that are heartbreaking, saying please, we're looking for
a proof of life. We're looking for them to be released.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Yea for Ela se.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Kecia, terrorista's criminalist. But yeah, I mean it was just
searching kind of these this prize for help that exists
on social media almost almost entirely in Spanish.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
From Schwartz Media on Daniel James. This is seven a m. Today.
Noel Leonard, a reporter at Mother Jones on the people
in America, who is disappearing and what the spectacle deportations
says about where America is headed. It's Monday, April seventh. Noah,
(02:22):
you've been trying to find out about that he's main
living in America who was suddenly deported to El Salvador.
So to start with Can you tell me a little
bit about Niri Alvarado Borjes.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Yeah, absolutely so. Alvarado Borhez is someone who I spoke
to her for a story that my colleague Isabella and
Diaz and I were doing. He's twenty five years old.
He just turned twenty five. He's from a kind of
more rural part of Venezuela and came to the United
States seeking asylum, also looking for economic opportunity. Obviously, Venezuela's
economy has suffered one of the worst collapses in modern history.
(02:55):
And at the time he's picked up as he's working
at a bakery. His boss, who I interviewed that he
was working basically seven seven every day, was an extremely
hard worker and just kind of a great guy. And
then on February fourth, he gets picked up by ICE
or Immigration Enforcement Agency. They come out right in front
of his apartment looking for him by name, and then
they bring him into the ICE kind of office and say, hey,
(03:15):
you're here because we're picking up people with tattoos. We're
interrogating people with tattoos who are Venezuelan looking to see
if they belong to this gang that has become a
bigger news item recently in the US because of the
Trump administration called trend de Aragua.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
So like the tiny asked to see his tattooes to
check whether he's affiliated with a gang. What does Alvarado do.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
What he showed them was an autism awareness tattoo with
the name of his brother, a fifteen year old with autism.
That's on his leg. And then he has two other tattoos.
One is in English it says brother again about his brother,
and the other says familia family. What is so strange
about this case is that the ICE agent said, you know,
basically you're clean. We know you're not in a gang.
That's kind of absurd here. But despite all that, he
(03:57):
a little over a month later ends up being sent
to El Salvador, accused of being theoretically a gang member.
And he is there and no one in his family
has spoken to him.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Since when you were speaking to these families, was there
any evidence that the people in their family that were
being sent to El Salvador were actually gang members?
Speaker 3 (04:16):
Nothing that I saw that, you know, nothing that would
really hold up in a court. And what was striking
is we spoke, you know, ten families, All ten said
their relatives had tattoos, and that's why they believed that
their relatives had been picked up.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
And so can you tell me a little bit about
the process of getting these men to El Salvador. Were
they told where they were going, while they were going there,
what the process was, what their rights were. Can you
give us any insight into what, if any process was
involved in this deportation.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
The short answer is no. And then to explain and
expand on that, basically you had Venezuelan's calling their family
members on Friday Friday night, March fourteenth, saying, Okay, we've
been told we're going to be sent to Venezuela and
there as far as we know. While they're on that
plane in the air, they believe they're going to Venezuela,
and it may only be when they land and basically
(05:07):
walk out of the plane and they're in chains, and
then they see basically the Salvador and military and police
apparatus in masks kind of waiting for them, and they're
then kind of frog marched off the plane and onto
buses and into this prison. But most of these people
had open immigration cases, meaning like they were scheduled to
be in court tomorrow or last week, and you know
(05:27):
they in many cases people we spoke to, like the
judge would say, hey, where's the guy, and the government's
own attorney would say, you know, we're not sure, and
then the defense attorney would have to say, well, I
think he might be an L. Salvador and that would
kind of be the end of the case because the
judge no longer has jurisdiction.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
And has anyone heard from them since has anyone actually
spoken with them.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Not that I'm aware of. They have no way to
contact these family members. They don't know when they're going
to get out, are they ever going to get out?
And so it's just every day is torture.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
After the break the message the Trump administration wants to
send all of us.
Speaker 4 (06:09):
Hi Ruby Jones.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Here.
