Funny Events of the "Woke" world

[Silvanus]

Again, I'm not entertaining your analysis of the law. If you are right, surely a journalist and/or lawyer has stated this in an article already. Provide said article.

It is not "analysis" to say the law forbids this. It is black and white, explicitly against those provisions. Read. Them.

If you absolutely must have lawyers telling you what the law says rather than reading it yourself, then here. Numerous articles calling it illegal have already been provided, but you can have yet another one to ignore.

 

[Trunkage]

So living in the US for 8 years and then filing an asylum claim is merely just undocumented vs illegal...?

Why would 8 years matter? Or 20?
Did he do something illegal? Break a law?
Or, and I'll even let you do a non illegal one, did he get benefits from the government?

 

[Trunkage]

It is not "analysis" to say the law forbids this. It is black and white, explicitly against those provisions. Read. Them.

If you absolutely must have lawyers telling you what the law says rather than reading it yourself, then here. Numerous articles calling it illegal have already been provided, but you can have yet another one to ignore.

I don't know if Phoenix understands the term read

This is not surprising. He didn't do any research over covid or mask or quarantines. Why would anyone expect him to do it here?

 

[Phoenixmgs]

That is not what happened. That's just the mischaracterization you're being fed that you've been too lazy to vet. The judge never found Garcia’s alleged gang membership to be credible. Quite the opposite. The only “evidence” ICE had was a confidential informant and a Chicago Bulls hoodie—something the judge explicitly called out as flimsy. It was enough to deny bond before trial, not to prove affiliation. That denial of bond is now being dishonestly repackaged as a finding of guilt—by people who either don’t understand the difference or are hoping you don’t.

The bond ruling was not that the evidence showed that he was a gang member, but that the accusation was serious enough to justify keeping him detained while his case played out. And mind you, in immigration bond hearings, the burden of proof is actually on the detainee to show they’re not a danger to the community. That means even a vague or uncorroborated allegation (such as in this case) can be enough to deny bond, especially when it involves gang claims. What you are referring to was based solely on the bond determination, not on a finding of gang membership. The ruling you're referencing was not a judicial finding that he was in a gang, but rather a decision that he had not met the high pre-trial evidential burden required to be released from detention before presenting his case in the hearing. Put simply and practically speaking, in immigration court, “we believe he’s in a gang” is often all it takes to keep someone detained pre-hearing. So his denial of bond does not hold any evidentiary weight, and it certainly is not accurate to treat it - as you have - as the claim being proven in court.

And for goodness sake, "even though the rest of his family were not targeted by the gang"? Can you make it any more obvious that you haven't read up on the case?

Let's review:
The gang was extorting the family business, threatening Kilmar, his older brother (Cesar), and the family in general. The gang threatened to press Cesar into membership. The family kept hiding Cesar and eventually sent him to the US once the gang escalated the threat to murdering him. This prompted the gang to switch targets to Kilmar, who was then 12 years old.

They continued to extort the family and threatened to kill Kilmar, The family moved to a nearby town in hopes of getting out of the gang's sights, but members of the gang found them and renewed their threats and extortions, including threats to rape Kilmar's sisters. The family closed their business and moved again to another nearby town (about 15 minutes away), and eventually sent Kilmar to the US for his protection. The gang is still harassing the family, despite them moving again.

This doesn't even take much digging to find! It's laid out in the memorandum of decision and order!

And once again, it was Garcia, not his accusers, that the court found credible. Let me quote the ruling:

"The Respondent provided credible responses to the questions asked. His testimony was internally consistent, externally consistent with his asylum application order and other documents, and appeared free of embellishment. Further, he provided substantial documentation buttressing his claims. Included in his evidence were several affidavits from family members that described the family's pupusa business, and threats by Barrio 18 to various family members - in particular the Respondent - over the years. The court finds the Respondent credible."

It further goes on to say that "the facts here show that the Barrio 18 gang continues to threaten and harass the Abrego Family over these several years, and does so even though the family has moved three times".

And let me reemphasize something. When it comes to the accusation of gang membership, Kilmar is innocent until proven guilty, and the accusations against him didn't even come close to meeting the preponderance of evidence, much less overcoming reasonable doubt.

Moreover, for Kilmar's application of asylum, he bore the burden of proof. And the court found that he met it. It's not a simple matter of him just spinning together a story, as you dishonestly suggest, and the courts simply nodding their heads in agreement. Hell, immigration courts are famously hostile to asylum seekers and highly deferential to immigration officials, so your insinuation is a special kind of absurd. This is not something he could simply bluff. He had to show the court that his story was well-evidenced, and the record shows that it was.

You’ve also wildly misrepresented the legal process. Garcia didn't "drop" an appeal. There was no separate appeal. There was one continuous case. The gang allegation and asylum claim were part of the same proceeding, as anyone who’s read even a summary of the case would know. For bonus points, this is where the actual lack of appeal comes in, but it was ICE and the government that decided not to try and appeal when the court ruled in Garcia's favor. And now, six years later, they're just flat-out lying to people like yourself that the ruling went the other way.

Again, you clearly have not familiarized yourself with even the most basic facts of the story, and are making no effort to rectify that.

You've been repeatedly provided with more data and sources to develop an informed opinion, but here you are, still making the objectively false argument that the courts concluded he was an MS-13 member, because you never bothered to read any deeper than the Trump administration's talking points and your own personal incredulity. You aren't even trying to learn the facts of the case, you're just scrambling to dismiss the ones that don't fit the conclusion you want to believe.

