March 30, 1891 Signaling a growing movement toward direct political action among desperate western farmers, “Sockless” Jerry Simpson called on the Kansas Farmers’ Alliance to work for a takeover of the state government. “Sockless” Jerry Simpson Simpson was one of the most well-known and influential leaders among Populist-minded western and midwestern farmers of the late 19th century. Angered over low crop prices, high-interest bank loans and unaffordable shipping rates, farmers began to unite in self-help groups like the Grange and the Farmers’ Alliances. Initially, these groups primarily provided mutual assistance to members while agitating for the regulation of railroads and grain elevators. Increasingly, though, they became centers of support for more sweeping political change by uniting to help form the nationwide third-party movement known as the Populists. More about Populist “Sockless” Jerry Simpson
March 30, 1919 Shops were closed and thousands demonstrated in protest against Rowlatt Acts in New Delhi, Amritsar, and other Indian cities. The hastily passed law permanently extended wartime civil liberties restrictions such as trial without jury and internment without trial.
March 30, 1948 Henry Wallace, former vice-president (under Franklin D. Roosevelt) and then Progressive Party presidential candidate, lashed out at the Cold War policies of President Harry S. Truman. Wallace and his supporters were among the few Americans who actively voiced criticisms of America’s Cold War mindset during the late 1940s and 1950s. Read more on his warnings about American fascists
March 30, 1976 Land Day, 1978. (Photo: Gidon Gitai) Became known as “Land Day” when Palestinians in occupied territories stood strong against the Zionist entity’s attempted confiscation of thousands of acres of land. Their grassroots protests were met with aggressive violence in which the Zionist police force killed six and injured hundreds of its Palestinian citizens. What is LandDay? | more 1982 AP photo/Castelnuove; Marchers protest for Land Day on March 30, 1982 in the Arab village of Sakhnine in northern Israel. 2018 Palestinian people mobilized en masse along the Gaza border to demand an end to a brutal “Israeli” blockade and to demand the rights for displaced Palestinians to return to their homeland. On that day, tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza put their lives on the line to participate in demonstrations that continued every Friday for over a year. Over 250 Palestinian demonstrators have been killed and over 30,000 injured. Rightfully called the Great March of Return, this unwavering display of strength solidified the Palestinian commitment to liberation and sent a clear message that Palestinians will not be silenced.
March 30, 1980 80,000 demonstrated against construction of a commercial nuclear reprocessing plant in Wackersdorf, Germany. The project was ultimately abandoned.
Mother Jones illustration; Mark Boster/Los Angeles Times/Getty; Photos courtesy Génesis Lozada, Joseph Giardina, Arturo Suárez, and María Alvarado
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On Friday, March 14, Arturo Suárez Trejo called his wife, Nathali Sánchez, from an immigration detention center in Texas. Suárez, a 33-year-old native of Caracas, Venezuela, explained that his deportation flight had been delayed. He told his wife he would be home soon. Suárez did not want to go back to Venezuela. Still, there was at least a silver lining: In December, Sánchez had given birth to their daughter, Nahiara. Suárez would finally have a chance to meet the three-month-old baby girl he had only ever seen on screens.
But, Sánchez told Mother Jones, she has not heard from Suárez since. Instead, last weekend, she found herself zooming in on a photo the government of El Salvador published of Venezuelan men the Trump administration had sent to President Nayib Bukele’s infamous Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT. “I realized that one of them was my husband,” she said. “I recognized him by the tattoo [on his neck], by his ear, and by his chin. Even though I couldn’t see his face, I knew it was him.” The photo Sánchez examined—and a highly producedpropaganda videopromoted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the White House—showed Venezuelans shackled in prison uniforms as they were pushed around by guards and had their heads shaved.
The tattoo on Suárez’s neck is of a colibrí, a hummingbird. His wife said it is meant to symbolize “harmony and good energy.” She said his other tattoos, like a palm tree on his hand—an homage to Suárez’s late mother’s use of a Venezuelan expression about God being greater than a coconut tree—were similarly innocuous. Nevertheless, they may be why Suárez has been effectively disappeared by the US government into a Salvadoran mega-prison.
Mother Jones has spoken with friends, family members, and lawyers of ten men sent to El Salvador by the Trump administration based on allegations that they are members of the Venezuelan organized crime group Tren de Aragua. All of them say their relatives have tattoos and believe that is why their loved ones were targeted. But they vigorously reject the idea that their sons, brothers, and husbands have anything to do with Tren de Aragua, which the Trump administration recently labeled a foreign terrorist organization. The families have substantiated those assertions to Mother Jones, including—in many cases—by providing official documents attesting to their relatives’ lack of criminal histories in Venezuela. Such evidence might have persuaded US judges that the men were not part of any criminal organization had the Trump administration not deliberately deprived them of due process.
On March 14, President Donald Trump quietly signed a proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act—a 1798 law last used during World War II. The order declared that the United States is under invasion by Tren de Aragua. It is the first time in US history that the 18th-century statute, which gives the president extraordinary powers to detain and deport noncitizens, has been used absent a Congressional declaration of war. The administration then employed the wartime authority unlocked by the Alien Enemies Act to quickly load Venezuelans onto deportation flights from Texas to El Salvador.