Speaker 4 (06:11):
Seven am tells stories that need to be told. Our
journalism is founded on trust and independence, and now we're
increasing our coverage. Every Saturday until the election, will bring
you an extra episode to break down the biggest political
moments of the week. If you enjoy seven am, the
best way you can support us is by making a
contribution at seven am podcast dot com dot au forward
(06:32):
slash support. Thanks for listening and supporting our work.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Noah, can you tell me about the prison where these
men have been sent? What do we know about this place?
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Yeah, so this is known as one of the world's
most infamous prisons. It was built only a few years
ago as part of President Bukelly's state of Exception, essentially
martial law, and it was theoretically built a whold kind
of the worst of the worst MS thirteen gang members,
the people who had made El Salvador into the one
of the world's most brutal and violent countries. It's called
(07:07):
the Terrorism Confinement Center in English, and it is a
very extreme environment. It is known for having horrendous conditions.
Prisoners spend about twenty three and a half hours a
day and they're basically barracks. I think it's about eighty
people per unit, and they live in bunks that are
stacked four high, with no mattresses, no calls to family.
(07:29):
It's even a stretch to call it a prison. I
think it's nothing like what people think of a prison,
and a lot of the images, frankly, are reminiscent of
what you solve concentration camps in the twentieth century.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Now, can you explain why the Venezuelan community is being
single outlocked these Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
So during the Biden administration, Venezuelans were the largest group
of migrants coming to the United States. It really was
off scale and records any numbers in the hundreds of
thousands each year, And that was, I was totally unprecedented.
Even though Venezuela's economy had been, you know, in a
terrible position for many years, it didn't translate to that
kind of massive numbers at the borders. Many of those
(08:10):
people ended up being bussed all around the United States,
including to where I live in New York City, by
the tens of thousands, and so it became this kind
of big it's a big national issue. But the Trump
administration now kind of needs, I think, to a villain
here or a boogeyman to kind of target here and
trend there. A Agua, this gang which I most Americans
still probably have never heard of or certainly have never
(08:31):
heard of one year ago, has become that as.
Speaker 5 (08:34):
We speak, heavily on im Venezuela and gangs or taking
over entire apartment buildings and apartment complexes in Aurora, Colorado,
terrorizing your residence and taking over the old days. You
have to pay to buy that bill.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
So the Trump administration declared trend Aragua foreign terrorist organization.
And for people who don't live in the United States,
like there are probably some issues with trend are Agua.
I'm sure there are some crimes committed by people affiliated
with it, but it's not a major gang. It's not
MS thirteen. Also, it's importantly it's not known for tattoos
being an identifying mark for its members, despite that being
(09:09):
one of the main things that Trump administration used. And
the second thing they did, which is probably more important
here is for only for the fourth time in the
entirety of American history, they invoked a seventeen ninety eight
wall called the Alien Enemies Act, and that is only
supposed to be used when America's in times of war
or invasion. So this has not been used since we
were using it basically to round up potential Nazis in
(09:31):
at the height of World War Two, and this case,
obviously we're not at war with then as well, of
course we're not, so they have to say we're under
invasion by this gang, and it's patently absurd.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
And so the Trump administration's going into sort of full
propaganda mode when it comes to exaggerating the reasons as
to wall they're being sent. What is the administration getting
out of.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
That I think they're getting I would say two things
that immediately come to mind to me. One you could
argue there's putting pressure on Venezuela to resume taking deportation flights,
so that would be one, And the second is the
spectacle of it. This facility is.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
One of the tools in our toolkit that we will
use if you commit crimes against the American people.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
And you're right, I'm shocked there wasn't a prison break, Yeah,
because that's like a riot right there. You know, I'm
surprised if they could walk Tom Holman through that jail
and you think he's hot at that point.
Speaker 5 (10:23):
But Christy, my god.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
So this you know what I love about that visit.
Speaker 5 (10:28):
She stood in front of criminals in their environment, because
usually Democrats when they want you to see criminals.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
Part of it here is, you know, there are only
so many ICE agents in the United States, and there
are twelve million or so undocumented immigrants in the United States.
