Trump’s other deportations: Automatic processes and secret expulsions of grandmothers

The image of a line of prisoners with shaved heads and white jumpsuits, herded like cattle into a hangar-like Salvadoran prison, has become a symbol of the Donald Trump administration’s hard-line immigration agenda. The detainees — Venezuelans allegedly tied to the Tren de Aragua criminal gang — embody the president’s determination to purge the U.S. of foreigners who are being essentially convicted without evidence or due process.

In addition to fueling concerns of a constitutional crisis by defying a judge’s orders blocking their expulsion, this image has deepened the criminalization of the most vulnerable group facing deportation: Venezuelans. This community has been without consular assistance since Caracas and Washington severed diplomatic ties in December 2018, and they also lack the benefits derived from being long-time residents, since they arrived in the country recently. Many question whether Washington would have dared to stage the collective expulsion of Mexicans — the largest community of potential deportees — in the same way.

“If it were because of the tattoos, I’d be the number one candidate for deportation,” jokes Fernando (not his real name), pointing to the numerous tattoos crawling up his neck, the typical markings associated with criminals. Fernando volunteers at Aid for Life, one of the NGOs assisting the thousands of fellow Venezuelans who, like him, have arrived in New York since spring 2022. At their Soho office, lawyers such as Ana Maldonado-Alfonzo work to ensure that fellow Venezuelans in the process of regularizing their status (through asylum applications or as beneficiaries of Temporary Protected Status, or TPS), don’t miss a single immigration hearing — failure to appear automatically results in a deportation order.

Because, in addition to high-profile expulsions like the one mentioned above — which Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has capitalized on — another type of threat looms over those who, out of fear, negligence, or force majeure, forget to appear before a judge.

“People are terrified of going out, but if they don’t show up, a deportation order is automatically issued, and it’s not easy to stop,” explains Maldonado-Alfonzo. “To reopen the case, you have to justify the failure to appear, but how do you justify fear? If the reason was illness, you need to provide a medical report; sometimes they even have another appointment at the same time with ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], and in fact, they shouldn’t miss either one, but even that can be documented…But what about fear?”

Sometimes, it’s simply a matter of not understanding the summons, which is in English.

Trump has been fixated with Venezuelans since the tragic murder of nursing student Laken Riley in Georgia in 2024, at the hands of an undocumented immigrant who was later sentenced to life in prison. In response, Congress passed a law in January named after the victim, which mandates the deportation of undocumented immigrants with criminal records. It was the first law signed by Trump in his second term, and it led to the controversial expulsion plans to Guantanamo Bay. However, the flights to El Salvador are based on an outdated law, the so-called Enemy Aliens Act of 1798, which was invoked for the first time in peacetime to justify the repatriation of 238 alleged gang members.

“It’s a terrible message for the U.S. and the world, because they are being persecuted without evidence,” explains Jesús Aguais, director of Aid for Life, the immigration branch of Aid for Aids, a long-standing NGO that also provides free antiretrovirals to numerous Latin American countries. “The United States has known how to deal with criminal gangs throughout its history; every mass migration has brought criminals with it. There are also criminals among Venezuelans, but the U.S. justice system has the capacity to make them pay for their crimes through due process [a fair trial].”

“Crime is prosecuted through a process like the one that convicted the killer of the Georgia student. What you can’t do is persecute an entire population, who are afraid even to go out and look for work. Many are being rejected for being Venezuelan,” adds Aguais, who further laments that people are being deported to Venezuela, “as if it were a normal country, with guarantees.”

According to Aguais, an undetermined number of Venezuelans have been deported, “including two former military personnel who were detained” upon landing. “Indiscriminately deporting Venezuelans to Venezuela is condemning them to disappear. Now, here, the enemy is the migrant; every Venezuelan with a tattoo is the enemy, but the real enemy is the Maduro regime. If here in the U.S. we have to believe whatever the White House says without proof, in Venezuela it’s even worse.”

Juan (not his real name), 49, a merchant in Caracas, hasn’t ventured out to look for day labor in weeks. “There’s a real sense of fear, and although no one in my circle has been deported, and what we know comes from what we see on social media, we all feel the threat, even in the shelter. I have TPS, but I’ve applied for asylum because I don’t trust that TPS will protect me,” he explains, adding that he left Venezuela after refusing to pay a bribe demanded by the Maduro government.

What’s more, according to Maldonado-Alfonzo, “the most recent TPS [approved by president Joe Biden in 2023] is about to expire, although the 2021 one is supposed to remain in effect.”

