The Reason the Trump Administration Is So Obsessed With Deporting This One Man

Donald Trump won the presidency in part on promises to deport immigrants who have criminal records and lack legal status. But his earliest executive orders—trying to undo birthright citizenship, suspending critical refugee programs—made clear he wants to attack immigrants with legal status too. In our series Who Gets to Be American This Week?, we’ll track the Trump administration’s attempts to exclude an ever-growing number of people from the American experiment.^[1]

Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda has been supercharged at every turn, through a complicit Congress^[2] and an obedient Cabinet^[3]. This week it was the U.S. Supreme Court’s turn. On Monday, the court issued a historic decision with little to no explanation that enables the federal government to racially profile Latino residents of the U.S. under the guise of immigration enforcement. Though this decision was speaking directly to the Trump administration’s use of federal agents in Los Angeles, it should also apply to other cities the president is keen on militarizing—this week it’s Chicago; next week it could be another city.

The Supreme Court’s decision came on the heels of the Trump administration announcing a new twist to its legal battle with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who it initially admitted was deported to El Salvador’s megaprison by mistake. Abrego Garcia now faces deportation to Eswatini, Africa, the third attempt in recent weeks by the federal government to find a country for his removal.

Here’s the immigration news we’re keeping an eye on this week:

The Supreme Court Allows Immigration Officers to Racially Profile Americans

On Monday, the Supreme Court issued a devastating 6–3 decision^[4]: The Trump administration can racially profile immigrants as it seeks to meet the president’s mass deportation agenda. Though this ruling was in response to a lawsuit out of California, it will undoubtedly have an impact across the country as the president seeks to deploy more National Guard troops to American cities. “It’s a devastating decision that has made immigrant communities even more fearful,” Elora Mukherjee, clinical law professor at Columbia University and director of the school’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, told me. “The decision will affect the daily lives of immigrants, including those who have lawful status, and U.S. citizens.”

When the president first deployed National Guard troops to Los Angeles back in June, disturbing stories quickly emerged of masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers aggressively^[5] pursuing^[6] people who they alleged, with little to no evidence, were here without legal status. A group of California residents filed a lawsuit to stop the administration, accusing it of racial profiling. A judge agreed to issue an injunction, with explicit instructions for ICE not to pursue anyone based on four factors: “appearing” Hispanic, speaking Spanish or English with an accent, working a specific job, and appearing in a place where immigrants “are known to gather.”

On Monday, the Supreme Court lifted that injunction, without providing any explanation for its decision, which it was able to do since this case was taken up on its shadow docket. However, Justice Brett Kavanaugh did put out a concurring opinion in which he said ethnicity is a “relevant factor” for determining who is in the U.S. unlawfully—the Fourth Amendment^[7] only allows law enforcement to execute searches and seizures with “probable cause,” and it appears that SCOTUS just added race to that list. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor explained, in practice this decision will mean Latino people will feel the need to carry any and all legal documentation whenever they leave home in order to be able to prove “they deserve to walk freely” and not be detained by ICE.

The Trump administration has insisted it is only going after immigrants with criminal histories, but the Los Angeles Times analyzed^[8] ICE data and found that in June, of the roughly 2,000 people arrested by federal agents in California, nearly half were Mexican nationals. About 68 percent did not have any criminal convictions and 57 percent had never been charged with a crime. The Supreme Court’s decision gives federal agents impunity to continue their racialized targeting of Latino residents in California right as the president threatens^[9] Chicago with a similar mass deportation showdown, actively works to remove legal protections^[10] from over 1 million immigrants from Haiti and Venezuela, and creates an entirely new police force^[11] for immigration enforcement.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia Gets a New Threatened Deportation Destination

The legal battle over the Maryland father’s deportation continued this week with the Trump administration now saying it wants to deport Abrego Garcia to Eswatini, a small country on the eastern edge of South Africa. This would be the third country the federal government has floated as a possibility for Abrego Garcia’s removal over the past month, while his legal team simultaneously works an asylum case to keep him in the U.S. with his family.

In an email from an ICE official, viewed by CBS News^[12], the U.S. government contended that because Abrego Garcia expressed credible fear of persecution if returned to his home country of El Salvador and is under a 2019 protection order, they now intend to remove him to Eswatini. About three weeks ago, the federal government had offered Abrego Garcia a plea deal where he could be deported to Costa Rica—a generally safe, Spanish-speaking country—but only if he pleaded guilty to a human smuggling charge, part of the Department of Justice’s criminal indictment^[13]. He rejected that offer, as Abrego Garcia has pleaded not guilty to all charges. In response, the federal government said Abrego Garcia faced deportation to Uganda. His attorneys immediately filed a lawsuit to protect his due process rights as his deportation case unfolds.

This week, the government changed its tune with its Eswatini removal plan. Despite admitting in court that the federal government mistakenly swept up the Maryland man to El Savador’s megaprison back in March, during one of its first big mass deportation efforts, it took about four months to bring Abrego Garcia back to the U.S., as the government dragged its feet to adhere to a Supreme Court order^[14]. And while Abrego Garcia sat imprisoned in El Salvador, the DOJ produced a criminal indictment^[15] with charges stemming from a 2022 traffic stop that at the time did not result in any legal action. By the time he was flown back to the U.S., Abrego Garcia was immediately placed in pretrial detention.

By August, Abrego Garcia was briefly released, only to be detained again after showing up to a mandated immigration hearing in Baltimore. Abrego Garcia’s defense team has decided to try to secure asylum, as it would grant him a green card and a path to citizenship. However, it is a risky move, as Abrego Garcia, who first came to the U.S. from El Salvador in 2012, already tried to request asylum but was rejected. In 2019, a judge ruled he missed the one-year deadline to apply, but accepted his credible fear of persecution by local gangs in El Salvador and issued a removal protection order that prevented the federal government from deporting him to his home country. Since then, Abrego Garcia had been given work permits, married a U.S. citizen, and established a family in Maryland.

Now, Abrego Garcia’s circumstances have drastically shifted, as his lawyers argue that since he technically left the U.S. back in March and has now reentered, the one-year asylum window should restart. If a judge agrees, he could be given a green card and a path to citizenship, but if the application is again rejected^[16], that 2019 protection order would be void and the federal government could immediately deport him back to El Salvador.

ICE Conducts One of Its Largest Immigration Raids in Georgia 

Last week, federal agents raided a Hyundai Motor Company battery plant that was under construction in a quiet, rural town of the Peach State, arresting nearly 500 people, most of whom were South Korean nationals. The president claimed^[17] they “were here illegally,” while an attorney for four of the South Koreans detained said they were legally working in the U.S. under the B-1 business visitor visa program^[18].

“The vast majority of the individuals that were detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that were South Korean were either there as engineers or were involved in after-sales service and installation,” Charles Kuck, the immigration attorney, told the Associated Press^[24]. They were only scheduled to be in the U.S. for a couple of weeks, a common practice among foreign companies who operate factories here. Just a few weeks ago, South Korea’s president met with Trump^[25] in the Oval Office to secure a trade deal that included a $350 billion promise for South Korean investments within the U.S. The Georgia Hyundai plant^[26] is a $5.5 billion manufacturing project that was expected to produce about 8,000 jobs.

Homeland Security claimed the factory raid came after the agency secured a federal search warrant, as the Hyundai plant is the subject of an active, ongoing criminal investigation over allegations of unlawful employment practices. It accused those arrested of working in violation of their visas or legal status. South Korea quickly came to the defense of its nationals, announcing it was sending a chartered plane to bring them back home; however, it’s still working through negotiations with the U.S. to secure the release of the Hyundai plant workers.^[27][28]

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