They don't have the capacity to arrest even a large
percentage of those people. And what they're relying on and
hoping for is is self deportation essentially, So in some sense,
the fact that there are innocent people, clearly innocent people
(10:56):
in this prison now has it benefit to them because
it is horrifying. It makes people, even people who are
following all the rules here, who have opened court cases,
feel that they could be next and maybe then they
all get on a plane and go back home, which
is what the Trump administration wants them to do.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
And what's been the general reaction to these deportations and
people being picked up off the streets. Is this something
that people that are talking about.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
Yeah, initially, the Trump administration and I did a lot
of stories on the attitudes of Latino voters before the election,
and they were really sure. They said, well, I'm all
four criminals being deported so and that's what Trump says
he's going to do, so it doesn't bother me. And
I think, initially, and if you look at the polling
right now, still Trump's kind of immigration approval is still favorable.
I think it was about fifty eight forty two approve
(11:41):
of his overall deportation efforts. But if you look at
this El Salvador Venezuela operation that pulls quite negatively. So
I think it's starting to shift as people start to realize,
you know, oh, this is not just all hardened criminals
and gang members who are being sent there.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
Could this approach affect other movements within American society, locked
their pro Palestinian movement for instance.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
Yeah, I mean I think that is. You know, you
have to see these as length you're having. For example,
someone like Mark mu Khalil, who's a Green card holder
married to an American citizen, whose wife is pregnant eight
months pregnant at the time of the arrest, being arrested
at is Columbia University student housing apartment and sent to
an immigration detention center in Louisiana. I used to report
(12:25):
on the detention center during the first Trump administration, the
idea that a Green card holder is now there because
of political speech and he's not alone. You know, they
were going after a Columbia University juniorlea, which is one
of our most elite universities in Ivy League school. She
had come to the United States when she was seven
years old. And that's all just because of pretty milk
toast pro Palestine activism.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Right, So, at the end of the day, Trump is
doing what he said he do. The polms indicate that
what he is doing is popular. But when it comes
to these man, what happens to them? Now? What does
their future look? Luck?
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Yeah, it is very unclear. There's a very contentious and
high drama court case right now having the United States.
You know, the judge would order that these jets be
turned around while they're in the AIRHL salvad Or in
the Trump administration extremely rare move basically ignored that court order,
so that court case is continuing to heat up. It's
(13:24):
bleak to say, but the best possibility would be that
they are let out and allowed to be deported to Venezuela.
I mean, I think the odds of them returning to
the United States are quite slim. I don't want to
say it's impossible, but if you're a family member who
has a son or a husband there, you have no
idea not only when you will see your loved one,
but when you might even ever be able to know
that they're alive.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Now, look, thanks so much for your reporting and thanks
so much for you Tom.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
Yeah, no, thank you for having me on.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Also in the years today, Prime Minister Anthony Albernezi has
pledged two point three billion dollars to be spent on
subsidizing home batteries should his government be re elected. Labour
release data showing that while one in three Australian households
have solar panels, only one in forty have a battery.
Batteries can push household bills down and reduce reliance on
the grid. The new plan will make the cost of
(14:27):
installing a new home battery thirty percent cheaper and is
designed to find one million more units by twenty thirty
and Peter Darton has promised to cut the number of
international students in Australia by eighty thousand per year if elected.
The opposition leader has argued that international students are contributing
to the housing crisis. The policy would allow thirty thousand
(14:48):
fewer foreign students than Labour's plan announced last year. I'm
Daniel James. This is seven am. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
You have
And first of all, I want to thank El Salvador
and their president for their partnership with the United States
of America to bring our terrorists here and to incarcerate them.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
And it looks like a scene from a very different
period of history. US Secretary of Homeland Security Christine Noam
standing in front of a prison pen filled with gaunt,
shirtless men, their head shaved, staring silently at the cameras.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
First of all, do not come to our country illegally.
You will be removed and you will be prosecuted.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
But the footage is from Ol Salvador, where the US
government has whisked away over two hundred Venezuelan migrants to
be held in a notorious prison. It's just one of
the surreal propaganda post that Trump administration has put out,
bragging about imprisoning men they deemed murderous gang affiliated terrorists.