In response to a class action lawsuit brought by the ACLU and Democracy Forward, federal judge James Boasberg almost immediately blocked the Trump White House from using the Alien Enemies Act to summarily deport Venezuelans, and directed any planes already in the air to turn around. But in defiance of that order, the administration kept jets flying to El Salvador. Now Suárez and others like him are trapped in the Central American nation with no clear way to contact their relatives or lawyers.
Suárez, whose story has also been reported on by the Venezuelan outlet El Estímulo, is an aspiring pop musician who records under the name SuarezVzla. His older brother, Nelson Suárez, said his sibling’s tattoos were intended to help him “stand out” from the crowd. “As Venezuelans, we can’t be in our own country so we came to a country where there is supposedly freedom of expression, where there are human rights, where there’s the strongest and most robust democracy,” Nelson said. “Yet the government is treating us like criminals based only on our tattoos, or because we’re Venezuelan, without a proper investigation or a prosecutor offering any evidence.” (All interviews with family members for this story were conducted in Spanish.)
“Well, you’re here because of your tattoos,” the ICE agent reportedly said. “We’re finding and questioning everyone who has tattoos.”
The Justice Department’s website states that Suárez’s immigration case is still pending and that he is due to appear before a judge next Wednesday. Records provided by Nelson Suárez show that Arturo has no criminal record in Venezuela. Nor, according to his family, does Suárez have one in Colombia and Chile, where he lived after leaving Venezuela in 2016. They say he is one of millions of Venezuelans who sought a better life elsewhere after fleeing one of the worst economic collapses in modern history. (Just a few years ago, Secretary Rubio, then a senator from Florida, stressed that failure to protect Venezuelans from deportation “would result in a very real death sentence for countless” people who had “fled their country.”)
The stories shared with Mother Jones suggest that Trump’s immigration officials actively sought out Venezuelan men with tattoos before the Alien Enemies Act was invoked and then removed them to El Salvador within hours of the presidential proclamation taking effect.
“This doesn’t just happen overnight,” said immigration lawyer Joseph Giardina, who represents one of the men now in El Salvador, Frizgeralth de Jesus Cornejo Pulgar. “They don’t get a staged reception in El Salvador and a whole wing for them in a maximum-security prison…It was a planned operation, that was carried out quickly and in violation of the judge’s order. They knew what they were doing.”
Arturo Suárez performing and speaking with his baby daughter from detention.Courtesy Arturo Suárez
The White House has yet to provide evidence that the hundreds of Venezuelans flown to El Salvador—without an opportunity to challenge their labeling as Tren de Aragua members and “terrorists”—had actual ties to the gang. When pressed on the criteria used for their identification, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt pointed to unspecified “intelligence” deployed to arrest the Venezuelans she has referred to as “heinous monsters.” Trump’s border czar Tom Homan has insisted—without providing specific details—that the public should trust ICE to have correctly targeted the Venezuelans based on “criminal investigations,” social media posts, and surveillance.
Robert Cerna, an acting field office director for ICE’s removal operations branch, said the agency “did not simply rely on social media posts, photographs of the alien displaying gang-related hand gestures, or tattoos alone.” But Cerna also acknowledged that many of the Venezuelans deported under the Alien Enemies Act had no criminal history in the United States, a fact he twisted into an argument to seemingly justify the summary deportations without due process. “The lack of a criminal record does not indicate they pose a limited threat,” Cerna wrote. “In fact, based upon their association with TdA, the lack of specific information about each individual actually highlights the risk they pose. It demonstrates that they are terrorists with regard to whom we lack a complete profile.”
The relatives who talked to Mother Jones painted a vastly different picture from the US government’s description of the men as terrorists or hardened criminals. Many said their loved ones were tricked into thinking they were being sent back to Venezuela, not to a third country. (The Department of Homeland Security and ICE did not respond to a detailed request for comment asking for any evidence that the Venezuelans named in this articlehave ties to Tren de Aragua.)
Before leaving for the United States in late 2023, Neri Alvarado Borges lived in Yaritagua, a small city in north central Venezuela. His father is a farmer and his mother supports his 15-year-old brother, Nelyerson, who has autism.
Neri Alvarado with his brother Nelyerson in 2023.Courtesy María Alvarado
Alvarado’s older sister, María, stressed in a call from Venezuela that her brother has no connection to Tren de Aragua. She said her brother was deeply devoted to helping Nelyerson—explaining that one of his three tattoos is an autism awareness ribbon with his brother’s name on it and that he used to teach swimming classes for children with developmental disabilities.“Anyone who’s talked to Neri for even an hour can tell you what a great person he is. Truly, as a family, we are completely devastated to see him going through something so unjust—especially knowing that he’s never done anything wrong,” María said. “He’s someone who, as they say, wouldn’t even hurt a fly.”
Still, Alvarado was detained by ICE outside his apartment in early February and brought in for questioning, Juan Enrique Hernández, the owner of two Venezuelan bakeries in the Dallas area and Alvarado’s boss, told Mother Jones. One day later, Hernández went to see him in detention and asked him to explain what had happened. Alvarado told Hernández that an ICE agent had asked him if he knew why he had been picked up; Alvarado said that he did not. “Well, you’re here because of your tattoos,” the ICE agent replied, according to Hernández. “We’re finding and questioning everyone who has tattoos.”