It is more than clear that you don't have enough interest in the topic to even look into the data points shoved in your face in this very discussion, much less do any independent research. Indeed, you've consistently made a point of flat out ignoring it even when it's handed to you. Hell, as recently as your last few posts, you demonstrated both your total disinterest in the topic and stubborn unwillingness to learn by claiming - in response to being provided with links to domestic and international law on immigration and refugee treatment - that you had been supplied with "no proof that these are protected immigrants that legally can't be deported" because your ctrl+f search didn't find the word "protected". That is embarrassingly lazy for someone trying so hard to pretend to be informed. Someone who's smart in their bluff reads up on the subject between posts and acts like they knew it all along. But you are pointedly and openly refusing to do even that much - making it abundantly clear that you're not only uninformed, but you're looking for an excuse to stay that way.

So, once again, why do you insist on wasting everyone's time with the pretense? You've consistently made it clear you’re not arguing from evidence, you’re reacting out of ego. When the actual evidence was offered you got offended that it contradicted you. But rather than doing the mature thing - engaging with and learning from the correction - you’ve been throwing a tantrum ever since. And everyone can see it, no matter how much you try to bluff otherwise.

I never claimed that Garcia was a convicted gang member (you've yet to disprove anything I've said or any of my info from Amber Duke via Free Media). I said it's more likely than not based on the evidence that he is. Funny thing your article left out was that Garcia was at the Home Depot with not just gang members of MS13 but high ranking gang members of MS13. Also, again not included in the article, was that the informant not only said Garcia was a gang member but also gave his nickname and rank in the gang.

Again, 2 courts found the evidence credible; from your own source:

Kessler cast doubt on law enforcement’s reliance on "clothing as an indication of gang affiliation," but she found "the fact that a ‘past, proven, and reliable source of information’ verified the Respondent’s gang membership."

When Kessler’s ruling was appealed, it was upheld.

"We adopt and affirm the Immigration Judge’s danger ruling," the decision says. The decision rejected challenges to the reliability of the statement provided by the informant at the Home Depot, saying the judge "appropriately considered allegations of gang affiliation" against Abrego-Garcia.

Do you know what there's no evidence of? All of Garcia's claims. Just because someone says something doesn't mean it's true, and there's no reason for any country (whether the US or not) to have to take the word of everyone looking to get into the country.

You say it's embarrassing that I used "ctrl + f" but you have still yet to show any kind of proof of illegal deportations. And like I told Silvanus, I'm not entertaining your guys' analysis of the law. Surely, if this was true, a journalist with aide of a lawyer would've written an article saying the Trump administration is deporting people illegally that they can't deport. The media would LOVE for this to be true, and yet you're gonna have me believe that this is happening and there's not a single story saying it?

It is not "analysis" to say the law forbids this. It is black and white, explicitly against those provisions. Read. Them.

If you absolutely must have lawyers telling you what the law says rather than reading it yourself, then here. Numerous articles calling it illegal have already been provided, but you can have yet another one to ignore.

I don't know if Phoenix understands the term read

This is not surprising. He didn't do any research over covid or mask or quarantines. Why would anyone expect him to do it here?

Show me the fucking article or shut up about it. It's that fucking simple.

The media would LOVE to find that Trump is illegally deporting people but yet there's literally no one saying it. You're gonna lead me to believe you guys are able to read the law better than other professionals and find something HUMONGOUS that they can't find? Not buying that for a fucking second. Funny when I say something about interpreting the law, the court rules what I said they would rule (whether it be Biden's covid vax mandate, Colorado removing Trump from the ballot, or the Rittenhouse case). I think Silvanus still believes states have the legal authority to remove Trump from ballots even though SCOTUS 9-0 essentially said "get this bullshit outta here".

Why would 8 years matter? Or 20?
Did he do something illegal? Break a law?
Or, and I'll even let you do a non illegal one, did he get benefits from the government?

Your asylum claim seems less likely if it took you 8 years to file it. And, you said illegal immigrant is "propaganda". Garcia is literally an illegal immigrant because he's lived in the US illegally for his entire time here.

 

[Schadrach]

No. Laughable.

The Dems would have at least had a stronger showing had Biden declared he wasn't seeking reelection up front and the Dems had had a real primary, whether she could have won such a primary or not is an entirely different question.

Also that the Dems weren't going to decide genocide was bad anytime soon anyway.

Yeah, but no party with a real chance of winning was actually opposing Israel having whatever they want.

The action of sending him there violated US law, they are obligated to say so. But the US can do no more than allow the man's return, we're not going to invade El Salvador to take their citizens away, which the Supreme Court acknowledged.

It can (for example) request him back and refuse to pay El Salvador to continue to hold him, as a starting point. If that is impossible, then you have to accept the premise that in fact the US government is knowingly grabbing people and throwing them on planes to an El Salvador prison forever on the US taxpayer's dime with no charges or due process, no need to prove anything whatsoever and that you are actively defending them doing so.

I'm honestly just waiting for Trump to get the balls to do this to a citizen, and then watch you defend grabbing a citizen off the street to spirit off to a max sec prison in El Salvador forever without due process or even an actual criminal charge.

Why would 8 years matter? Or 20?
Did he do something illegal? Break a law?
Or, and I'll even let you do a non illegal one, did he get benefits from the government?

I think the presumption is that an asylum seeker is supposed to report in and start actually seeking asylum at their earliest opportunity, and not wait until they've been caught illegally in the country years later.

 

[Agema]

Yeah, but no party with a real chance of winning was actually opposing Israel having whatever they want.

Fascinatingly, I read somewhere that a recent poll puts Israel's approval rating in the USA comfortably underwater. Although US public opinion has relatively little to do with US government policy.

 

[Silvanus]

Show me the fucking article [...] there's literally no one saying it.