But looking at these images, one woman saw not a
(00:50):
terrorist but her husband.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
And she recognizes a tattoo on his neck of a hummingbird,
and she said, he got it because it signolizes kind
of good vibes energy. So she recognized that and she
was like, that's my husband.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Another person who viewed the footage is reported Noel Leonard,
who said at the fond who was taken and why?
Speaker 3 (01:10):
So the way that we want to go about finding
this is it's quite bleak in a lot of ways.
In my colleague Isabella and I were on Facebook and TikTok,
you know, googling things like who's tcl Salvador or Venezuela,
like justice El Salvador, and you would see these videos
from families that are heartbreaking, saying please, we're looking for
a proof of life. We're looking for them to be released.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Yea for Ela se.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Kecia, terrorista's criminalist. But yeah, I mean it was just
searching kind of these this prize for help that exists
on social media almost almost entirely in Spanish.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
From Schwartz Media on Daniel James. This is seven a m. Today.
Noel Leonard, a reporter at Mother Jones on the people
in America, who is disappearing and what the spectacle deportations
says about where America is headed. It's Monday, April seventh. Noah,
(02:22):
you've been trying to find out about that he's main
living in America who was suddenly deported to El Salvador.
So to start with Can you tell me a little
bit about Niri Alvarado Borjes.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Yeah, absolutely so. Alvarado Borhez is someone who I spoke
to her for a story that my colleague Isabella and
Diaz and I were doing. He's twenty five years old.
He just turned twenty five. He's from a kind of
more rural part of Venezuela and came to the United
States seeking asylum, also looking for economic opportunity. Obviously, Venezuela's
economy has suffered one of the worst collapses in modern history.
(02:55):
And at the time he's picked up as he's working
at a bakery. His boss, who I interviewed that he
was working basically seven seven every day, was an extremely
hard worker and just kind of a great guy. And
then on February fourth, he gets picked up by ICE
or Immigration Enforcement Agency. They come out right in front
of his apartment looking for him by name, and then
they bring him into the ICE kind of office and say, hey,
(03:15):
you're here because we're picking up people with tattoos. We're
interrogating people with tattoos who are Venezuelan looking to see
if they belong to this gang that has become a
bigger news item recently in the US because of the
Trump administration called trend de Aragua.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
So like the tiny asked to see his tattooes to
check whether he's affiliated with a gang. What does Alvarado do.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
What he showed them was an autism awareness tattoo with
the name of his brother, a fifteen year old with autism.
That's on his leg. And then he has two other tattoos.
One is in English it says brother again about his brother,
and the other says familia family. What is so strange
about this case is that the ICE agent said, you know,
basically you're clean. We know you're not in a gang.
That's kind of absurd here. But despite all that, he
(03:57):
a little over a month later ends up being sent
to El Salvador, accused of being theoretically a gang member.
And he is there and no one in his family
has spoken to him.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Since when you were speaking to these families, was there
any evidence that the people in their family that were
being sent to El Salvador were actually gang members?
Speaker 3 (04:16):
Nothing that I saw that, you know, nothing that would
really hold up in a court. And what was striking
is we spoke, you know, ten families, All ten said
their relatives had tattoos, and that's why they believed that
their relatives had been picked up.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
And so can you tell me a little bit about
the process of getting these men to El Salvador. Were
they told where they were going, while they were going there,
what the process was, what their rights were. Can you
give us any insight into what, if any process was
involved in this deportation.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
The short answer is no. And then to explain and
expand on that, basically you had Venezuelan's calling their family
members on Friday Friday night, March fourteenth, saying, Okay, we've
been told we're going to be sent to Venezuela and
there as far as we know. While they're on that
plane in the air, they believe they're going to Venezuela,
and it may only be when they land and basically
(05:07):
walk out of the plane and they're in chains, and
then they see basically the Salvador and military and police
apparatus in masks kind of waiting for them, and they're
then kind of frog marched off the plane and onto
buses and into this prison. But most of these people
had open immigration cases, meaning like they were scheduled to
be in court tomorrow or last week, and you know
(05:27):
they in many cases people we spoke to, like the
judge would say, hey, where's the guy, and the government's
own attorney would say, you know, we're not sure, and
then the defense attorney would have to say, well, I
think he might be an L. Salvador and that would
kind of be the end of the case because the
judge no longer has jurisdiction.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
And has anyone heard from them since has anyone actually
spoken with them.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Not that I'm aware of. They have no way to
contact these family members. They don't know when they're going
to get out, are they ever going to get out?