The agent then asked Alvarado to explain his tattoos and for permission to review his phone for any evidence of gang activity. “You’re clean,” the ICE officer told Alvarado after he complied, according to both Hernández and María Alvarado. “I’m going to put down here that you have nothing to do with Tren de Aragua.”
For reasons that remain unclear, Hernández said that another official in ICE’s Dallas field office decided to keep Alvarado detained. María Alvarado said her brother told her the same story at the time.
Hernández spoke to Alvarado shortly before he was sent to El Salvador. “There are 90 of us here. We all have tattoos. We were all detained for the same reasons,” he recalled Alvarado telling him. “From what they told me, we are going to be deported.” Both assumed that meant being sent back to Venezuela.
Hernández, a US citizen who moved to the United States from Venezuela nearly three decades ago, searched desperately for Alvarado when he didn’t show up in his home country that weekend. He was nearly certain that Alvarado was in El Salvador when he first spoke to Mother Jones on Thursday. “I have very few friends,” he said. “Very few friends and I have been in this country for 27 years. I let Neri into my house because he is a stand-up guy…Because you can tell when someone is good or bad.” Later that day, on Alvarado’s 25th birthday, Hernández got confirmation that his friend was in El Salvador when CBS News published a list of the 238 people now at CECOT.
A centerpiece of Bukele’s brutal anti-gang crackdown, CECOT is known for due process violations and extreme confinement conditions. Last year, CNN obtained rare access to the remote prison, which can hold up to 40,000 people. The network found prisoners living in crowded cells with metal beds that had no mattresses or sheets, an open toilet, and a cement basin. Visitation and time outdoors are not allowed. A photographer who was allowed into the prison as the Venezuelans arrived earlier this month wrote for Time magazine that he witnessed them being beaten, humiliated, and stripped naked.
The Trump administration has indicated in court records that the El Salvador operation was weeks, if not months, in the making. In a declaration, a State Department official said arrangements with the Salvadoran and Venezuelan governments for the countries to take back US deportees allegedly associated with Tren de Aragua had been made after weeks of talks “at the highest levels”—including ones involving Secretary of State Rubio—and “were the result of intensive and delicate negotiations.”
As part of the deal, the US government will pay El Salvador $6 million to hold the Venezuelan men for at least one year. Calling the agreements a “foreign policy matter,” Rubio has claimed the outsourcing of deportees’ detention to Bukele’s “excellent prison system” is saving money for US taxpayers.
It is unclear if, or when, anyone sent to CECOT will be able to return to Venezuela. A Human Rights Watch program director noted in a declaration that the organization “is not aware of any detainees who have been released from that prison.” During an appeals court hearing on March 24, the ACLU’s lead counsel Lee Gelernt said, “We’re looking at people now who may be in a Salvadoran prison the rest of their lives.”
Neri Alvarado working at the bakery and the autism awareness tattoo with his brother’s name.Courtesy María Alvarado
Joseph Giardina’s client Frizgeralth de Jesus Cornejo Pulgar thought he was set to return to Venezuela on a deportation flight. Carlos, Frizgeralth’s older sibling, said his 26-year-old brother called their sister, who lives in Tennessee, from the El Valle detention center in Texas. He said Frizgeralth told her he was going to be deported to Venezuela later that day. “He was happy that he was going to be here with us,” Carlos said from Caracas in a video call with Mother Jones.
But Frizgeralth never arrived. Eventually, the family heard from the girlfriend of another Venezuelan set to be deported on the same flight as Carlos. She had identified him in videos shared on social media of the men who had been sent to the prison in El Salvador. On March 19, Carlos started scouring the internet and spotted his brother in a TikTok video. In it, Frizgeralth has his freshly shaved head pressed down, a rose tattoo on his neck peeking out from under a white t-shirt.
“We felt very powerless and in a lot of pain,” Carlos said. “To see how they mistreat a person who doesn’t deserve any of that. It’s not fair.”
“I never imagined being imprisoned just for getting a tattoo.”
Frizgeralth arrived in the United States in June 2024 after crossing the Darién Gap and waiting several months in Mexico for a CBP One appointment. The Biden-era program, which the Trump administration has since terminated, allowed migrants to schedule a date to present lawfully at a US port of entry. Carlos said Border patrol agents let Frizgeralth’s girlfriend and their other brother, as well as two friends, through but they held Frizgeralth back. He ended up detained at Winn Correctional Center, an ICE facility in Louisiana.
In messages to his family from detention, Frizgeralth expressed concern he was being investigated because of his tattoos. He explained that none of the 20 or so images—including one on his chest of an angel holding a gun—he has tattooed on his body have any connection to gang activity. He also described feeling discouraged from hearing stories in detention of Venezuelans who had recently been redetained and said ICE agents picked them up over suspicions about their tattoos.