I literally just gave you yet another article, in the very post to which you responded, predicting you'd ignore it. And lo and behold, you did ignore it.

Here's yet another. Gonna ignore it again?

 

[Phoenixmgs]

I literally just gave you yet another article, in the very post to which you responded, predicting you'd ignore it. And lo and behold, you did ignore it.

Here's yet another. Gonna ignore it again?

An editorial by some unnamed individual on Amnesty International (not a news source) is your evidence?

 

[Asita]

I never claimed that Garcia was a convicted gang member (you've yet to disprove anything I've said or any of my info from Amber Duke via Free Media). I said it's more likely than not based on the evidence that he is. Funny thing your article left out was that Garcia was at the Home Depot with not just gang members of MS13 but high ranking gang members of MS13. Also, again not included in the article, was that the informant not only said Garcia was a gang member but also gave his nickname and rank in the gang.

Again, 2 courts found the evidence credible; from your own source:

Kessler cast doubt on law enforcement’s reliance on "clothing as an indication of gang affiliation," but she found "the fact that a ‘past, proven, and reliable source of information’ verified the Respondent’s gang membership."

When Kessler’s ruling was appealed, it was upheld.

"We adopt and affirm the Immigration Judge’s danger ruling," the decision says. The decision rejected challenges to the reliability of the statement provided by the informant at the Home Depot, saying the judge "appropriately considered allegations of gang affiliation" against Abrego-Garcia.

Once again, what you're referring to is the bond ruling, which operates under an extremely low standard of evidence. In these kinds of immigration proceedings, ICE can say, 'We have a source who says this person is in a gang, and we believe that source is reliable,' and that's often taken at face value. That kind of deference to ICE's claims is a well-documented systemic issue. It doesn't mean a neutral court found the evidence credible —it's a reflection of how the system is tilted to accept unverified allegations, especially in bond and removal contexts. And let me reiterate, the bond ruling comes before any evidence was given any more than a perfunctory glance. You've mischaracterized it as being the court concluding that it was "more probable than not" that Garcia was in a gang, when in fact what you're citing is little more than a first glance evaluating the severity of the accusations against Garcia and what that meant for his evaluation as a flight risk, which is necessarily predicated on assuming the accusations are true for the sake of risk evaluation.

And mind you, once the actual facts of the case were presented in trial, the same judge not only concluded that the same accusation was unsupported by the evidence, but also that the evidence Garcia provided about his innocence and his circumstances were strong enough that he granted Garcia protection under the Convention Against Torture—because the risk of what would happen to him in El Salvador outweighed the claims of the government, which - contrary to their initial assertion - proved to be unsubstantiated once they were actually presented. And that decision was upheld without contest from ICE or the government. So this narrative that 'two courts confirmed gang membership' completely misrepresents what the rulings actually did.

You say that it's 'funny' that the article left out that "Garcia was at the Home Depot with not just gang members of MS13 but high ranking gang members of MS13". That actually has a very simple explanation: That's because the only part of that statement that is actually true is that the police accosted him at a Home Depot, in which he and others were looking for work. The police profiled him as a gang member. The claim that he was there with "high ranking members of MS13" is a complete fabrication. Generously, this can be attributed to the recent game of telephone that the story has been subjected to among right-wing outlets that have been - as you have - misconstruing the bond hearing as the court's ruling, taking the accusation against Garcia as a given, and escalating the story in the retelling. "The court denied bond because of the accusation that claimed a confidential source" became "the court found it credible that he was a gang member", which became "the court proved that he was a gang member" which snowballed into the alarmist presumption that the police had disrupted some kind of gang meeting, which then became further warped into the assertion that he was caught with high-ranking members of MS-13. But that bears very little resemblance to what the record actually says.

The record is very explicitly that the police detained him on the presumption (based on profiling him) that he was a gang member and was therefore must have been being uncooperative by not telling them about the gang. (Which, mind you, should raise a big red flag about the supposed confidential source. Because these circumstances were quite explicitly 'we will arrest you if you don't give us something we'd believe is actionable information on the gang, and we won't believe you if you don't'. And that provides an exceptionally strong reason for the people they accosted to just say whatever their interrogator wants to hear. More on this later). They turned him over to ICE, telling them that he was absolutely a gang member.

When ICE presented this to the court for the bond hearing, the repeated the claim that Garcia was gang member because he was wearing a Bulls Hoodie and claiming that they had a credible confidential source (their characterization, if I'm not mistaken) that said Garcia was a member of MS-13. The judge accepted the accusation for the sake of bond determination, but when the evidence was actually submitted in the trial, it turned out that that was the sum total of ICE's evidence, and the claim of the 'credible confidential source' was vague, uncorroborated, and frankly unrealistic (again, the claim was that Garcia was a part of a gang over 200 miles away). Remember what I said about bullshitting an answer you think the interrogator wanted to hear? This kind of result is a pretty telltale sign of that.

So no, by no stretch of the imagination does the evidence make it "more probable than not that Garcia is a gang member". The evidence presented for the claim was vague, tenuous, and uncorroborated by the facts. It is being wholly propped up by the self-serving initial puffery by ICE that the information was credible, when in actuality it promptly collapsed as soon as it was actually subjected to the court's scrutiny rather than treated as a given.

Do you know what there's no evidence of? All of Garcia's claims. Just because someone says something doesn't mean it's true, and there's no reason for any country (whether the US or not) to have to take the word of everyone looking to get into the country.

...Dude. I literally just went through this with you. To repeat:

"The Respondent provided credible responses to the questions asked. His testimony was internally consistent, externally consistent with his asylum application order and other documents, and appeared free of embellishment. Further, he provided substantial documentation buttressing his claims. Included in his evidence were several affidavits from family members that described the family's pupusa business, and threats by Barrio 18 to various family members - in particular the Respondent - over the years. The court finds the Respondent credible."