And so it's just every day is torture.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
After the break the message the Trump administration wants to
send all of us.
Speaker 4 (06:09):
Hi Ruby Jones.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Here.
Speaker 4 (06:11):
Seven am tells stories that need to be told. Our
journalism is founded on trust and independence, and now we're
increasing our coverage. Every Saturday until the election, will bring
you an extra episode to break down the biggest political
moments of the week. If you enjoy seven am, the
best way you can support us is by making a
contribution at seven am podcast dot com dot au forward
(06:32):
slash support. Thanks for listening and supporting our work.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Noah, can you tell me about the prison where these
men have been sent? What do we know about this place?
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Yeah, so this is known as one of the world's
most infamous prisons. It was built only a few years
ago as part of President Bukelly's state of Exception, essentially
martial law, and it was theoretically built a whold kind
of the worst of the worst MS thirteen gang members,
the people who had made El Salvador into the one
of the world's most brutal and violent countries. It's called
(07:07):
the Terrorism Confinement Center in English, and it is a
very extreme environment. It is known for having horrendous conditions.
Prisoners spend about twenty three and a half hours a
day and they're basically barracks. I think it's about eighty
people per unit, and they live in bunks that are
stacked four high, with no mattresses, no calls to family.
(07:29):
It's even a stretch to call it a prison. I
think it's nothing like what people think of a prison,
and a lot of the images, frankly, are reminiscent of
what you solve concentration camps in the twentieth century.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Now, can you explain why the Venezuelan community is being
single outlocked these Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
So during the Biden administration, Venezuelans were the largest group
of migrants coming to the United States. It really was
off scale and records any numbers in the hundreds of
thousands each year, And that was, I was totally unprecedented.
Even though Venezuela's economy had been, you know, in a
terrible position for many years, it didn't translate to that
kind of massive numbers at the borders. Many of those
(08:10):
people ended up being bussed all around the United States,
including to where I live in New York City, by
the tens of thousands, and so it became this kind
of big it's a big national issue. But the Trump
administration now kind of needs, I think, to a villain
here or a boogeyman to kind of target here and
trend there. A Agua, this gang which I most Americans
still probably have never heard of or certainly have never
(08:31):
heard of one year ago, has become that as.
Speaker 5 (08:34):
We speak, heavily on im Venezuela and gangs or taking
over entire apartment buildings and apartment complexes in Aurora, Colorado,
terrorizing your residence and taking over the old days. You
have to pay to buy that bill.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
So the Trump administration declared trend Aragua foreign terrorist organization.
And for people who don't live in the United States,
like there are probably some issues with trend are Agua.
I'm sure there are some crimes committed by people affiliated
with it, but it's not a major gang. It's not
MS thirteen. Also, it's importantly it's not known for tattoos
being an identifying mark for its members, despite that being
(09:09):
one of the main things that Trump administration used. And
the second thing they did, which is probably more important
here is for only for the fourth time in the
entirety of American history, they invoked a seventeen ninety eight
wall called the Alien Enemies Act, and that is only
supposed to be used when America's in times of war
or invasion. So this has not been used since we
were using it basically to round up potential Nazis in
(09:31):
at the height of World War Two, and this case,
obviously we're not at war with then as well, of
course we're not, so they have to say we're under
invasion by this gang, and it's patently absurd.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
And so the Trump administration's going into sort of full
propaganda mode when it comes to exaggerating the reasons as
to wall they're being sent. What is the administration getting
out of.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
That I think they're getting I would say two things
that immediately come to mind to me. One you could
argue there's putting pressure on Venezuela to resume taking deportation flights,
so that would be one, And the second is the
spectacle of it. This facility is.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
One of the tools in our toolkit that we will
use if you commit crimes against the American people.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
And you're right, I'm shocked there wasn't a prison break, Yeah,
because that's like a riot right there. You know, I'm
surprised if they could walk Tom Holman through that jail
and you think he's hot at that point.
