Right, the cluckstercluck part of it is the bad part of it. I’ve thought of something like this before and am frankly surprised that there isn’t such a thing. But as thought up and administered by this administration, no thank you.
The MAGAs really just want to kill the tourist industry, don’t they?
The mainstream media doesn’t seem to be paying attention to this at all, but this past Friday over 250 Venezuelan have been repatriated from CECOT to Venezuela. Jay Kuo commented in his Substack:
After four harrowing months, 252 Venezuelan nationals were finally sprung from El Salvador’s hellish CECOT prison, swapped for 10 Americans held in Venezuela by the Maduro regime. Notably, this occurred after nonstop pressure from civil rights and immigrants rights groups and sustained protests around the country. It also occurred long after the Trump White House repeatedly gaslit the American public and our federal courts over its supposed lack of jurisdiction over the men once they were in El Salvador.
Some Dopers will recall the plight of Andry Hernandez. He was among the CECOT prisoners freed. Further by Kuo:
Among those freed from CECOT were many wrongly accused of being members of the notorious Tren de Aragua gang.
These included Andry Hernández, a gay make-up artist whose crown tattoos above the names of his parents led U.S. officials to wrongly identify him as a Tren de Aragua member. Hernández’s plight was highlighted and amplified through civil protests led by the Human Rights Campaign … including die-in rallies in cooperation with The Bulwark and activation of thousands of people at Pride celebrations around the country in June to contact their federal elected officials to pressure the Trump White House to “Free Andry.”
Either this a typo or people are really going all-out with their protests.
A conceptually simple act of physical resistance.
238 people the U.S. sent to CECOT (who I’ll call betrayees) - 1 (Albrego Garcia’s back in the States, at least for now) - 252 Venezuelans returned from CECOT to Venezuela = me totally confused.
How many betrayees are still in CECOT? I gather from the tone of the Kuo article none. But then how many of the 252 deported or repatriated Venezuelans were betrayees? Or were there always more than 238 betrayees and that was just a preliminary figure that later stories ran with?
There have been multiple flights from the US to transfer migrants to CECOT. The site below has a helpful section titled “How many people did the US government send to CECOT and when?”
https://www.nilc.org/resources/tracking-the-cecot-disappearances/
I’d have to go through the data to hazard a guess at how many remain. Maybe 30 or so?
[quote=“bordelond, post:923, topic:1013404”]>
After four harrowing months, 252 Venezuelan nationals were finally sprung from El Salvador’s hellish CECOT prison, swapped for 10 Americans held in Venezuela by the Maduro regime. Notably, this occurred after nonstop pressure from civil rights and immigrants rights groups and sustained protests around the country. It also occurred long after the Trump White House repeatedly gaslit the American public and our federal courts over its supposed lack of jurisdiction over the men once they were in El Salvador.
[/quote]
Why would the El Salvador government swap 252 prisoners for ten Americans held in Venezuela? Obviously that proved that the American government was really in charge of who was held in that El Salvador prison.
It is easy to refute this claim in an extremely literal manner, by showing links that all the major wire services and U.S. networks have stories on this, on their web sites, dated July 18, 2025. But by itself, that isn’t all that significant. The real question should be how prominently the story was featured.
I do not know a good way to do that without hours of research. One easy thing I tried was to ask ChatGPT what was the top story on the ABC, NBC, and CBS evening news programs on July 18, 2025. They say that it was the top story on ABC but not on NBC and CBS. I realize that this isn’t proof. I would need to watch the programs, which I am loath to do. But for what it is worth, I do recall this being prominently featured news late last week.
Here’s what I think:
- This was a top news story last Friday.
- Progressive attacks on mainstream media are often exaggerated. The Trump administration has not yet achieved control over the news cycle.
- If and when the administration does obtain such control, many Americans will not notice it because they had been previously told of it back when it was not yet an accurate observation.