It further goes on to say that "the facts here show that the Barrio 18 gang continues to threaten and harass the Abrego Family over these several years, and does so even though the family has moved three times".

And let me reemphasize something. When it comes to the accusation of gang membership, Kilmar is innocent until proven guilty, and the accusations against him didn't even come close to meeting the preponderance of evidence, much less overcoming reasonable doubt.

Moreover, for Kilmar's application of asylum, he bore the burden of proof. And the court found that he met it. It's not a simple matter of him just spinning together a story, as you dishonestly suggest, and the courts simply nodding their heads in agreement. Hell, immigration courts are famously hostile to asylum seekers and highly deferential to immigration officials, so your insinuation is a special kind of absurd. This is not something he could simply bluff. He had to show the court that his story was well-evidenced, and the record shows that it was.

You say that there's no evidence of his claim, but in fact the court found his claim to be very well evidenced.

You say it's embarrassing that I used "ctrl + f" but you have still yet to show any kind of proof of illegal deportations. And like I told Silvanus, I'm not entertaining your guys' analysis of the law. Surely, if this was true, a journalist with aide of a lawyer would've written an article saying the Trump administration is deporting people illegally that they can't deport. The media would LOVE for this to be true, and yet you're gonna have me believe that this is happening and there's not a single story saying it?

Show me the fucking article or shut up about it. It's that fucking simple.

Ok, setting aside your hypocrisy in saying that you "aren't entertaining our analysis of the law" when we are citing and quoting the damn cases to you while you're almost exclusively repeating yourself as you insist upon your own - demonstrably and consistently deficient - analysis of the law...what even are you on about by saying that there isn't a single story saying it? That's not even remotely defensible. Setting aside that you've been repeatedly provided with such stories in this very thread, those have been headlines for weeks now!

Class Action lawsuit by the National Immigration Litigation Alliance (NILA), Northwest Immigrant Rights Project (NWIRP), and Human Rights First:

Class Action Lawsuit Challenges Unlawful Deportations to Third Countries Without Notice and Opportunity to Seek Protection from Persecution or Torture - Human Rights First

Boston, MA – Yesterday, four individuals with final removal orders filed a national class action in federal district court in Boston, Massachusetts. The lawsuit challenges the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) policy of deporting noncitizens to countries the government never raised as...

humanrightsfirst.org

From the National Immigration Center:

https://www.nilc.org/articles/analysis-of-trump-day-1-executive-orders-unconstitutional-illegal-and-cruel/

From Amnesty International:

Unlawful Expulsions to El Salvador Endanger Lives Amid Ongoing State of Emergency

The expulsion of 238 Venezuelans from the USA to El Salvador represents a step toward authoritarian practices in both the Trump administration and Bukele's security policies.

www.amnesty.org

From Amnesty International (Canada):

USA: Stop illegal deportations to El Salvador

Under a presidential order by President Trump, 255 individuals have been wrongfully sent from the U.S. to El Salvador. This was done after targeting

amnesty.ca

From the ACLU:

Trump Invokes the Alien Enemies Act to Carry Out Mass Deportations, Explained | ACLU

The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 was used to justify World War II-era internment of noncitizens. Now Trump is attempting to abuse that authority to deport immigrants without due process

www.aclu.org

The courts calling out the false pretense of the Administration's use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798:

Judge blocks Trump from using 18th-century wartime act for deportations

Trump had invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport five Venezuelans, but order halted by judge

www.theguardian.com

This is not an exhaustive list. That's just what I found at the top of the feed after a quick search for "unlawful deportation". So again, "Not a single story"? I can only presume that you didn't bother to look for them and declared that your resulting willful ignorance of the subject meant that those stories must not exist.

So once again, if you can't be bothered to do even that level of token research, why do you insist on pretending that you're well informed? You very obviously aren't making an informed argument.

At this point, you've misrepresented the legal standards, the findings of the court, and the evidentiary thresholds involved at nearly every step. You confused the bond ruling with the final decision, then insinuated that the former had a high bar while the latter had almost none—when in fact it's the reverse. Withholding of Removal is rarely granted for a reason: it requires strong evidence, which the court found that Garcia provided. Your interpretation has been so consistently incorrect that, in any structured setting, it would fail to meet even a basic standard of understanding.

The only reason you don't see that is because you've mistaken yourself for a neutral third party rendering fair judgment on both sides. But you're not. You're an active participant who is emotionally invested in your own argument, and that investment has blinded you to the extent of your own misunderstandings. You're not weighing evidence—you're just rooting for yourself.

 

[Trunkage]

I think the presumption is that an asylum seeker is supposed to report in and start actually seeking asylum at their earliest opportunity, and not wait until they've been caught illegally in the country years later.

What if a person is here on a work visa but then their country is overthrown 8 years later.
Israel has sent assassins to kill Canadians if they spoke out over Palestine. Russia does similar tactics, particularly to its own expats. It might be worth hiding a little while because asylum is about protecting you
What if they are sent up as a drug mule and the cartel threatens to kill their family if they report anything.
Many countries do not hand out passports to certain people deliberately to make sure they cant seek asylum. Those sort of people might want to hide and wait for an administration that isn't so disingenuous
After these four years are done, and assuming there is a less strict regime, a bunch of people will come out of the woodwork and start claiming asylum again. Can you imagine anyone actually trying to go through legal channels right now? You just going to get deported, irrelevant of the circumstance. Are you going to be cranky about those people in 2029 too?

 

[Silvanus]

An editorial by some unnamed individual on Amnesty International (not a news source) is your evidence?