Speaker 5 (10:23):
But Christy, my god.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
So this you know what I love about that visit.
Speaker 5 (10:28):
She stood in front of criminals in their environment, because
usually Democrats when they want you to see criminals.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
Part of it here is, you know, there are only
so many ICE agents in the United States, and there
are twelve million or so undocumented immigrants in the United States.
They don't have the capacity to arrest even a large
percentage of those people. And what they're relying on and
hoping for is is self deportation essentially, So in some sense,
the fact that there are innocent people, clearly innocent people
(10:56):
in this prison now has it benefit to them because
it is horrifying. It makes people, even people who are
following all the rules here, who have opened court cases,
feel that they could be next and maybe then they
all get on a plane and go back home, which
is what the Trump administration wants them to do.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
And what's been the general reaction to these deportations and
people being picked up off the streets. Is this something
that people that are talking about.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
Yeah, initially, the Trump administration and I did a lot
of stories on the attitudes of Latino voters before the election,
and they were really sure. They said, well, I'm all
four criminals being deported so and that's what Trump says
he's going to do, so it doesn't bother me. And
I think, initially, and if you look at the polling
right now, still Trump's kind of immigration approval is still favorable.
I think it was about fifty eight forty two approve
(11:41):
of his overall deportation efforts. But if you look at
this El Salvador Venezuela operation that pulls quite negatively. So
I think it's starting to shift as people start to realize,
you know, oh, this is not just all hardened criminals
and gang members who are being sent there.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
Could this approach affect other movements within American society, locked
their pro Palestinian movement for instance.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
Yeah, I mean I think that is. You know, you
have to see these as length you're having. For example,
someone like Mark mu Khalil, who's a Green card holder
married to an American citizen, whose wife is pregnant eight
months pregnant at the time of the arrest, being arrested
at is Columbia University student housing apartment and sent to
an immigration detention center in Louisiana. I used to report
(12:25):
on the detention center during the first Trump administration, the
idea that a Green card holder is now there because
of political speech and he's not alone. You know, they
were going after a Columbia University juniorlea, which is one
of our most elite universities in Ivy League school. She
had come to the United States when she was seven
years old. And that's all just because of pretty milk
toast pro Palestine activism.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Right, So, at the end of the day, Trump is
doing what he said he do. The polms indicate that
what he is doing is popular. But when it comes
to these man, what happens to them? Now? What does
their future look? Luck?
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Yeah, it is very unclear. There's a very contentious and
high drama court case right now having the United States.
You know, the judge would order that these jets be
turned around while they're in the AIRHL salvad Or in
the Trump administration extremely rare move basically ignored that court order,
so that court case is continuing to heat up. It's
(13:24):
bleak to say, but the best possibility would be that
they are let out and allowed to be deported to Venezuela.
I mean, I think the odds of them returning to
the United States are quite slim. I don't want to
say it's impossible, but if you're a family member who
has a son or a husband there, you have no
idea not only when you will see your loved one,
but when you might even ever be able to know
that they're alive.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Now, look, thanks so much for your reporting and thanks
so much for you Tom.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
Yeah, no, thank you for having me on.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Also in the years today, Prime Minister Anthony Albernezi has
pledged two point three billion dollars to be spent on
subsidizing home batteries should his government be re elected. Labour
release data showing that while one in three Australian households
have solar panels, only one in forty have a battery.
Batteries can push household bills down and reduce reliance on
the grid. The new plan will make the cost of
(14:27):
installing a new home battery thirty percent cheaper and is
designed to find one million more units by twenty thirty
and Peter Darton has promised to cut the number of
international students in Australia by eighty thousand per year if elected.
The opposition leader has argued that international students are contributing
to the housing crisis. The policy would allow thirty thousand
(14:48):
fewer foreign students than Labour's plan announced last year. I'm
Daniel James. This is seven am. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
You have
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