← Bulwark Takes
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- [00:00]
Sam Stein
Hey guys, it's me, Sam Stein, managing editor at the Bulwark. I am joined by Adrian Carrascuelo and Tim Miller. We're coming to you because all of us are pretty, pretty hot on a couple stories right now. Our rage level at 100 or so over what's happening with these Venezuelans being deported to El Salvador and what's happening frankly on college campuses with ICE agents coming in and basically swooping up kids who wrote bad op EDS about Palestinians. Before we get to that, subscribe to the feed. Thank you for doing that. Appreciate it. Adrian, I want to start with you because you were the one who first pointed this out. There's a new Mother Jones story and it goes through a number of these people who were caught in this dragnet. And basically the gist is they all kind of were here, some through legal channels to get here, applying for asylum, things like that. And then there were detained because they each had tattoos. And in the most shocking case, one of the people that they profiled had a tattoo that is about autism awareness because their sibling has autism. And they explained this to, they explained to the ICE agent. The ICE agent said, you're in the clear. We realize you're not in trend Aragua. Like we're good. And yet he still was deported.
- [01:15]
Tim Miller
Yeah.
- [01:15]
Sam Stein
To an El Salvadorian prison. So, you know, you wrote, I think. Right. Like that this is just absolutely scandalous. And the question is, does it break through? And I'm kind of struck and almost paralyzed by that same question. Why is this not breaking through? To me this is just like, it's just shocking. It's so inhumane.
- [01:34]
Tim Miller
Yeah.
- [01:35]
Sam Stein
What is going on here?
- [01:36]
Tim Miller
I think we're going to get into with Warner and Gallego where Democrats are looking at it through this like purely political lens, but it's obviously a scandal that they are completely removing due process from these men in the past, as you know. So lawyers have, immigrants, immigration lawyers have told me if you were thought if you had a tattoo and they weren't sure, you would then get that adjudicated, you would then do due process. Okay. Actually he's not a member. These mistakes have been made in the past is that now no one cares and they're just shipping you to an El Salvador and black site. Right.
- [02:05]
Sam Stein
And it's all just because of tattoo. Yeah, it seems like that's it.
- [02:09]
Tim Miller
The one guy, you said his, his 15 year old brother has autism, so he has a tattoo. His name is Neri Alvarado. You have another guy who's a Venezuelan musician. These Guys have no criminal records. They just have tattoos. The other thing that gets me is these tattoos are always, like, so innocuous. They're like a hummingbird, you know, tattoo, because it gives good harmony and good energy. I mean, it's not like these are, like, scary looking tattoos. The one guy, Arturo Suarez, he's a Venezuelan musician. The other guy, F. Gal Cornejo, owns a streetwear clothing company. I mean, these guys are trying to do something with their lives, escaping the, like, black hole that is Venezuela, and it's, you know, government and its economy trying to do something here.
- [02:49]
Sam Stein
And this. This is on the heels, Tim, of the thing that you. The case that you spotlighted, too, which was an LGBTQ makeup artist. The photos of him were like, he was clearly not a. A gang member.
- [03:00]
Adrian Carrascuelo
And he's then Pink Mafia, maybe.
- [03:03]
Sam Stein
Yes, Pink mafia. But he then finds himself in. In a El Salvadorian prison again because of tattoos.
- [03:12]
Adrian Carrascuelo
Yeah, and others. There was another case yesterday the Miami Herald covered, where in this case, they didn't even come to the border. They did it exactly the right way. They didn't even use the asylum process. They went to a third country, Colombia, applied for refugee status, got vetted, fully vetted. Nobody gets vetted more than someone applying for refugee status. Come to America. Get to America at the airport, look at the tattoos again, and it's like, oh, we're gonna detain you. And. And then they get sent to San Salvador, and they didn't even deport this person. Again, in none of these cases, it's not even right to say they deported them because they get sent back to Venezuela. We've sent them to this prison camp in El Salvador where who the hell knows what's happening to them? And the report that we've been covering from Time magazine, the reporter saw them slapping and physically abusing these men. And so if that's what they're doing in front of the cameras, who the hell knows what is happening in the depths of this prison camp that's been known, known for having human rights violations. It's absolutely, like, unbelievable and astonishing. I mean, like, this. The photo, again, this photo of Neri Alvarado is, to me, just rightly akin to the case that I've been talking about with the makeup artist. I mean, are there gang members that have a rainbow ribbon tattoo for autism awareness? Like, is that a common tattoo for GAG members? I don't really think that violent criminals, like, also, you know, have their little sort of ribbon, you know, activism ribbon. And this thing is ridiculous. If. If they. If they wanted to deport gang members or people or violent criminals or rapists, then like, okay, I, I, I think that they would have.
- [04:54]
Sam Stein
Do it.