You insisted I give you an article saying its illegal, since you refused to accept the laws themselves and the court filings. So I gave you an article from an organisation that directly works in this area.

You also said you wanted a lawyer (even though I already gave two court filings from lawyers). Ana Piquer, Americas Director for Amnesty, is a lawyer. Directly quoted at length in that article.

All this after you completely ignored the Guardian article I provided before, which also quoted lawyers, directly saying its illegal to detain TPS beneficiaries.

I have fulfilled everything you've asked for, over and over again.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Once again, what you're referring to is the bond ruling, which operates under an extremely low standard of evidence. In these kinds of immigration proceedings, ICE can say, 'We have a source who says this person is in a gang, and we believe that source is reliable,' and that's often taken at face value. That kind of deference to ICE's claims is a well-documented systemic issue. It doesn't mean a neutral court found the evidence credible —it's a reflection of how the system is tilted to accept unverified allegations, especially in bond and removal contexts. And let me reiterate, the bond ruling comes before any evidence was given any more than a perfunctory glance. You've mischaracterized it as being the court concluding that it was "more probable than not" that Garcia was in a gang, when in fact what you're citing is little more than a first glance evaluating the severity of the accusations against Garcia and what that meant for his evaluation as a flight risk, which is necessarily predicated on assuming the accusations are true for the sake of risk evaluation.

And mind you, once the actual facts of the case were presented in trial, the same judge not only concluded that the same accusation was unsupported by the evidence, but also that the evidence Garcia provided about his innocence and his circumstances were strong enough that he granted Garcia protection under the Convention Against Torture—because the risk of what would happen to him in El Salvador outweighed the claims of the government, which - contrary to their initial assertion - proved to be unsubstantiated once they were actually presented. And that decision was upheld without contest from ICE or the government. So this narrative that 'two courts confirmed gang membership' completely misrepresents what the rulings actually did.

You say that it's 'funny' that the article left out that "Garcia was at the Home Depot with not just gang members of MS13 but high ranking gang members of MS13". That actually has a very simple explanation: That's because the only part of that statement that is actually true is that the police accosted him at a Home Depot, in which he and others were looking for work. The police profiled him as a gang member. The claim that he was there with "high ranking members of MS13" is a complete fabrication. Generously, this can be attributed to the recent game of telephone that the story has been subjected to among right-wing outlets that have been - as you have - misconstruing the bond hearing as the court's ruling, taking the accusation against Garcia as a given, and escalating the story in the retelling. "The court denied bond because of the accusation that claimed a confidential source" became "the court found it credible that he was a gang member", which became "the court proved that he was a gang member" which snowballed into the alarmist presumption that the police had disrupted some kind of gang meeting, which then became further warped into the assertion that he was caught with high-ranking members of MS-13. But that bears very little resemblance to what the record actually says.

The record is very explicitly that the police detained him on the presumption (based on profiling him) that he was a gang member and was therefore must have been being uncooperative by not telling them about the gang. (Which, mind you, should raise a big red flag about the supposed confidential source. Because these circumstances were quite explicitly 'we will arrest you if you don't give us something we'd believe is actionable information on the gang, and we won't believe you if you don't'. And that provides an exceptionally strong reason for the people they accosted to just say whatever their interrogator wants to hear. More on this later). They turned him over to ICE, telling them that he was absolutely a gang member.

When ICE presented this to the court for the bond hearing, the repeated the claim that Garcia was gang member because he was wearing a Bulls Hoodie and claiming that they had a credible confidential source (their characterization, if I'm not mistaken) that said Garcia was a member of MS-13. The judge accepted the accusation for the sake of bond determination, but when the evidence was actually submitted in the trial, it turned out that that was the sum total of ICE's evidence, and the claim of the 'credible confidential source' was vague, uncorroborated, and frankly unrealistic (again, the claim was that Garcia was a part of a gang over 200 miles away). Remember what I said about bullshitting an answer you think the interrogator wanted to hear? This kind of result is a pretty telltale sign of that.

So no, by no stretch of the imagination does the evidence make it "more probable than not that Garcia is a gang member". The evidence presented for the claim was vague, tenuous, and uncorroborated by the facts. It is being wholly propped up by the self-serving initial puffery by ICE that the information was credible, when in actuality it promptly collapsed as soon as it was actually subjected to the court's scrutiny rather than treated as a given.



...Dude. I literally just went through this with you. To repeat:

"The Respondent provided credible responses to the questions asked. His testimony was internally consistent, externally consistent with his asylum application order and other documents, and appeared free of embellishment. Further, he provided substantial documentation buttressing his claims. Included in his evidence were several affidavits from family members that described the family's pupusa business, and threats by Barrio 18 to various family members - in particular the Respondent - over the years. The court finds the Respondent credible."

It further goes on to say that "the facts here show that the Barrio 18 gang continues to threaten and harass the Abrego Family over these several years, and does so even though the family has moved three times".

And let me reemphasize something. When it comes to the accusation of gang membership, Kilmar is innocent until proven guilty, and the accusations against him didn't even come close to meeting the preponderance of evidence, much less overcoming reasonable doubt.

Moreover, for Kilmar's application of asylum, he bore the burden of proof. And the court found that he met it. It's not a simple matter of him just spinning together a story, as you dishonestly suggest, and the courts simply nodding their heads in agreement. Hell, immigration courts are famously hostile to asylum seekers and highly deferential to immigration officials, so your insinuation is a special kind of absurd. This is not something he could simply bluff. He had to show the court that his story was well-evidenced, and the record shows that it was.

You say that there's no evidence of his claim, but in fact the court found his claim to be very well evidenced.



