Isabela Dias

Trump is making thousands of rule-abiding immigrants undocumented Inside the largest delegalization campaign in modern US history.

“You enter legally, and suddenly, because of someone else’s whim, you’re illegal. It doesn’t make sense.”

I wrote about the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan TPS holders losing legal status overnight as a result of the Trump administration's mass deportation push.

No One Was Supposed to Leave Alive Venezuelans deported by the Trump administration say they were tortured during their four months in CECOT.

"The female guards would count to 20 as they administered the beatings, and if the prisoners complained or cried out, they would start again...Tito Martínez, one of the inmates, recalled that a prison nurse was watching. 'Hit the piñata,' she cheered."

"We were kidnapped" On Friday, more than 200 Venezuelans disappeared to a megaprison in El Salvador returned home. The horror stories are already emerging.

He's one of the many Venezuelan men whose stories @nlanard.bsky.social and I have followed since mid-March when the Trump administration sent them to CECOT. Zambrano had been detained by ICE during a routine check-in back in January, just days before his wife gave birth to their second daughter.

Late last night, Julio Zambrano's sister sent me this photo of him home with his mother in Venezuela.

Trump's DOJ stripped lifeline legal services from the most vulnerable detained immigrants "Without a lawyer, people don't have a prayer. They don't have a chance in hell."

Today, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to reinstate a legal representation program for detained immigrants with mental health issues who are deemed unfit to represent themselves in court.

I wrote about how critical this government-appointed counsel service is here:

Maria Quevedo, the mother of Eddie Adolfo Hurtado Quevedo, told us she was feeling relieved but still scared.

“Happy because God gave me the gift of seeing my son free on my birthday. Scared because my son is going to Venezuela, where he was threatened by the [paramilitary group] colectivos.”

"We were kidnapped" On Friday, more than 200 Venezuelans disappeared to a megaprison in El Salvador returned home. The horror stories are already emerging.

"The bitterness is still there. The anger about what happened to him is still there.”

After four months, more than 200 men sent to El Salvador have been released from CECOT and returned to Venezuela. @nlanard.bsky.social and I spoke with family members and friends waiting to be reunited with them.

"We were kidnapped" On Friday, more than 200 Venezuelans disappeared to a megaprison in El Salvador returned home. The horror stories are already emerging.

NEW: Story from @isabelaalhadeff.bsky.social and me based on interviews with families of the men returned to Venezuela tonight after Trump disappeared them to El Salvador in March.

www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Her husband is trapped in a Salvadoran prison. She has no idea how to get him back. Ripped apart by Trump, one Venezuelan family endures another hell: silence.

Earlier today, the mother of Julio Zambrano, one of the Venezuelans sent to CECOT, was told to go to Caracas for some "good news." She's at the airport in anticipation of her son's arrival after four long months. @nlanard.bsky.social and I are in touch with other families as they wait for more news.

How ICE’s arrest of a high school student activated a Massachusetts town “We’re trying to find ways the community can defend itself.”

“It was a perfect storm.”

In Milford, MA, a town where 30 percent of the population is foreign-born, the arrest of 18-year-old Marcelo Gomes da Silva set off a chain reaction unlike anything the community had seen before. My latest for @motherjones.com:

What $100 billion in new ICE funding looks like The staggering increase is difficult to process. These numbers will help.

$100 billion in new ICE funding is about to get unleashed thanks to this bill. Come process that crushing figure with me.

Funder, pilot, survivor, physician: Inside the network assisting abortion journeys And some women who took them.

To mark the 3-year anniversary of the Dobbs decision, I published a guide on all the ways doctors, nonprofits, pilots, and ordinary people are helping people from banned states access reproductive healthcare. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Humanitarian parole is over. Now comes the fear. Communities in Florida already were suffering after all the other anti-immigrant threats by Trump.

Humanitarian parole is over. Now comes the fear.

"This order gives ICE a green light to grab these immigrants and deport them to the hell they escaped from in a legal way.”

Trump disappeared them to El Salvador. Now, they're being erased by immigration courts. At least 14 cases of Venezuelans sent to a Salvadoran mega prison have been dismissed by US immigration judges.

NEW: Frizgeralth de Jesús Cornejo Pulgar was among the 238 Venezuelans removed to El Salvador without due process in mid-March. He has no criminal history or a final order of deportation.

On Friday, a US immigration judge terminated his asylum case, effectively ejecting him from the legal system.

Trump Administration Knew Vast Majority of Venezuelans Sent to Salvadoran Prison Had Not Been Convicted of U.S. Crimes Homeland Security records reveal that officials knew that more than half of the 238 deportees were labeled as having no criminal record in the U.S. and had only violated immigration laws.

NEW: We obtained DHS data that shows the US knew only 32 of the 238 Venezuelans deported to a prison in El Salvador in March were convicted of US crimes, only 6 of those violent. Trump called them “savages,” “monsters” and "the worst of the worst.” www.propublica.org/article/trum...

10 ways to enrich the Trumps and the MAGA movement “We don’t actually give a fuck.”