- [04:55]
Adrian Carrascuelo
Freaking do it, do it. Yeah, but, like, what? And, and I just, to me, this is just absol, you know, the two other elements to this one. These guys are fleeing communism. So we're about to yell at the Democrats for not speaking out enough. But for Republicans, for Marco Rubio, for somebody whose family fled communism, you would think there would be some ideological sympathy with people fleeing the Maduro regime and coming to this country. And it was like the fundamental element, building block of what America is and about Reaganism. And so the idea that people now are fleeing communism and then we are treating them as if we are the communist autocrats, where you get no due process, you have no rights, and we just send you into a fucking gulag in another country. It is just absolutely enraging and gobsmacking. And I think that to your point about the lack of outrage.
- [05:55]
Sam Stein
Well, I know what, I know what's happening here. I mean, you know what's happening here. They want, the Trump people want you to engage in this because they think they have, like, a real bait and switch here. They get us to get outraged over these individual cases, and then they'll come up like, well, you know, there's some social media posts that you're not even examining where they really did sort of show their colors that they really like the gang.
- [06:16]
Adrian Carrascuelo
What about Lincoln Riley? Or what about, like, what about these three horrible guys? People are tweeting me at this all the time. Like, MAGA people are like, oh, what about these three examples of these people that have like nine criminal convictions and never got deported by Biden? And I'm like, great, Biden should have deported the guy with nine criminal convictions. I don't like that doesn't have anything to do with the basic human rights and the basic American values of protecting.
- [06:42]
Sam Stein
And I guess, and I guess this is what really pisses me off is because I know, and I think we all know they're, they're playing a political game here. Yeah, to them, this is bait. It's not. It's both about deporting as many people as possible, which I think is the ideological foundation, but it's also about fucking bait, because they think that this is a smart issue for them to go and bait the Democrats and anyone else to argue that, no, you can't deport these people unless you vet them, because they think that the public's with them on their side and frankly, honestly, maybe they're right.
- [07:12]
Adrian Carrascuelo
Yeah. I don't know. Is down there, I think right now, like I think today.
- [07:16]
Sam Stein
But I think, I think they're right about the Democrats, honestly, because I've not seen. And you two have talked to them. I've not seen one Democrat actually impassion with passion argue that this is antithetical to American values. You talk to Ruben Gallego when you're out in Arizona. I mean, he's gotten, he's just one election. He just won election. Like, what does he have to lose here?
- [07:40]
Tim Miller
Yeah. You know, Reuben made it clear that the calculation he's making on everything from Lake and Riley to Guantanamo to now the El Salvador notorious prison is, you know, are Democrats fighting on smart ground? And should they fight on higher ground? And so, you know, you're not. If you're, if you're making that argument, you're not talking about due process, you're not talking about the, the rights of these men being completely violated. And so it's just like that's where Gallego is coming from. And to me, what struck out to me about that is that I think every, every decision he makes on immigration over the next few years is going to be through that lens.
- [08:18]
Sam Stein
And also he's going to, he's going to determine a lot of what the party itself does on immigration.
- [08:22]
Tim Miller
Yeah.
- [08:22]
Sam Stein
Because even when I did Arizona, and he's young and story, the folks in.
- [08:28]
Tim Miller
The House, they, they often hear, where's Gallego on this? So he has a lot, a lot of hope.
- [08:33]
Sam Stein
And Tim, you talked to Mark Warner.
- [08:34]
Adrian Carrascuelo
So see, I talked to Mark Warner yesterday mostly about, you know, the, the signal intel breach, since that's his remit. But I asked about this issue at the end, and again, he was, he said it was wrong. You know, he gave a perfunctory statement about being opposed to it. Said he wants the courts to do something. But I interrupted him. Like, the courts can't do anything about somebody that is not an American that is in a San Salvador prison. Like, it's too late. Like, for the example of some of these men, they're now in the custody of El Salvador. They don't have recourse. They're not on US Land, they're not US citizens. So there is no. And there's. For certain people, there's still court cases. So for some of them, though, there's not. And you know, and he was just like, well, you know, then I guess there's protesting and there's. Whatever. It was just, it was very lukewarm. And I think that you could just. And I asked him specifically about Democrats reluctance and like he didn't realize want to engage on it, but you could just tell like that there is not, this is not the hill that they want to die on. And, and I just think that by, I think the opposite is true of debate. Like by, by humanizing the people, by, by giving specific examples of people who are being tortured and tormented against, you know, for, for no fault of their own, and then tying it to what's happening on college campuses. People don't want to live in fear that their friends are gonna be round. And we haven't talked about this tough situation. People aren't gonna wanna live in fear that their friends who are here legally on visas are gonna be rounded up by secret police and fucking hoodies and unmarked cars.
