Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Newman: It’s my pleasure. Thank you.
Newman: Like everything, it’s difficult to interpret. On the one hand, it appears that Trump is softening and indeed backing away from the position of Stephen Miller, who appears to be higher on the organizational chart than his own vice president. On the other hand, it seems to be an admission as well that he’s violating the Supreme Court order because the order clearly said that he was supposed to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. And the fact that he hasn’t tried seems to be a dead to rights admission that he is not complying with the order. From a political lens, it appears to reflect what is actually happening, which is public opinion is turning against Trump on this issue, and on immigration broadly. But as a legal matter, again, we continue to inch closer and closer to the proverbial constitutional crisis that people have been afraid of and some would even say—potentially rightly—that we’re already there.
Newman: Yeah, and it makes you wonder which lawyer, if any, he’s talking to. For example, is he talking to Erez Reuveni, the Department of Justice lawyer who admitted that Abrego Garcia was mistakenly deported and then subsequently fired—seemingly because of that admission? Or is he talking to Pam Bondi? Or in fact, is he just making it entirely up and he hasn’t spoken to any lawyers at all? The fact is that we don’t know. And also the fact is that this is also part of this trick mirror thing where Trump is trying to make it seem like he ultimately is all three branches of government. It doesn’t really matter whether he’s spoken to lawyers or not. His administration must comply with the Supreme Court order.
But then Trump adds again that his lawyers “don’t want to do that” at this moment. To be clear, Chris, the administration does have the option of bringing him back and recontesting his withholding of removal status or seeking to deport him to a third country. Trump now just said flat out that he’d be OK with this. Well, what the hell are we waiting for then? How is this not a big deal?
Sargent: I think there’s no question about it. I want to bring up this new poll from The New York Times. It finds Trump underwater on immigration with 51 percent of voters disapproving versus only 47 percent approving; 63 percent opposed deporting legal immigrants who have protested Israel, 73 percent say a president shouldn’t be able to send American citizens to prison in El Salvador, which Trump has threatened to do; 76 percent opposed defying the Supreme Court. Chris, I don’t think Stephen Miller and Trump anticipated that. They went into this thinking that people would get so seduced by their propaganda that they’d broadly rally behind extra-legal tactics against immigrants. Your thoughts on that?
Sargent: The new Washington Post poll also finds Trump sinking fast on immigration, but crucially, he’s taking a big hit among independents on the issue. Fifty-six percent of independents disapprove his handling of immigration; 62 percent oppose removing foreign students; 52 percent oppose renditions to El Salvador; only 21 percent want Abrego Garcia left in El Salvador. Those are really striking numbers. These are, again, independence. This is the middle of the electorate—majorities, solid majorities against Trump on all these things. What do you make of that? Did you expect that?
Now, I think, to the incurious, they’re just going to listen. If Donald Trump says he’s a gang member or terrorist, they’ll just take his word for it. But I think for the vast majority of Americans, people are saying, Well, maybe he’s a terrorist, maybe he’s not. That’s why we have courts. And the only courts that we’ve had looking at this case so far have not found him guilty of anything. And we have a Department of Justice attorney admitting that he was removed essentially to a black site in El Salvador mistakenly. So like I said, I think this is causing people to reconsider basically trusting or going along with just the overall racist defamation of immigrants that Donald Trump has been engaging in for a decade.
Newman: No question about it. First, I just, again, want to express praise and gratitude for Senator Van Hollen, for his courage, for entering into the unknown, for clearly understanding that this is a test case for due process for everyone, for taking the trip there without the normal accoutrements that travel like that come along with for senators. It was clear to him after the first day that roadblocks were being put up in his way.
Later that day, when Senator Van Hollen and I parted ways, I went to the airport and then very quickly Kilmar was brought to his hotel. And then we had learned that Kilmar had been transferred, I think, approximately a week before to another prison in El Salvador. But yeah, incredibly grateful to Senator Van Hollen for asserting the initiative and for leading through action. Up until then, there had been lots of statements of support—I wouldn’t even say solidarity but statements from politicians saying, Hey, this is terrible. Trump shouldn’t do this. But Senator Van Hollen jumped into action, and he got results. At least as of that day, we knew that Kilmar was OK. We knew where he was. And I think we were one step closer to securing his eventual release and return into what should be a fair hearing for all the claims being made against him.
Newman: Greg, I’m so happy you asked this question. It’s something that I don’t think enough in the media are focusing on. Because frankly speaking, the fate of U.S. democracy and the fate of Salvadoran democracy right now, they’re intertwined in a common story. And yet I don’t think nearly enough people in the U.S. know about the history of El Salvador, nor do they know about the history of the involvement of the U.S. in El Salvador. I’ve been going there for 10 years, and I have witnessed with my own eyes El Salvador’s descent into fascism. And I think it’s worth noting that President Bukele, while autocratic, dictatorial—I think he refers to himself as the world’s coolest dictator—is quite popular in El Salvador because in the short term he has decreased street crime.
And unlike in El Salvador, we still have checks and balances in this country. And that’s, by the way, what Senator Van Hollen, Congressman Frost, and Congressman Garcia—that’s what we were all told in all of our meetings in civil society. They were saying, Hey, listen, you guys have got to stop this now because you still have checks and balances in your country. We don’t anymore. We’re part of the 20 percent and growing of people resisting Bukele. But again, that raises another point, which is that every single—and I don’t want to speak for the congressman and certainly not for Senator Van Hollen on some of the things that we learned in our travels—but everyone we spoke to in El Salvador said, Hey, listen, this situation with Kilmar is a tragedy. It’s terrible. We’re going to help you. But you have to understand that there are tens of thousands of people in El Salvador living in the exact same situation right now. And there’s been efforts to help in El Salvador to liberate Kilmar, but there have been requests from human rights lawyers in El Salvador for people from the U.S. who are learning about El Salvador to get involved in helping them as well.
Newman: Let me say a couple things. Number one, Kilmar’s wife and U.S. citizen children are in the U.S. and Kilmar needs to be home with them in the U.S. And I and his legal team, his union brothers and sisters, people from CASA Maryland are going to work until he comes home, period. And we’ll do whatever it takes to make that happen, however long it takes to make that happen.
Sargent: Well, Chris Newman, I want to thank you so much for all the work you’re doing on this case and on the issue more broadly. It was really great to talk to you, man. Thanks for coming on.
Sargent: You’ve been listening to The Daily Blast with me, your host, Greg Sargent. The Daily Blast is a New Republic podcast and is produced by Riley Fessler and the DSR Network.
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