Frizgeralth even had a declaration from his tattoo artist confirming the harmless nature of the artwork. “I never imagined being imprisoned just for getting a tattoo,” Frizgeralth, who owns a streetwear clothing brand with Carlos, wrote. “I never imagined being separated from my family. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone, not even my worst enemy if I had one. It’s horrible, it’s mental torture every day.”
Like Suárez and Alvarado, Frizgeralth had no criminal record in Venezuela, documents show. Giardina said his client also had no known criminal history in the United States. Nor did he have a final deportation order. During his preliminary court hearings, the US government never claimed or presented evidence that Frizgeralth had ties to Tren de Aragua. “He was doing everything he was supposed to do,” Giardina said. “He got vetted and checked when he came into the country. He was in detention the entire time. It’s insanity.” If anything, Giardina said, his client had a strong claim for asylum based on political persecution. He said Frizgeralth was being targeted by the colectivos, paramilitary groups linked to the Maduro regime.
About a week prior to his deportation, they moved Frizgeralth to Texas. His next hearing, which is scheduled for April 10, still appears on the immigration court’s online system. “To detain them in this maximum security prison with no access to lawyers, no charges, just because you’re saying they’re terrorists…,” Giardina said. “I mean, what the hell?”
Génesis Lozada Sánchez said she and her younger brother Wuilliam are from a rural Venezuelan “cattle town” called Coloncito near Colombia. Following Venezuela’s economic collapse, both she and Wuilliam lived in Bogota, where her brother saved up for the journey to the United States by making pants at a clothing factory. After he reached the border last January, Wuilliam was detained for more than a year, Génesis said.
On Friday, March 14, he called a cousin in the United States to say that he was about to be deported to Venezuela. “But to everyone’s surprise, that’s not what happened. They were kidnapped,” Génesis said. “Why do I say kidnapped? These people have no ties to El Salvador. They haven’t committed any crimes there. And they’re not even Salvadoran. They don’t even cross into El Salvador after going through the Darién Gap on their way to the United States. So, it’s a kidnapping. They tricked these guys into signing papers by telling them they were being sent to Venezuela.”
Like other men sent to El Salvador, Wuilliam has tattoos. But Génesis said that they have nothing to do with Tren de Aragua and that her brother has no criminal record. His goal had been to make enough money in the United States to help support their parents and to save up enough to hopefully open a clothing factory back home.
Other reporting and court briefs further support the families’ suspicions that their loved ones were primarily targeted for deportation because of their tattoos. In one instance, a professional soccer player, whose attorney said had fled Venezuela after protesting against the Maduro regime and being tortured, was accused of gang membership based on a tattoo similar to the logo of his favorite team, Real Madrid.
John Dutton, a Houston-based immigration attorney, said that he started noticing ICE officers detaining Venezuelans during check-ins due to their tattoos earlier this year. “If they notice they have a tattoo, they’re just taking them into custody,” he explained. “No more questions to ask.” Dutton estimated he now has about a dozen clients who have been arrested because of tattoos.
One of his clients, Henrry Albornoz Quintero, was due in court for a bond hearing last Wednesday after being taken into detention at a routine ICE check-in. “I show up. The judge asked me where my client is,” the Houston lawyer said. “I asked the same question to the DHS attorney. She looked at her notes, shuffled papers around as if she’s gonna find the answer in there, looks up, and said, ‘Judge, I don’t know.’”
Dutton told the judge that his client might be in El Salvador; his relatives had recognized him in one of the images of people at CECOT. The judge then decided not to hear the case on the grounds that he no longer had jurisdiction. “You could tell he wanted to help me,” Dutton added. “He just couldn’t. There’s nothing he could do.”
The next day, Albornoz’s name appeared on the list of people imprisoned in El Salvador. So far, Albornoz is the only one of Dutton’s clients to be sent there. His wife is nine months pregnant with their first child.
“They didn’t just deport these people and then set them free,” says Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University. “They sent them to El Salvador, where that country, at the behest of the United States, is incarcerating them for at least a year in their prison system.This is not just deportation without due process. This is imprisonment without due process in a foreign prison system that has terrible conditions. That’s a pretty blatant violation of the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause, which says that you can’t take away people’s life, liberty or property without due process of law.”
Until Thursday, March 20, Barbara Alexandra Manzo still wasn’t sure if her brother Lainerke Daniel Manzo Lovera was among those sent to El Salvador and transferred to CECOT. The family hadn’t heard from him since that Saturday, when he called from El Paso, Texas, to say they were deporting him to Venezuela or Mexico. Her confirmation also came when she saw his name on the CBS News list.
Barbara Alexandra told Mother Jones that Lainerke didn’t even have a tattoo before he left Venezuela in December 2023. He got one—a clock on his arm—while living and working in Mexico, waiting for a CBP One appointment. It was a gift from a roommate who had been given a date before he did. Last October, Lainerke showed up at the border and was sent to ICE detention; first in San Diego, then briefly in Arizona. He had a court hearing scheduled for March 26.
“My son went to look for a better future, the American Dream,” his mother Eglee Xiomara said in a video. “And it didn’t come true. That was the worst trip he has ever made in his life.”