- [10:03]
Sam Stein
Yeah, the Tufts situation. So there you have a student at Tufts who's just walking down the street on her phone and what, four, five, six people come up to her masked, hoodied, put her hands behind her back, take her phone, bring her to a car. I mean, there's people, there's a guy walking the dog in the background, like, what the fuck? And this student, as far as I can tell, according to the. Reporting the crime and put that in air quotes, is that she once wrote an op ed praising or saying, support the Palestinian cause and divest from Israel. I mean, what the hell is going on?
- [10:43]
Adrian Carrascuelo
Is that right?
- [10:44]
Sam Stein
I think that's it. I think that's all they've had on her so far. Now again, I'm sure the DHS Spocks will have some sort of tweet saying, you know, we monitored some social media posts and maybe it's true, but there are processes that cannot involve just hooded undercover ICE agents abducting you from the street and then your lawyer not knowing where the hell you are. We have to have a better system than that. And you know, what point of personal privilege. But like, it gets me so pissed off because all these free speech absolutists, they all saddled up to Trump right after the election saying, ah, you know, finally someone who protects free speech and, you know, the ability for people on campus to, you know, speak their mind and all this stuff. And it's like, that's such horseshit. Where are they? Honestly, where the fuck are they?
- [11:34]
Adrian Carrascuelo
Zuck, Zuck, Zuck. What was free speech for Zuck? He was like, oh, I just don't want to get regulated. That was free speech.
- [11:39]
Sam Stein
That was free speech.
- [11:40]
Adrian Carrascuelo
I don't know. And the, the thing is, Again, what is this person a danger? Like, I thought that the point. No, I thought that the point of this whole thing was that, oh, we're going to prioritize the criminals, you know, and it's like, how's that process going, Tom Homan? You know, because the deportation total numbers, if you look at them, are not really any different than during the Biden administration. For good, for ill or good, you know, like, but like, the total numbers are not up. There's not been a mass deportation so far. What we've had is them doing these kind of made for TV efforts to target people that they think that they will get political advantage of because they have some ideological valence, because they want to go after the campus protesters because of Israel, they want to go after the gang members because of Trenda Aragua, Venezuelans because of Trenda Aragua. So, I mean, and they're doing so very. At, like, haphazardly would be the fucking nicest way you could put it.
- [12:41]
Sam Stein
The nicest way to do it. Adrian, how. I just. Honestly, how are the numbers? Like, is Tim right? Is it sort of on par with where Biden was?
- [12:50]
Tim Miller
Yeah, I think there's been a lot of talk about that, where the Trump numbers, I think they started out at higher levels and they sort of have leveled off. We've heard a lot about, you know, these sort of Stephen Miller driven quotas, you know, where they want the. Each field, each ICE field office to be getting certain arrests per day. I think, like, I'm with you, Sam. Watching that Tufts video, it was like, horrifying. Can you imagine, like, being a woman who's being surrounded by all these dudes in masks who are like, I'm coming with you. And she's like, can I call the police? And they said, we are the police. So first of all, that's horrifying. But again, it, like the canceling of green cards, the canceling of legal status, it goes along.
- [13:27]
Sam Stein
I think it's.
- [13:28]
Tim Miller
It's tied in many ways, like Tim was saying, to the use of the Alien Enemies act, where an immigration lawyer told me, under what legal basis are you okay? Alien Enemies act says you can kick them out of the country. Under what legal basis does it say you can disappear them to a. To a prison for forced labor in another country? So these are the things where it's like, if no one speaks up, if Democrats don't speak up, then this is. This allows the Trump administration to go further and further each time.
- [13:53]
Sam Stein
Let me just end with this. Like, there's a. There's a real cost to this one. If you're an international student, why the hell would you want to come to the United States and study at our universities right now? Honestly, why would you do that? We're not going to attract anyone to come over here now. Maybe that's what they want. So maybe they don't view that as a cost. But two is the communities that are being destroyed by the indiscriminate targeting of people based on tattoos is evident. And I just want to note, going back to the Morning of Mother Jones piece, Arturo Suarez, the Venezuelan musician who was caught in the dragnet, he has a kid, he has a wife. They are now left at home. They have no idea where the husband and father are. They were able to ascertain that he was in El Salvador because they saw the snuff film and they recognized him. I don't know how because his head is shaved and it's down. That's how they saw him.
- [14:49]
Adrian Carrascuelo
And that picture, that's just the picture again, it, like, looks like Abu Ghraib. The picture of these humanizing.
- [14:56]
Sam Stein
It's. They're all in, like, you know, white shirts and underwear and their shaved heads, and they're chained and they're sitting on top of each other. It's dehumanizing. Imagine just seeing your husband or your father like that randomly the next day, not knowing where he is. I mean, the. The emotional trauma that that would cause, the profound developmental trauma it's going to cause the kid. We need to recognize that, too. This is all levels of messed up, and that's why we're talking about it. Anyways, Adrian, Tim, appreciate it. Sorry I had to get that one off my chest. Thank you for doing this. Thank you for tuning to the feed. Be in touch.