Ok, setting aside your hypocrisy in saying that you "aren't entertaining our analysis of the law" when we are citing and quoting the damn cases to you while you're almost exclusively repeating yourself as you insist upon your own - demonstrably and consistently deficient - analysis of the law...what even are you on about by saying that there isn't a single story saying it? That's not even remotely defensible. Setting aside that you've been repeatedly provided with such stories in this very thread, those have been headlines for weeks now!

Class Action lawsuit by the National Immigration Litigation Alliance (NILA), Northwest Immigrant Rights Project (NWIRP), and Human Rights First:

Class Action Lawsuit Challenges Unlawful Deportations to Third Countries Without Notice and Opportunity to Seek Protection from Persecution or Torture - Human Rights First

Boston, MA – Yesterday, four individuals with final removal orders filed a national class action in federal district court in Boston, Massachusetts. The lawsuit challenges the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) policy of deporting noncitizens to countries the government never raised as...

humanrightsfirst.org

From the National Immigration Center:

https://www.nilc.org/articles/analysis-of-trump-day-1-executive-orders-unconstitutional-illegal-and-cruel/

From Amnesty International:

Unlawful Expulsions to El Salvador Endanger Lives Amid Ongoing State of Emergency

The expulsion of 238 Venezuelans from the USA to El Salvador represents a step toward authoritarian practices in both the Trump administration and Bukele's security policies.

www.amnesty.org

From Amnesty International (Canada):

USA: Stop illegal deportations to El Salvador

Under a presidential order by President Trump, 255 individuals have been wrongfully sent from the U.S. to El Salvador. This was done after targeting

amnesty.ca

From the ACLU:

Trump Invokes the Alien Enemies Act to Carry Out Mass Deportations, Explained | ACLU

The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 was used to justify World War II-era internment of noncitizens. Now Trump is attempting to abuse that authority to deport immigrants without due process

www.aclu.org

The courts calling out the false pretense of the Administration's use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798:

Judge blocks Trump from using 18th-century wartime act for deportations

Trump had invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport five Venezuelans, but order halted by judge

www.theguardian.com

This is not an exhaustive list. That's just what I found at the top of the feed after a quick search for "unlawful deportation". So again, "Not a single story"? I can only presume that you didn't bother to look for them and declared that your resulting willful ignorance of the subject meant that those stories must not exist.

So once again, if you can't be bothered to do even that level of token research, why do you insist on pretending that you're well informed? You very obviously aren't making an informed argument.

At this point, you've misrepresented the legal standards, the findings of the court, and the evidentiary thresholds involved at nearly every step. You confused the bond ruling with the final decision, then insinuated that the former had a high bar while the latter had almost none—when in fact it's the reverse. Withholding of Removal is rarely granted for a reason: it requires strong evidence, which the court found that Garcia provided. Your interpretation has been so consistently incorrect that, in any structured setting, it would fail to meet even a basic standard of understanding.

The only reason you don't see that is because you've mistaken yourself for a neutral third party rendering fair judgment on both sides. But you're not. You're an active participant who is emotionally invested in your own argument, and that investment has blinded you to the extent of your own misunderstandings. You're not weighing evidence—you're just rooting for yourself.

The evidence Garcia had was just 2 family members corroborating his story. And he did change his story to being persecuted by a gang and then to being persecuted by the government. Let's not forget he was in the country for 8 years before he filed any type of claim. Garcia was never protected from not getting deported, he could be deported at any time he had been in the US, and you don't need to go through due process to deport him. The mistake that was made wasn't that he was deported, it was where he was deported to.

You linked the same page Silvanus linked to... These are not legit sources, they don't even have the name of the person who wrote it, it's not like a journalist or lawyer. And the one actual news site you linked says the following:
Though anti-immigrant politicians and groups have long advocated for the use of the act in response to unlawful border crossings, Macedo do Nascimento said a number of executive orders and congressional policies have already broadened the federal government’s authorities to detain and deport immigrants.

“There are already laws that allow for mass detention. There are already laws, like the Laken Riley Act, that would broaden the dragnet of people who can be detained,” Macedo do Nascimento said. “So the idea of him invoking the Alien Enemies Act feels kind of needless. To me, it is really about building the narrative to label immigrants as terrorists.”

The article is complaining about how the administration is deporting people vs whether that they can or not; the latter is what I care about (I don't care about the optics of things). If Trump is doing mass deportations and continuing to do so ignoring court orders, surely he has deported more than the 200+ people you guys keep talking about, right? I don't think 200 people being deported are considered to be mass deportations.

What if a person is here on a work visa but then their country is overthrown 8 years later.

What if that didn't happen?

You insisted I give you an article saying its illegal, since you refused to accept the laws themselves and the court filings. So I gave you an article from an organisation that directly works in this area.

You also said you wanted a lawyer (even though I already gave two court filings from lawyers). Ana Piquer, Americas Director for Amnesty, is a lawyer. Directly quoted at length in that article.

All this after you completely ignored the Guardian article I provided before, which also quoted lawyers, directly saying its illegal to detain TPS beneficiaries.

I have fulfilled everything you've asked for, over and over again.

If I gave you those shitty ass sources as evidence for something I'm claiming, you'd throw that shit in my face too. Ana was talking about the whole plane kerfuffle, which we already talked about. How many of the people were granted TPS that were deported?

 

[Silvanus]

If I gave you those shitty ass sources as evidence for something I'm claiming, you'd throw that shit in my face too.