Lainerke has yet to meet his six-month-old daughter, who was born in the United States. “He’s never been in prison,” Barbara Alexandra said. “[We’re wondering] if he’s ok or if something is happening to him. And we’ll never know because we have no recourse.”
Nelson Suárez fears that he, too, could meet the same fate as his brother Arturo, the Venezuelan musician. Even during the first Trump administration, the fact that Nelson has Temporary Protected Status and a pending asylum case would have been enough to protect him from deportation. But there are no guarantees that it will be now. If Judge Boasberg’s temporary restraining order is lifted or overturned, he could be immediately deported to Venezuela, or sent to El Salvador, without due process. He doesn’t know if he will walk out of a scheduled check-in with ICE in May free or in chains.
“I’m really scared,” he said last week. “My three daughters are here with me. My wife is here. My kids are in school. I don’t know what could happen. Since this happened to my brother, I really haven’t been able to sleep. I have no peace, no sense of calm. I’m afraid to go out on the street. But at the same time, we have to go out to work and get things done.”
I was not going to post again tonight, and in fact had thought to place some videos in a scheduled post for tomorrow. But this is FAR TOO IMPORTANT TO WAIT! When I told Ron about this, he remembered the Portland protests where tRump had security from prisons in unmarked vans and blacked out uniforms snatch people from the street. Is this them. Or as Ron asked me, is this just his brown shirt thugs trying to enforce his positions on the street? How to know because he sent them after drag queens and drag queen story hours. How far down the authoritarian road have we traveled already? How much farther before we can’t come back. Want to know her crime. She is a legal student here from Turkey and she wrote a pro-Palestinian op-ed. For that she got black bagged and sent to a location no one can contact her as even her lawyer says he has heard nothing and has no way to contact her. Even after a judge told ICE / tRump not to do this, they did it. Oh and why are they snatching these students and others then sending them to Louisiana? The appeals court for that area is notoriously right wing. They want as much good press and legal writing as they can get before it hits the SCOTUS. Even if a judge in the proper district tells them to do something they don’t want they just ignore it trying to force the judge to sanction tRump and his administration for using his core power which the SCOTUS tRump seems to feel has made him immune from any consequences of even an illegal act. We will soon see if he is correct. Seems Justice Sotomayor was correct. Hugs. Hugs
Unidentified men grabbing someone off the street and putting her in a car because she wrote an op-Ed. This as flatly authoritarian as anything we’ve seen in this country in a very long time.
Video of the international student at Tufts being arrested by "federal authorities" in Massachusetts has been released and it's terrifying. They're not even uniformed officers. Just secret police thugs in hoodies and masks. From WCVB: youtu.be/PuFIs7OkzYY
A longer version of the Tufts announcement about the abduction of an international graduate student by federal authorities, circulating on Twitter and Reddit.
"An emergency rally has been called for 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at Powder House Square in Somerville to protest a Tufts international graduate student being taken into custody Tuesday by federal authorities."
I want to thank Allison Gill for this report. I got it from her daily beans podcast that I listen to while I brush my teeth, shower, and if she goes long while I dress. Her podcasts are very informative with three different segments of news and what is happening. Often I write down what I can remember to talk about. Then I realized she gives a transcript of each show, and that transcripts with links is bringing you this post. She has a substack which I also follow where she reports the news giving tips on how to get involved. https://www.muellershewrote.com. What follows is horrifying and triggered me because the abuse these people went through was some of what I did. But remember most of the people on these flights are not gang members. This all comes from a slum lord not wanting to deal with a protest on his apartment complex that was getting really dangerous for the people living there. He went to the news claiming a gang called … had taken over and was shaking down him and residents. Yes they did go to a few residences and demand the money, the money promised to help fund their fight against the landlord. Many right wing outlets selectively edited the videos to make the protesting people seem very sinister. TYT also pushed the scenario hard. As you will read the people in this foreign prison for at least a year held in commutation black out are not gang members, many came to the US in legal ways, some had green cards. They can not access lawyers, can’t call friends or family, they are held for a year in horrific conditions like in a Russian gulag because tRump and crew don’t care about the constitution or the people. All they want is all non-white people removed from the US. Some of those deported by the way, luckily not to this place are US citizens that are fighting for their rights. Hence the sending them to El Salvador that has no laws of rights and agreed for a huge price per detainee to keep them from accessing any outside person. They could kill them tomorrow and no one would know. The tRump people are grabbing anyone they can and sending them there knowing they can not get any help. Sadly I just watched a clip on Tim Pool a low info moron who clearly thinks this is great no matter how many innocent people get caught up in it. It doesn’t matter they broke no laws, and entering the US illegally to ask for asylum is not a criminal offense despite what the white supremacist say it is a protected right under US laws and the treaties, That makes it legal. Again not that tRump and crew care. By any definition that torture is against the US Constitution. An impeachable offense. Hugs
Holsinger is an American photojournalist based out of Nashville, Tenn.
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On the night of Saturday, March 15, three planes touched down in El Salvador, carrying 261 men deported from the United States. A few dozen were Salvadoran, but most of the men were Venezuelans the Trump Administration had designated as gang members and deported, with little or no due process. I was there to document their arrival.
