These are just a few of the pieces of evidence that the Trump administration has cited in its legal efforts to detain and deport migrants from the United States in high-profile actions the past few weeks.
The evidence has been cited in efforts to send over 200 Venezuelan men to prison in El Salvador for alleged gang membership, to detain a pro-Palestinian activist and green card holder without charging him with any crime, and to deport a doctor with a visa to Lebanon.
People in immigration court already face a lower standard of due process in proceedings, but the Trump administration’s moves reflect a stark deterioration of migrant civil liberties even further, immigration attorneys said.
“In this instance under the Trump administration, what we’re seeing is yes, allegations using flimsy evidence paired with no meaningful opportunity to refute that evidence in any kind of proceeding before any kind of decision-maker,” said Nayna Gupta, policy director of the American Immigration Council, a pro-immigration non-profit group. “That’s really what makes this different.”
The administration’s quick pace of detention and deportation has similarly disoriented attorneys.
“Every day we’re hit with a different decision, and we just don’t know how to make sense of it,” Veronica Cardenas, the former assistant chief counsel for the Department of Homeland Security, told CNN last week. “Us immigration lawyers are really experiencing the lack of due process circumventing immigration courts, and so it’s been a very difficult time.”
The Trump administration has pushed back against critics who raised concerns about immigrants’ legal rights.
“Due process? What was Laken Riley’s due process?” border czar Tom Homan said on ABC’s “This Week,” referring to the nursing student who was killed by an undocumented immigrant from Venezuela. “What were all these young women that were killed and raped by members of (Tren de Aragua) – what was their due process?”
Here’s a closer look at some of the evidence being cited in the cases and what attorneys and family members of the migrants have said about its relevance.