You have zero ability to evaluate or read sources, so nobody should take any of this seriously. When you provide sources, they tend to be utter shit-- that's the difference; fringe bunkum or YouTube videos or whatever. Whereas I've given you the laws themselves explicitly saying its illegal, the court filings saying its illegal, an article from an internationally respected organisation saying its illegal, and multiple quotes from lawyers saying its illegal. And still you whine. Because there's nothing that could satisfy you on this; you've made up your mind, evidence be damned, and you'll give a kneejerk automatic dismissal to whatever is presented.

 

[Casual Shinji]

You've consistently made it clear you’re not arguing from evidence, you’re reacting out of ego.

Print this on some police tape, and cordon off whatever Phoenixmgs has to say about anything, so we can all move the fuck on from him.

 

[Bedinsis]

Show me the fucking article or shut up about it. It's that fucking simple.

The media would LOVE to find that Trump is illegally deporting people but yet there's literally no one saying it.

Article behind paywall, but its author reposted the Blusky-post below, so I assume it is valid. Note the word choice in the third sentence.

Jim Pickard (@pickardje.bsky.social)

total clarity here from @edwardluce.bsky.social https://www.ft.com/content/4c4b0f14-3e85-4436-94de-204d3f518f3c

bsky.app

 

[thebobmaster]

Time to hear about how this judge doesn't understand the law.

Trump administration likely acted in contempt of court by not turning around deportation flights, judge says

A judge found probable cause the Trump administration acted in contempt of court when officials defied his order to turn two planes around carrying alleged gang members.

abcnews.go.com

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Whereas I've given you the laws themselves explicitly saying its illegal, the court filings saying its illegal, an article from an internationally respected organisation saying its illegal, and multiple quotes from lawyers saying its illegal. And still you whine. Because there's nothing that could satisfy you on this; you've made up your mind, evidence be damned, and you'll give a kneejerk automatic dismissal to whatever is presented.

You've given me YOUR INTERPRETATION OF THE LAW. You've given me literally nothing from any lawyer or journalist (doing research) that any deportations (outside of a small handful) were illegal. You guys are acting like Trump and ICE are just rounding up people all over the place and illegally deporting them, that is not what is happening and you're just spouting propaganda.

You keep saying all these people had some protected status when they did not and they you edit out that part of my post and don't even respond.

Article behind paywall, but its author reposted the Blusky-post below, so I assume it is valid. Note the word choice in the third sentence.

Jim Pickard (@pickardje.bsky.social)

total clarity here from @edwardluce.bsky.social https://www.ft.com/content/4c4b0f14-3e85-4436-94de-204d3f518f3c

bsky.app

I believe that is about the one guy that got sent to El Salvador by error (which he could be deported anywhere but there). It's not on the US to go and take this guy out of a foreign country.

Time to hear about how this judge doesn't understand the law.

Trump administration likely acted in contempt of court by not turning around deportation flights, judge says

A judge found probable cause the Trump administration acted in contempt of court when officials defied his order to turn two planes around carrying alleged gang members.

abcnews.go.com

We've already talked about the plane kerfuffle and by that it's seems still not legally settled as word "likely" is used in the headline.

 

[Asita]

The evidence Garcia had was just 2 family members corroborating his story. And he did change his story to being persecuted by a gang and then to being persecuted by the government. Let's not forget he was in the country for 8 years before he filed any type of claim. Garcia was never protected from not getting deported, he could be deported at any time he had been in the US, and you don't need to go through due process to deport him. The mistake that was made wasn't that he was deported, it was where he was deported to.

You linked the same page Silvanus linked to... These are not legit sources, they don't even have the name of the person who wrote it, it's not like a journalist or lawyer. And the one actual news site you linked says the following:
Though anti-immigrant politicians and groups have long advocated for the use of the act in response to unlawful border crossings, Macedo do Nascimento said a number of executive orders and congressional policies have already broadened the federal government’s authorities to detain and deport immigrants.

“There are already laws that allow for mass detention. There are already laws, like the Laken Riley Act, that would broaden the dragnet of people who can be detained,” Macedo do Nascimento said. “So the idea of him invoking the Alien Enemies Act feels kind of needless. To me, it is really about building the narrative to label immigrants as terrorists.”

The article is complaining about how the administration is deporting people vs whether that they can or not; the latter is what I care about (I don't care about the optics of things). If Trump is doing mass deportations and continuing to do so ignoring court orders, surely he has deported more than the 200+ people you guys keep talking about, right? I don't think 200 people being deported are considered to be mass deportations.

To borrow your words: "I'm not interested in your amateur analysis of the law",

But the difference between you and me is that while you said it to dismiss other people's invocations and quotations of legal statutes and the results of the very court cases under discussion, I say it after you have consistently and blatantly demonstrated that you have no appreciable understanding of the law - immigration or otherwise - and even less knowledge about the case being discussed. Worse, despite being given every opportunity to do so you have not only made no effort to rectify that, but you've actively refused to do so, That makes your ignorance willful.

Case in point: you claim (again, falsely) that the only evidence for Garcia's claim was two family members. In actuality, you might notice that the judge also cited substantial documentation corroborating his claims. You've also once again inverted the burden of proof and insisted that he Garcia had to prove a negative - that he was not part of a gang - when in fact the burden of proof was on his accusers, who failed spectacularly to meet it.

You are brazenly cherry picking and re-framing in order to inflate the credibility of the accusation against him while minimizing the actual ruling and the evidence that the ruling was based on. To be perfectly direct, you are confusing the accusation for the verdict and treating the verdict as if it were some speculative defense claim made outside of court — despite the fact that the ruling itself clearly contradicts your assertion, and you have been shown that repeatedly.