For more than a year, I have been embedded throughout El Salvador’s society, working on a book chronicling the country’s transformation. From the huts of remote island fishermen to the desk of the President, from elite homicide detective units to elementary school classrooms, I have interviewed government officials and everyday people, collecting stories that would shock Stephen King. I’ve stood in classrooms full of happy students which not long ago were empty, because children here once learned early that schools were places to be raped or recruited. I’ve interviewed killers in prison and sat with them face-to-face.
As I stood on the tarmac, an agent with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s ICE Special Response Team told me that some of the Venezuelans had weakly attempted to take over their plane upon landing. It wasn’t unusual for detainees to try to make a last stand, the agent said, guarding the doorway to the plane at the top of the gangway stairs. “They began to try to organize to overthrow the plane by screaming for everyone to stand up and fight. But not everyone was on board,” the agent said, cautioning me to be careful because some of the Venezuelans would fight once they were offloaded
Philip Holsinger
PHILIP HOLSINGER
Philip Holsinger
Even if not fighting, almost all the detainees came to the door of the plane with angry, defiant faces. It was their faces that grabbed me, because within a few hours those faces would completely transform.
The Venezuelans emerging from their plane were not in prison clothes, but in designer jeans and branded tracksuits. Their faces were the faces of guys who in no way expected what they first saw—an ocean of soldiers and police, an entire army assembled to apprehend them.
Philip Holsinger
Philip Holsinger
One of the alleged organizers of the attempted overthrow fought the U.S. agents on the plane, cursing the Americans, the Salvadorans, President Nayib Bukele himself. El Salvador’s Minister of Defense, René Merino, who had been standing on the tarmac at the bottom of the gangway, rushed aboard, dragged the guy to the gangway himself, and flung him into the waiting hands of black-masked guards.
Philip Holsinger
The transfer from the plane to the buses that would carry them to prison was rapid, yet it might as well have been the crossing of an ancient continent. I felt the detainees’ fear as they marched through a gauntlet of black-clad guards, guns raised like the spears of some terrible tribe. I walked the line of buses waiting to depart, photographing faces. A guard noticed one of the detainees turned toward the window and wrenched his head back down into his chest.
Philip Holsinger
Around 2 a.m., the convoy of 22 buses, flanked by armored vehicles and police, moved out of the airport. Soldiers and police lined the 25-mile route to the prison, with thick patrols at every bridge and intersection. For the few Salvadorans, it was a familiar landscape. But for a Venezuelan plucked from America, it must have appeared dystopian—police and soldiers for miles and miles in woodland darkness.
The Terrorism Confinement Center, a notorious maximum-security prison known as CECOT, sits in an old farm field at the foot of an ancient volcano, brightly lit against the night sky. I’ve spent considerable time there and know the place intimately. As we entered the intake yard, the head of prisons was giving orders to an assembly of hundreds of guards. He told them the Venezuelans had tried to overthrow their plane, so the guards must be extremely vigilant. He told them plainly: Show them they are not in control.
Philip Holsinger
The intake began with slaps. One young man sobbed when a guard pushed him to the floor. He said, “I’m not a gang member. I’m gay. I’m a barber.” I believed him. But maybe it’s only because he didn’t look like what I had expected—he wasn’t a tattooed monster.
The men were pulled from the buses so fast the guards couldn’t keep pace. Chained at their ankles and wrists, they stumbled and fell, some guards falling to the ground with them. With each fall came a kick, a slap, a shove. The guards grabbed necks and pushed bodies into the sides of the buses as they forced the detainees forward. There was no blood, but the violence had rhythm, like a theater of fear.
Inside the intake room, a sea of trustees descended on the men with electric shavers, stripping heads of hair with haste. The guy who claimed to be a barber began to whimper, folding his hands in prayer as his hair fell. He was slapped. The man asked for his mother, then buried his face in his chained hands and cried as he was slapped again.
Philip Holsinger
After being shaved, the detainees were stripped naked. More of them began to whimper; the hard faces I saw on the plane had evaporated. It was like looking at men who passed through a time machine. In two hours, they aged 10 years. Their nice clothes were not gathered or catalogued but simply thrust into black garbage bags to be thrown out with their hair.
They entered their cold cells, 80 men per cell, with steel planks for bunks, no mats, no sheets, no pillow. No television. No books. No talking. No phone calls and no visitors. For these Venezuelans, it was not just a prison they had arrived at. It was exile to another world, a place so cold and far from home they may as well have been sent into space, nameless and forgotten. Holding my camera, it was as if I watched them become ghosts.
If it can happen to them, being held without due process. It can happen to any of us. We know it has happened before with US citizens of Mexican heritage that were not allowed any due process but just deported. We know tRump had unmarked black bag groups just adduct people off the streets during the BLM protests. They were held with no charges, interrogated by people who did not identify themselves, and had their items take and phones searched. In some cases they never got their phones back. It can and will happen to any of us if it is not stopped now. Hugs
A man being held by ICE at the KROME detention center in Miami is posting videos to TikTok about the inhumane conditions and treatment.