Asked about the ethics of Donald Trump Jr and other family members using the Trump presidency to enrich themselves, a DJT Jr. adviser said: "We don’t actually give a fuck.” www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Judge rules Trump's South Sudan deportations violate court order "I don’t see how anybody could say that these individuals had a meaningful opportunity to object.”

“This is not about sending this man or a group of men to another country because of their criminal backgrounds...This is about the executive branch violating fundamental due process and constitutionally protected rights and breaking the law.”

She escaped her abuser. But not before he buried her in debt. This is how coerced debt haunts survivors of domestic abuse.

Sarah Ortiz has spent years trying to prove that her ex used her personal information to rack up $45,926 of debt in her name without her knowledge.

Unfortunately, Sarah's story isn't new.

Scores of women across the country are victims of coerced debt—and it's ridiculously hard to crack down on.

How Trump is creating an American caste system If the administration's birthright citizenship executive order is implemented, "there will be a new kind of stratification" in the United States.

Trump's EO would “create a permanent caste of aliens, generation after generation—born in America but never to be among its citizens.”

Birthright citizenship is fundamental to “who we are as a nation.” So why do Republicans attack it? 2024 GOP presidential hopefuls want to distort the Constitution to fit their agenda.

Critics of birthright citizenship have distorted a long-standing interpretation of the 14th Amendment—and a fundamental principle of what means to be American:

The big-money right-wing push to upend the Constitution—and kill birthright citizenship “We’re in totally uncharted territory.”

And it's backed by deep-pocketed right-wing groups:

The plot against birthright citizenship The incoming Trump administration wants to take away citizenship for the US-born children of undocumented immigrants. Here's how.

Ahead of SCOTUS hearing on Trump's executive order attacking birthright citizenship, here are a few articles I've written that help understand how we got here—and where we could be headed.

The conservative effort to undermine birthright citizenship has been a long time in the making:

Wall Street gutted Steward Health Care. Patients paid the price. One of America's biggest for-profit hospital operators is bankrupt, broken, and responsible for countless mistreated patients—thanks to its private equity overlords.

I wrote about the rise and fall of Steward Health Care—fueled by a private equity firm, a real estate trust, & multimillionaire executives. The saga is a stunning indictment of what happens when financiers try to squeeze huge returns from the places that save people's lives. /1 shorturl.at/TcvV7

Trump's DOJ stripped lifeline legal services from the most vulnerable detained immigrants "Without a lawyer, people don't have a prayer. They don't have a chance in hell."

"No trial can be fair that leaves a person with mental illness alone before a court."

A counsel-appointed program for detained immigrants with mental health needs and cognitive disabilities has been gutted. Providers say people will languish in detention and be deported without a fighting chance.

“Designed to scare people”—Lawyers warn of self-deportation notices posted in immigration courts Taking the government's offer as presented on the Justice Department's notice could backfire.

NEW: A DOJ notice encouraging immigrants to "self-deport' is being posted in immigration courts across the country and sent to lawyers, including when their clients have won asylum. Attorneys say the notice is misleading and a "scare tactic" that could lead to people skipping proceedings.

The dangerous legal theory behind Trump’s power grabs There was no "unitary executive" until some dudes made the idea up to save Nixon.

The unitary executive theory is animating all of Trump's legal moves, becoming a catch-all defense for the idea that Trump is basically a king. Fittingly, the idea of an unaccountable president started with Nixon. But unlike in 1974, the Supreme Court is on board. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

The men who could be sent to El Salvador next A Mother Jones investigation based on firsthand accounts from ICE detainees in Texas reveals how Venezuelans were nearly removed from the country under the Alien Enemies Act without a chance to contes...

“I can’t remember a situation that was this urgent or extraordinary," ACLU's Lee Gelernt told @nlanard.bsky.social and I, "where we were worried that every minute we delayed filing something could mean that our clients would end up permanently in a brutal foreign prison for the rest of their lives.”

The men who could be sent to El Salvador next A Mother Jones investigation based on firsthand accounts from ICE detainees in Texas reveals how Venezuelans were nearly removed from the country under the Alien Enemies Act without a chance to contes...

I was able to talk about the danger to one of our clients at @unlvimmigration.bsky.social (co-counsel with @aclunv.bsky.social), and the absurdity of giving someone just 24 hour warning that he might be sent to a foreign prison, never to return.

www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

The men who could be sent to El Salvador next A Mother Jones investigation based on firsthand accounts from ICE detainees in Texas reveals how Venezuelans were nearly removed from the country under the Alien Enemies Act without a chance to contes...

a big new story from @isabelaalhadeff.bsky.social + @nlanard.bsky.social:

A Mother Jones investigation based on firsthand accounts from ICE detainees reveals how Venezuelans were nearly removed from the country under the Alien Enemies Act without due process

www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

The men who could be sent to El Salvador next A Mother Jones investigation based on firsthand accounts from ICE detainees in Texas reveals how Venezuelans were nearly removed from the country under the Alien Enemies Act without a chance to contes...

“I felt this kind of fear, like something was telling me we weren’t going to Venezuela at all. Because the cops, when they had us here, they kept laughing a lot."

@nlanard.bsky.social and I interviewed six Venezuelans who were nearly removed from Bluebonnet—presumably to El Salvador—on April 18.