You cite the 8 years before applying for asylum as if it undermines his case, but it doesn't. Delays like that do raise the burden of proof, and Garcia met it. That's something you keep missing: the court found that he met that elevated burden. And here's the other thing you've missed: The government has never appealed the court's decision to grant him Withholding of Removal status. Instead, they’ve tried to paint this as an "administrative error" precisely because they genuinely can’t get around the simple fact that he was legally protected from deportation. And that, moreover, they explicitly accepted that ruling.

And no, it is not true that "he was never protected from deportation." The court granted Garcia Withholding of Removal status — which means, by law, he could not be deported and could not leave the U.S. voluntarily until that status was lifted or the order executed lawfully. That is the legal reality, regardless of your misreadings.

And he has not "changed his story", you're just misreading it. His claim wasn't that the government persecuted him, it was that the government had shown over an extended period that it was unable or unwilling to protect his family from the gang's persecution. That's not a change in story. That's what strengthens the claim for protection.

And let's be clear here: you moved the goalposts again. You originally said, "There's not a single story saying this.” That’s what my links were responding to. Now, faced with those articles, you’re pretending the issue is their authorship, or that a rhetorical concession in one of them invalidates the point. It doesn’t. It just highlights that you’re more committed to dismissing evidence than engaging with it.

At this point, you’re not just wrong, you are knowingly misrepresenting the facts. That’s not ignorance, and it's certainly not a well-reasoned or informed opinion. That’s just pure dishonesty.

Honestly, I’m not sure what’s worse — that your pride has made you this immune to correction, or that you genuinely think the people around you are too uninformed to see through it, even as they call you out on it. Though I suppose that in a perverse way it's impressive, if still contemptible.

 

[Silvanus]

You've given me YOUR INTERPRETATION OF THE LAW. You've given me literally nothing from any lawyer or journalist (doing research) that any deportations (outside of a small handful) were illegal.

This just shows you haven't read the stuff, or lack the capacity to understand it, or both. Because all of this has been given.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

To borrow your words: "I'm not interested in your amateur analysis of the law",

But the difference between you and me is that while you said it to dismiss other people's invocations and quotations of legal statutes and the results of the very court cases under discussion, I say it after you have consistently and blatantly demonstrated that you have no appreciable understanding of the law - immigration or otherwise - and even less knowledge about the case being discussed. Worse, despite being given every opportunity to do so you have not only made no effort to rectify that, but you've actively refused to do so, That makes your ignorance willful.

Case in point: you claim (again, falsely) that the only evidence for Garcia's claim was two family members. In actuality, you might notice that the judge also cited substantial documentation corroborating his claims. You've also once again inverted the burden of proof and insisted that he Garcia had to prove a negative - that he was not part of a gang - when in fact the burden of proof was on his accusers, who failed spectacularly to meet it.

You are brazenly cherry picking and re-framing in order to inflate the credibility of the accusation against him while minimizing the actual ruling and the evidence that the ruling was based on. To be perfectly direct, you are confusing the accusation for the verdict and treating the verdict as if it were some speculative defense claim made outside of court — despite the fact that the ruling itself clearly contradicts your assertion, and you have been shown that repeatedly.

You cite the 8 years before applying for asylum as if it undermines his case, but it doesn't. Delays like that do raise the burden of proof, and Garcia met it. That's something you keep missing: the court found that he met that elevated burden. And here's the other thing you've missed: The government has never appealed the court's decision to grant him Withholding of Removal status. Instead, they’ve tried to paint this as an "administrative error" precisely because they genuinely can’t get around the simple fact that he was legally protected from deportation. And that, moreover, they explicitly accepted that ruling.

And no, it is not true that "he was never protected from deportation." The court granted Garcia Withholding of Removal status — which means, by law, he could not be deported and could not leave the U.S. voluntarily until that status was lifted or the order executed lawfully. That is the legal reality, regardless of your misreadings.

And he has not "changed his story", you're just misreading it. His claim wasn't that the government persecuted him, it was that the government had shown over an extended period that it was unable or unwilling to protect his family from the gang's persecution. That's not a change in story. That's what strengthens the claim for protection.

And let's be clear here: you moved the goalposts again. You originally said, "There's not a single story saying this.” That’s what my links were responding to. Now, faced with those articles, you’re pretending the issue is their authorship, or that a rhetorical concession in one of them invalidates the point. It doesn’t. It just highlights that you’re more committed to dismissing evidence than engaging with it.

At this point, you’re not just wrong, you are knowingly misrepresenting the facts. That’s not ignorance, and it's certainly not a well-reasoned or informed opinion. That’s just pure dishonesty.

Honestly, I’m not sure what’s worse — that your pride has made you this immune to correction, or that you genuinely think the people around you are too uninformed to see through it, even as they call you out on it. Though I suppose that in a perverse way it's impressive, if still contemptible.

Stop talking down to me like I don't know anything. "Withholding of Removal" status does NOT protect someone from being deported.

https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/sites/default/files/research/the_difference_between_asylum_and_withholding_of_removal.pdf

This just shows you haven't read the stuff, or lack the capacity to understand it, or both. Because all of this has been given.

You've never proven your claim that these people are protected from being deported.

You original post isn't fucking true and never was.

Temporary Protected Status | USCIS

Temporary Protected Status

www.uscis.gov

"During a designated period, individuals who are TPS beneficiaries or who are found preliminarily eligible for TPS upon initial review of their cases (prima facie eligible): Are not removable from the United States [...]"

Asylum | USCIS

www.uscis.gov

" You may only file this application if you are physically present in the United States, and you are not a U.S. citizen. [...] If you are eligible for asylum you may be permitted to remain in the United States."

These are categories of people eligible to temporarily, legally be in the United States, who do not hold visas. You can repeat "they didn't have a visa" as much as you want, but it's simply not in dispute that they were in the US legally. It's not even the grounds of the government's decision to deport them.