Judge to Trump: ‘Nazis got better treatment under Alien Enemies Act’

Immigrants deported from the U.S. were sent to El Salvador, where the Trump-supporting government abused and humiliated them. The Appeals Court Judge condemned the action, saying that immigrants sent out of the U.S. are entitled to individual hearings. These immigrants were not even told where they were going before they ended up jailed in El Salvador. | El Salvador Presidential Press Office via AP

U.S. Circuit Court Judge Patricia Millett ripped Trump lawyers yesterday as they tried to get the Appeals Court to lift a block on rushed and illegal deportations under the centuries-old Alien Enemies Act.

The administration shipped planes full of immigrants out of the country and into the Central American country of El Salvador. The president of El Salvador is a Trump-supporting fake “populist” garnering support for himself by portraying his government as committed to “cleaning up corruption” in his country.

Immigrants sent to his government by Trump are paraded in public as they are being mistreated and denied even basic medical and other needed care. Some have already fallen ill and are denied needed drugs like insulin and other heart medications.

They were not notified about where they were going and were not provided with any type of due process.

“There were planeloads of people. There were no procedures in place to notify people. Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act than has happened here,” U.S. Circuit Judge Patricia Millett said. Her strong words were heard live on national television yesterday afternoon.

President Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act earlier this month, and within hours deported more than 200 migrants to El Salvador, where the government happily accepted them in order to publicly abuse them and showcase its alleged policy of favoring international law and order.

The Trump Justice Department’s is struggling to get judges to allow its illegal and unconstitutional processes.

At a meeting on immigration rights in Chicago on Sunday the Rev. Sandra Castillo, who leads the immigration taskforce of the Episcopal Church Diocese of Chicago, condemned the Trump administration’s policy of shipping immigrants out of the country without due process. “Every one of the immigrants is entitled to their own individualized hearing,” she told People’s World, “and they cannot be deported without a court order or when they have any type of action pending on their case. That includes,” she noted, “people who simply have applied for asylum but have not yet heard back from the courts.”

Judge Millett’s comments were made when she heard arguments regarding an earlier decision by U.S. District Judge James Boasberg temporarily blocking the administration form invoking the centuries-old law to get around due process requirements.

Trump began a rant calling for impeachment of Judge Boasberg after his ruling, a rant that was rebuked by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.

Relatives of one of the immigrants shipped by Trump to El Salvador filed a lawsuit in Maryland yesterday, noting that he is not, as charged by the Trump administration, a member of a Venezuelan gang.

Immigration rights activists and leaders are warning that the deportations without due process are only one of the illegal policies carried out by the Trump Department of Justice.

Rev. Primo Racimo, pastor of St. Margaret of Scotland Episcopal Church on Chicago’s South Side, noted that green card holders who recently visited family in the Philippines, for example, were grabbed by government agents at the locations at which they re-entered the United States and sent to immigrant detention centers where they are currently imprisoned.

“We are telling all immigrants, including people with green cards, not to leave the country, not to give the administration a chance to do anything illegal,” Rev. Castillo said.

The immigration task force she runs advises people not to open their doors to ICE agents because doing so green lights their moves to apprehend and illegally deport people.

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CONTRIBUTOR

John Wojcik

John Wojcik is Editor-in-Chief of People's World. He joined the staff as Labor Editor in May 2007 after working as a union meat cutter in northern New Jersey. There, he served as a shop steward and a member of a UFCW contract negotiating committee. In the 1970s and '80s, he was a political action reporter for the Daily World, this newspaper's predecessor, and was active in electoral politics in Brooklyn, New York.