Simply very bad news. Precisely what Project 2025/Agenda 47/Republican National Platform said they want to do. I’m sorry; I don’t like to bring bad news. But people need to prepare. This is written in editorial/opinion style, but facts are within and there are citations. For people like us who need time to prepare for austerity, it’s news we ought to read.
Also, there are Senator names included for who we should write to regarding this bill. That’s our last chance. Shutdown is on Republicans, not Democrats, no matter how they try to deflect. We need to tell the Dem senators to speak what’s in this bill, every chance they get, and to refuse to vote in favor, pointing at Republicans the entire time.
There are parts in the article complaining about Democrats and their choices, etc., et. m. Read it if you want (you’ll have to click through for it,) but it won’t help anyone to read more complaining about Democrats. We the people need to energize Dem. Senators to speak out, and to vote no. Especially the speak out portion; Sen. Mark Kelly does that especially well, and is among those the author of this piece feels is wavering. I intend to start first thing in the morning, and I hope all of us will devote some time to this. It’s vital.
Without the luxury of Republicans falling apart, Democrats in the Senate need to decide whether to prevent a dangerous and harmful budget that shrinks the power of Congress in the government. Since operating on principle goes against their “adults in the room” mindset, they are wavering on what to do. But it should be an open-and-shut case.
A normal continuing resolution funds the government at the same level as the previous budget. This bill does not. It cuts non-defense discretionary spending by $13 billion below last year’s level, while increasing military spending by $6 billion. It zeroes out funding for programs that fund homeless shelters and prevent child abuse. It cuts health care funding for clinics and hospitals, emergency preparedness for communities, clean water projects and tribal assistance. Meanwhile, it adds money for mass deportations, just as Immigrations and Customs Enforcement has illegally detained a green card holder for his political beliefs.
Most of the budget cuts are achieved by removing earmarks, which members of Congress put in to direct projects. But usually when earmarks are removed, the money goes back to the agency to decide how to distribute it. This maneuver cuts the earmarks and the money.
The House Republican bill also fails to fix a carryover of a $20 billion rescission to IRS money from the Inflation Reduction Act, effectively doubling that cut. This was kind of pre-ordained when Democrats punted on this in a prior continuing resolution last December, but it still means that practically all of the IRA’s funding for greater enforcement of tax collection is now gone.
The bill not only adds $6 billion to the Department of Defense’s enormous budget, but adds $8 billion in “transfer authority” that allows the agency to shift spending where they deem important, a flexibility no other agency gets.
While Republicans tout a $6 billion increase in veterans health care in the bill, they neglect to mention the removal of a $23 billion appropriation to the Toxic Exposure Fund to implement the PACT Act, which cares for veterans exposed to burn pits and other cancer-causing chemicals. While there’s an extra $2.2 billion for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster relief fund, there’s no additional money to support the rebuilding in southern California after the January wildfires.
But most important, the bill grants an open invitation to Trump and Elon Musk to continue to ignore Congress and toss out disfavored spending. Vice President JD Vance, while selling the deal to House Republicans, stated outright that “Trump would continue cutting federal funding with his Department of Government Efficiency initiative and pursue impoundment — that is, holding back money appropriated by Congress.” This has been reiterated by others in the Trump administration.
In fact, the House Republican bill gives the president more leeway to move money around. It appropriates money for things that Musk has eliminated, meaning that money can operate as a floating slush fund for Trump’s priorities, as long as the courts don’t roll back the illegal impoundments.
… The Trump administration is saying that they will sign a bill appropriating specific funding, and then go about cutting funding anyway. If you’re a member of Congress, you’re being told that your work product doesn’t matter, that the constitutional power of the purse doesn’t matter, and that there’s no guarantee that anything you pass will actually reach the people you serve.
I can see why Republicans would take this deal: they want budget cuts but know they don’t have the votes for them, so they’re plenty happy to outsource that to the president, even if it turns Congress into a separate and unequal branch of government. But why would Democrats willingly submit to a fake budget on paper that can be so easily circumvented? As Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said on X, “The Republican spending plan will supercharge Musk’s theft from working people to pay for billionaire tax cuts. Senate Democrats must stop it.”
…
So far, only Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) has committed to voting yes. But as Josh Marshall has documented at Talking Points Memo, a number of Senate Democrats have stated no position on the bill, leaving their options open. In general, senators have been hedging their bets until forced to make a decision. That time has come.
Credible sources indicate that the most likely Democrats to offer up the remaining seven votes to avoid a shutdown are Mark Kelly (D-AZ), Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), Michael Bennet (D-CO), John Hickenlooper (D-CO), Jon Ossoff (D-GA), Gary Peters (D-MI), Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), Maggie Hassan (D-NH), and Mark Warner (D-VA).
March 9, 1839 The U.S. Supreme Court, with only one dissent, freed the slaves who had seized the Spanish slave ship Amistad, ruling that they had been illegally forced into slavery, and thus were free under American law. Slave ship They had mutinied and taken control of the ship off the shore of Cuba (then a colony of Spain) and demanded to be taken back to Africa but wound up in U.S. waters off the coast of Long Island, New York. More on the Amistad mutiny
March 9, 1945 Phyllis Daley became the first African-American commissioned nurse in the U.S. Navy. Though more than 500 black nurses served in the Army during World War II, the Navy had only dropped its color ban a few weeks before.
