Jonathan P. Baird

During the President George W. Bush war on terror years, the term “black site” entered the American lexicon. Black sites were clandestine detention centers around the world where prisoners were held and tortured. The people taken to these secret locations were held incommunicado. They had no access to lawyers or any legal protection.

For almost twenty years, mention of black sites disappeared from our public life but under the Trump administration, they are back. The mega-prison in El Salvador where the Venezuelan migrants were taken is a black site. It is a well-known hellhole, recognized for slave labor, torture and the worst cruelty.

Prisoners have no access to the telephone, the internet or any means of communication with the outside world. No one, including lawyers, can reach these prisoners. Because they have had no legal process, they are held indefinitely. They are entirely at the mercy of their jailers.

Part of the dehumanization process is shaving the prisoners’ heads, reducing any individuality like they were prisoners at Auschwitz. The infamous prison picture of the DHS Secretary Kristi Noem showcased that reduction. In this process the prisoners lose their status as human beings. They become an undifferentiated mass who can be labeled terrorists, dismissed and forgotten.

This is our American gulag. Sending Venezuelan migrants to such a fate without any due process or hearing reflects a ramped-up lawlessness worthy of Kafka.

The case of a Maryland man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was removed to El Salvador, perfectly illustrates the wrongfulness of black sites. The government mistakenly deported Abrego Garcia to the notorious prison, CECOT, in El Salvador. An immigration judge had previously granted Abrego Garcia withholding of removal from the United States to El Salvador. Ironically. Abrego Garcia left El Salvador to escape a gang that was extorting his family’s business. He faced death threats. The immigration judge was concerned Abrego Garcia might be tortured if returned to El Salvador.

Abrego Garcia made it to the U.S. in 2011. He moved to Maryland where he worked in construction. He met his future wife, an American citizen, and they started a family. In March 2019, he went to a Home Depot looking for day labor. The police picked him up and turned him over to ICE. They asked him if he was a gang member and he denied he was.

For the next six months, federal agents sought to deport Abrego Garcia, saying he belonged to MS-13, a street gang. In court proceedings, the government produced the evidence they had compiled to prove Abrego Garcia was a gang member. They had an accusation from an uncorroborated confidential informant. They also argued that at the time of his arrest, Abrego Garcia was wearing a Chicago Bulls hat which the agents said was proof of gang affiliation.

In October 2019, the immigration judge found the evidence was insufficient and ruled that Abrego Garcia could not be deported to El Salvador. For the next six years, he worked as a sheet metal worker and he started taking college courses at the University of Maryland. He and his wife had a third child. Between 2019-2025, he was never accused of or charged with any crime.

On March 12, everything changed. After finishing his shift at work and picking up his youngest child from his grandmother’s house, immigration agents stopped him on the way home. They told him he no longer had protected status in the U.S.. They said his wife had to be there in ten minutes or his five year old would be put in child protective custody. His wife arrived in time to see her husband handcuffed and taken away.

ICE shuffled Abrego Garcia around to different detention centers but for the first two days he was able to call his wife. Then the calls stopped and his whereabouts were unknown. It turned out he was on the third plane that sent the Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador even though there was a court order that precluded that. The plane Abrego Garcia was stuffed into was one of the planes Federal Judge James Boasberg had ordered to turn around. In bad faith, the government disregarded the court order.

There were actually two court orders which should have prevented Abrego Garcia’s removal to El Salvador, the immigration judge’s 2019 order and Judge Boasberg’s order. Also, there is a class action currently in effect which precludes deportation to a third party country without notice and a meaningful opportunity to argue that such a deportation would jeopardize personal safety. Although Abrego Garcia is from El Salvador, he never got notice and never had a chance to argue.

The Trump administration admitted in court that Abrego Garcia’s presence on the plane to El Salvador was an “administrative error” but then it took the position that it could do nothing to return him to the U.S. The same government that placed DHS Secretary Noem inside CECOT for a photo op and wheeled and dealed with El Salvador’s president to receive the prisoners could do nothing to rectify Abrego Garcia’s situation. Even worse, without any evidence, Vice President Vance and Press Secretary Leavitt have doubled down on the idea Abrego Garcia was a gang member.

A Maryland federal court judge, Paula Xinis, has ordered that the Trump administration must return Abrego Garcia by midnight on April 7. But at the time of this writing, the government told an appeals court that the federal judge didn’t have the authority to order the Trump administration to return the man they wrongly sent to El Salvador. They were not willing to ask El Salvador to return him even though the U.S. has enormous leverage over El Salvador.

Left out of the government argument is the fact they never appealed in 2019 when the immigration judge granted withholding of removal. They could have appealed and that was frequently done in other cases during the first Trump administration when Jeff Sessions was Attorney General.

Removal to a black site is un-American and entirely offensive to any notion of due process. The Trump administration appears to believe it is fine to label someone a terrorist and based on the label, deprive them of all rights, without needing to prove anything. That is what they are doing to all the Venezualans sent to El Salvador.

Black sites are characteristic of fascist regimes, not democracies. Everyone who cares about the rule of law must push back hard on the Trump administration’s lawlessness. If they can disregard court orders, that practice could become the norm. What happens to Abrego Garcia is of great concern to all Americans.