Deportation by absence

“Trump has added even more weight to the heavy burden we, the 600,000 Venezuelans in the U.S., are carrying by criminalizing the entire community,” says Niurka Meléndez, head of the organization Venezuelans and Immigrants Aid (VIA). While she hasn’t heard of any deportations within her own circle, she has heard from her peers in Houston.

“There must undoubtedly be a small group of criminals, no one denies that, but that doesn’t justify criminalizing hundreds of thousands with this hate speech from the administration. Hatred of immigrants, contempt, and sweeping generalizations put us all in the same box,” she says.

With respect to the Venezuelans deported to El Salvador last week, of the 300 cases she has been able to personally review, “10 were criminals. They should be expelled, their protections removed, but not the other 290.”

In any case, Meléndez adds, the administrative concept of “deportation in absentia” — that is, for abandoning the regularization process — existed before Trump (just like deportations, which are common). “Many people didn’t show up [for their hearing] because they didn’t have a lawyer, because they changed their address, others due to negligence, partly because they were confident that nothing would happen. But when we learned the election results, everyone started moving. The message from the lawyers is clear: don’t miss a hearing.” However, if the foreigner hasn’t received a summons, Meléndez advises, “don’t go to court or ICE. If you’ve never registered anywhere, neither at the border nor where you live, don’t go anywhere.”

Attorney Maldonado-Alfonzo hasn’t heard of any deportations in her community since Trump returned to the White House, although she has heard of several cases in previous years. “People who showed up for their ICE appointment were detained, and we didn’t have time to do anything because they were deported immediately — they were gone in a minute. It happened to me with a Peruvian young man last year: by the time I was informed of his detention, he had already disappeared from the radar.” Information on deportees is automatically removed from ICE’s online locator, as was the case with those sent to El Salvador.

Trump’s migrant hunt is far from meeting its target numbers — in fact, daily ICE raid figures show only a few individuals have been arrested — and that’s why Washington has stepped up its efforts, resorting to two obscure laws that are sending shockwaves through the country and Latin America: the aforementioned 1798 law and the 1953 Immigration and Nationality Act.

These laws underpin some of the most politically motivated detentions, such as that of pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, who was arrested for participating in protests against the Gaza war on the Columbia campus and declared himself a political prisoner. In his case, judicial intervention has at least managed to halt his deportation, which Washington claims is due to the “risk to national security” that he and other detainees allegedly pose.

The ‘disappearance’ of a Mexican grandmother

But the threat posed by a Mexican grandmother from New Jersey, recently detained while returning from shopping, is beyond comprehension, laments Ellen Whitt, a volunteer with the New Jersey Deportation and Immigration Response Team (DIRE), which answers calls 24 hours a day. “If someone calls because they see ICE agents at their door, members of our rapid response team, which totals 50 people, come to check on what’s happening, to help the family if ICE is interrogating someone or has already taken them.”

Whitt says calls have spiked exponentially since Trump returned to the White House, with most coming from Mexicans and Venezuelans, followed by Hondurans and Guatemalans. “We had the case of a grandmother,” she says. “ICE came to her house and disconnected the security cameras at the entrance so the arrest wouldn’t be recorded. They arrived, she opened the door, and unfortunately, they took her away, after 30 years living here.” She was Mexican. “I myself spoke to the family the night it happened to try to locate her. She had been transferred to Louisiana for no reason.”

Louisiana is where detention centers — precursors to deportation — “are often much worse.” Political prisoner Khalil remains detained there, although a judge has requested his return to New York because his wife is about to give birth.

Whitt paints a grim, disturbing picture. “Trump is using this as a major opportunity to implement his extremely draconian measures,” she says. “This is demonstrated by how they’re being deported, sent to a prison that’s a black hole with completely inhumane conditions. It’s a test to try to erode people’s rights, their right to due process, to convince Americans that these are their enemies, so we can do whatever we want to them. And eventually, they’ll move on to the next group, sending all kinds of people to Guantanamo, or to third countries… even Iranians facing execution in their own country."

“It’s a new chapter in American history,” Whitt continues. “There have always been deportations, and it’s always been terrible. But now they’re trying things they’ve never tried before, that’s the difference. Using the Alien and Sedition Act to try to deport people who they simply say are terrorists because of their views [like campus activists], or simply labeling you a gang member because they think a tattoo of yours is a gang symbol… and they’re doing it on a massive scale. There, you have no resources to fight back.”

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