Thanks, that was handy! Assuming their numbers were correct, there were 288 betrayees, all 252 Venezuelans have been sent back to Venezuela, and all 38 Salvadorans except for Abrego Garcia remain in CECOT.
There are growing signs that some of the National Guard troops whom President Donald Trump deployed to Los Angeles are demoralized and discontent with their ostensible mission of quashing the “rebellion” of protests against federal immigration raids. …
The interviews “show that many members of the Guard are questioning the mission,” the Times reports. …
The Times says several of the guard members had “raised objections themselves or knew someone who objected, either because they did not want to be involved in immigration crackdowns or felt the Trump administration had put them on the streets for what they described as a ‘fake mission.’”
No shit.
There’s an additional element for the National Guard compared to the rest of the military that is summed up by calling L.A. a fake mission. Members of the NG are taken away from their regular jobs/careers every time they are called to duty, whether by a governor or president, and they really should be used only in case of real emergency for the actual duration of the emergency.
In addition to any legal or political implications of the L.A. deployment, there’s an economic impact from sucking thousands of workers from their primary jobs for weeks or months only to stand around uselessly or perform in photo-ops (MacArthur park “raid”) for Trump, Noem & Co. And only about half of the NG sent to L.A. has been sent home!
The straight dope, which El Salvador told the UN:
- On the lack of grounds for the request for information from the State of El Salvador. The Salvadoran State emphatically states that its authorities have not arrested, detained, or transferred the persons referred to in the communications of the Working Group. The actions of the State of El Salvador have been limited to the implementation of a bilateral cooperation mechanism with another State, through which it has facilitated the use of the Salvadoran prison infrastructure for the custody of persons detained within the scope of the justice system and law enforcement of that other State. In this context, the jurisdiction and legal responsibility for these persons lie exclusively with the competent foreign authorities, by virtue of international agreements signed and in accordance with the principles of sovereignty and international cooperation in criminal matters. In this regard, the actions attributable to the Salvadoran State are limited to its sovereignty and territorial jurisdiction, and therefore it cannot be held responsible for the failure to observe the principle of non-refoulement with respect to the persons mentioned.
- On the absence of elements constituting enforced disappearance attributable to the State of El Salvador. In this regard, the State of El Salvador emphasizes that the claims presented do not attribute any direct action to the Salvadoran State that meets the definition of enforced disappearance under international law and the working methods of the Working Group.
~Max
Thanks for that. So we’re just renting space in an El Salvador prison.
Has Trump’s rent cheque cleared?
I can’t find a link that isn’t on twitter, but there is video out there of an arrest in Houston, where the ICE officers are tossing around a woman who is 9 months pregnant for ‘interfering in the arrest of her partner’ and all I can say is at least the officers were not masked.
This is happening in my country.
Now maybe her partner is a wanted murderous serial killing gang member and then won’t I look the fool for having any concern about this woman and her unborn child?
Oh, I heard the ICE folks were at a minor little league game in NY last week and the coach confronted them. I don’t know if they were after the kids or the parents, but what a way to end your weekend game huh?
This is making me very anxious and I know there probably is not a god damn thing I can do about it.
The Los Angeles Times reports that ICE arrested a law-abiding deaf, mute Mexican man under DACA protection and transported him from California to a detention facility in Texas, preventing him from communicating with anyone and not giving him any paperwork in a language he could understand (he doesn’t read English).
I don’t think that’s what the article is saying. “At times, Diaz received paperwork in Spanish — a language he cannot read.” It is possible Diaz doesn’t read English either, but unlikely, I think. The government also claims to have provided an American Sign Language interpreter at some point, just not when they picked him off the streets.
~Max
From the article it seems to me that ICE/DHS is making the assumption that the first (or only) language of anyone they pick up on the street is Spanish. Once it was figured out this guy speaks Sign and reads English why did they keep giving him documents in Spanish? The only thing that comes to mind is racism.