March 9, 1964 Five Sioux Indians, led by Richard McKenzie, claimed the island of Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay as Indian land. The island had recently been abandoned, and the action was based on an 1868 treaty which entitled Indians to take possession of surplus federal land. The native Americans advocated turning it into a cultural center and Indian university, but their occupation lasted only four hours.
March 9, 1965 Two days after Bloody Sunday [see March 7, 1965] Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. led 1500 outraged people gathered from around the country back to the Edmund Pettus Bridge on the outskirts of Selma, Alabama. They were attempting for a second time to march to the state capital of Montgomery in support of voting rights for black Americans. Confronted once again by state troopers blocking passage to the bridge, King knelt in prayer, then led his followers back, avoiding further violence. Later that evening three white ministers were attacked by local whites as they left a soul food restaurant in Selma. Reverend James Reeb was struck on the head with a club and died two days later.
Reviewing a directive from DCPAS Director Daniel J. Hester. This applies to DOD civilian personnel. On Friday the 28th, they “must terminate the employment of all individuals who are currently serving probationary or trial periods in the DOD.” The document lists categories of exception: positions “designated mission critical,” “political appointees.” There are a few other technical exception categories. Document signed yesterday.
Yesterday I saw a video from VA Secretary Doug Collins (former member of Congress from Georgia) bragging about how they were cutting $2 billion worth of what were clearly, in his estimation, worthless and stupid contracts. They were in fact almost one thousand different contracts tied to everything from medical and burial services to cancer prevention and doctor recruiting programs. I’ve posted that video below. This afternoon I received this email from a longtime reader …
I’m a contractor working for a service-disabled veteran-owned small business (SDVOSB) for 15 years. I’ve worked on projects with the Veterans Benefit Administration and the Veterans Health Administration. During that time, I’ve run marketing campaigns to get veterans to enroll in healthcare, conducted program evaluations and process improvement efforts, and provided strategic communications support.
I’ve been very proud of my work and the VA mission. But today I’m devastated. My contract was one of more than 800 that were canceled last night. The cancellations were not based on any evaluation. DOGE appears to have simply identified all professional services contracts and canceled them.
The cancellations will not only have a terrible impact on VHA healthcare, it will destroy hundreds of SDVOSBs because a great deal of VA contracts go to SDVOSBs. I don’t know how Republicans in Congress can let this destruction continue when so many of them profess to care deeply about veterans.
This afternoon, VA appears to have reversed course, now saying their going to review and potentially reverse at least some of the cancellations. “Under pressure, VA halts contract cancellations in major reversal” reads the WaPo headline. It goes on: “Records show the 875 contracts at issue included support for medical and burial services, cancer programs, and efforts to recruit doctors for critical vacancies.”
“I don’t have a lot of hope that they’ll reverse many,” the TPM Reader followed up.
The last Trump administration might not have introduced the concept of disinformation, but 2.0 has taken propaganda to a new dangerous level. Are we better equipped to combat it this time around?
But I have some ideas that might help. Here is what I have learned from my work as a debunker and a cross-border reporter with a background in breaking news, where you have to learn to protect yourself and your information:
Limit the time you spend consuming news. The news cycle is being deliberately weaponized to make you feel hopeless in ways that many journalists are unable or unwilling to understand and mitigate at the moment.
Limit your time on social media unless you can have trusted private networks. And even then don’t talk about anything unlawful. Save those conversations for face-to-face meetings.
Embrace physical media. Write things down. Send letters to each other. No, really.
It’s possible to step up and help when others won’t. We can learn from previous disasters and do better, if we work together.
Find and form trusted mutual aid networks.
Support your local libraries.
Do not waste your time appealing to authority that has demonstrated they are unwilling to fight for you. Fact-checking is always important, but it is only effective on its own in a healthy democracy. We are not in a healthy democracy.
Learn your regional history, particularly unresolved crimes against humanity such as slavery and genocide. Learn about vulnerable groups and how they are treated. Often, those painful histories are leveraged in the service of disinformation campaigns. Listen to marginalized people.
Follow people online who you have already observed having integrity. Give people the benefit of the doubt if you hear rumors. Do not give them the benefit of the doubt if you observe them engaging in bad behavior.
Toss toxic people out of your trusted networks.
Keep a journal. Write a few words in it every day, if you can; it doesn’t need to be a long letter to yourself. Writing down your thoughts will help you remember what you want to remember, and it will also provide you with a bulwark against weapons-grade gaslighting.
Take breaks and find joy somehow. This is going to really suck. Find or make a haven for yourself if you possibly can.
Take care of your health. Don’t forget to rest, eat, and hydrate. Find a place you can retreat and shut out the rest of the world if you have to.
Spend time with your loved ones.
Stand up for each other, even when it’s hard. (And it will be hard.)
We can get through this. But in order to do so, we all have to work together to debunk poisonous lies and preserve our memories and our thoughts, because that’s how we build resilience, real resilience, the type that gives us what we need in order to bounce back from the heartbreak and tragedies of the last few years and whatever is to come. We can do that if we work together, and the time to do so is now.
Scottie's Playtime 