A few weeks ago, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement mistakenly deported Kilmar Abrego García to a violent prison in El Salvador. Agents arrested Mr. Abrego García in an Ikea parking lot on March 12 with his 5-year-old son in the car.
The Trump administration has since acknowledged Mr. Abrego García’s deportation as an “administrative error.” In 2019, he was detained and questioned about ties to the MS-13 gang, but an immigration judge eventually granted him protection from deportation back to El Salvador because local gangs were likely to persecute him. Yet the Trump administration, after incorrectly deporting him despite the protection order, argued that federal courts had no authority to order him returned since he is being held by the Salvadoran government. They have also renewed the allegation that he is part of MS-13.
Three months into President Trump’s second term, the administration’s focus on expelling immigrants has expanded to include not only undocumented immigrants and alleged gang members but also legal residents and visa holders whom the government describes as supporters of terrorism. The government has the power to remove foreigners whose presence threatens the United States or its foreign policy interests, but the Trump administration has stretched this rationale to include those engaging in protests against the war in Gaza, acts which are ordinarily protected by the First Amendment.
Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, said he has revoked more than 300 student visas, some in connection to campus protests over the war in Gaza, claiming that the students were “creating riots, basically, on campus.” In late March, masked agents apprehended Rumeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University graduate student, without explanation. A spokesperson later said she “engaged in activities in support of Hamas,” likely referring to an op-ed co-written with other students. Rasha Alawieh, a Brown University professor and kidney transplant specialist, was deported to Lebanon for allegedly supporting Hezbollah. And ICE arrested Badar Khan Suri, a postdoctoral student at Georgetown, for purportedly sharing pro-Hamas propaganda online.
Whether or not one believes that these students are in league with Hamas or Hezbollah, or agrees with their positions on the war in Gaza, campus protests and op-eds do not threaten U.S. foreign policy, unless dissent from the administration’s position is a threat in itself. The president’s executive actions and his administration’s aggressive use of any minimally plausible authority against noncitizens betray a disdain for the right to object to the actions of those in power.
Against this backdrop, how should Americans who disagree with the administration’s hostility toward immigrants proceed?
For decades, the church in the United States, including the editors of America, has stressed the importance of recognizing the human dignity of migrants. On March 24, Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso organized a rally in support of immigrants, describing the administration’s policy toward immigrants as a hardening of hearts.
“I’m very concerned,” he told OSV News. “You might even say I’m more concerned about ‘us’ than ‘them,’ than the immigrants among us, because we’re losing something that is essential for us to be who we are, to have our own particular identity as a country of immigrants that welcomes people who are different than ourselves.”
Bishop Seitz articulated what has become frighteningly apparent following the recent spate of disappearances: The United States, whose nationhood has in large measure been constituted by its embrace of immigrants, is turning its back on the stranger. This is not only a threat to the country’s historic identity but is also, in the abuse of power to target those whom the Trump administration considers enemies, a betrayal of the rule of law and the values of a democratic society.
In the months preceding the 2020 presidential election, the editors of America wrote that Mr. Trump’s first administration had “undermined the constitutional order to a degree unprecedented in modern American history,” a concern we have reiterated many times since. Less than three months into his second term, the threat Mr. Trump poses to the constitutional order has only grown.
In 2025, the United States is a nation where a young woman can be snatched off the street by masked, plainclothes agents, shoved into a van and transported halfway across the country in violation of a court order, without the state producing any evidence of criminal activity—as happened to Ms. Öztürk. It is a nation where a father can be sent to a maximum-security foreign prison, shipped beyond the reach of American courts without due process—as happened to Mr. Abrego García.
These and other similar actions taken by the Trump administration represent a move away from a free, open society. The same president who pardoned roughly 1,500 convicted Jan. 6 rioters on his first day in office now claims to be protecting Americans from an “invasion” of violent criminals by making end runs around the courts. The deportation of violent criminals is morally justifiable and the revocation of visas is legally possible, but the orchestration of such actions to insulate them from judicial review telegraphs that they aim more to demonstrate power than to implement policy.
Mr. Trump has demonstrated a willingness to use broad power to terrorize his opponents—even those who simply disagree with him. He has all but eliminated any debate within his own party. But healthy democracies allow disagreement without the threat of punishment.
This crisis is a call to solidarity. Americans should raise their voices, defying Mr. Trump’s attempts to stifle criticism, in defense of our immigrant brothers and sisters. We should call and write to our congressional representatives, demanding accountability for this administration’s denial of due process and defiance of the courts. We should call for an end to the appalling practice of consigning deportees to Salvadoran custody to avoid accountability before U.S. courts.
Yet given the gravity of the crisis, more frequent and more visible nonviolent protest may be necessary. Rallies such as the one Bishop Seitz led in El Paso may need to become so common as to be impossible to ignore. They can serve to confront Americans with what is being done by our government in our name and wake the consciences of our fellow citizens. The Trump administration’s targets today are immigrants, but attacks on and disdain for due process, free expression and the separation of powers endanger the democratic freedoms of all Americans.
