Attorney General Pam Bondi is celebrating a new milestone in her efforts to deport men accused of having too many tattoos. Bondi said during a press briefing Friday that the Trump administration has officially arrested 2,711 accused Tren de Aragua members since President Donald Trump took office.
“You should all feel safer now that President Trump can deport all of these gangs and not one district court judge can think they are an emperor over this administration and his executive powers and why the people of the U.S. elected him,” she said to reporters.
Bondi seems to be referring to the efforts of judges like James Boasberg, who has butted heads with the administration on more than one occasion in recent months. Boasberg was at the forefront of the battle between the Department of Justice and those seeking the release of the 252 Venezuelan men who were taken from the U.S. and imprisoned in an El Salvador terrorist facility, known as CECOT, without any due process.
“Perhaps the President lawfully invoked the Alien Enemies Act,” Boasberg wrote in a court filing earlier this month, citing the act Trump used to rush the Venezuelan men into their cells. “Perhaps, moreover, Defendants are correct that Plaintiffs are gang members.”
Continuing, he said, “But—and this is the critical point—there is simply no way to know for sure, as the CECOT Plaintiffs never had any opportunity to challenge the Government’s say-so.”
Boasberg ruled that these imprisoned men should have a means to prove their innocence while behind bars before they were deported. However, the U.S. government, and El Salvador, have maintained that neither of them have any way of carrying out their release. In other words, both countries are denying any accountability for the men they’ve abandoned behind bars.
But as Bondi is tossing around confetti for all of these arrests, it seems as if the only public-facing “proof” of these men’s gang involvement is their tattoos.
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For many of them, like 24-year-old Widmer Josneyder Agelviz Sanguino who is currently behind bars in CECOT, they have no past criminal record in this or any other country. However, Homeland Security claims that they have evidence that they can’t share due to national security reasons.
Only one man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, has made it out of CECOT since being placed there by the Trump administration. And despite being able to dodge America’s attempts at labelling him as a dangerous terrorist, they’re now trying him in the U.S. for human smuggling charges. His court case is ongoing and the DOJ has said they will try to deport him again. Abrego Garcia has become a symbol of these unlawful deportations, with Trump pointing out his guilt with doctored images of his tattoos.
For the rest of the men accused of being Tren de Aragua members, many family members are advocating for their innocence around the world. While they cannot speak for themselves from behind bars, supporters are fighting for their stories to be told.