‘We Have No Idea!’ CBS News Segment On Trump Deportations Questions Exactly Who Was Taken to World’s ‘Most Notorious’ Prison
CBS’s News Ed O’Keefe spoke to CATO Institute immigration expert David Bier on Monday about the Trump administration deporting migrants to prisons in El Salvador. Bier sounded the alarm on that fact that who exactly is being deported to these infamous jails remains largely unknown, despite White House assurances the migrants were all gang members.
“This deportation flight landed early Sunday in El Salvador. The cameras were ready. Footage, slickly produced by the Salvadoran government, shows they were whisked away to one of the most notorious prisons in the world,” began the CBS News segment with a voice over, adding:
CBS News visited last month finding 80 to 100 men crammed into a cell Officially it can hold up to 40,000 prisoners But at the time was only half full. The Trump administration has vowed to help fill it paying El Salvador six million dollars to take three plane loads on Sunday Most were removed under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, last invoked by Franklin D. Roosevelt to detain Japanese immigrants in internment camps during World War II. Today, the White House stood by the president’s moves.
A clip then rolled of O’Keefe asking the White House press secretary earlier in the day, “So you’re saying definitively that the administration can prove everyone that was put on those flights to El Salvador was either a member of Trinidad Agua, MS-13, or some other entity?”
“Yep, we’ve already provided the breakdown in the effort of transparency about the 261 illegal aliens who were deported,” replied Karoline Leavitt.
“What criteria, though, other than, say, tattoos or maybe being in the wrong place at the wrong time, are they using to determine that someone is actually a member of one of these organizations?” O’Keefe pressed.
“Intelligence and the men and women on the ground in the interior of our country uh… who are finally being allowed to do their jobs,” Leavitt added.
“The president’s use of the law sparked a weekend legal fight where minutes mattered. After the White House revealed it had invoked the act on Saturday, the planes took off. Shortly after, a judge ordered the planes to turn around, but they never did, and a third flight would depart a few minutes later. David Bier tracks immigration policy for the libertarian CATO Institute,” continued O’Keefe, asking:
Why should any American care about these flights that went and the way those people were sent away?
“We have no idea whether these people were in the country legally or illegally, whether they were in a gang or not,” Bier replied.
“The bigger part of this, perhaps, is that it’s part of the ongoing fight over what exactly an American president can do. Is that fair?” O’Keefe followed up.
“Once we get to the point in the country where the president gets to say, I can arrest anyone, I don’t have to prove anything, I don’t have to go to courts, I don’t have to follow the laws as they’re written, then that’s anarchy,” replied Bier.
Bier on Tuesday post to X commentary on an ICE official answering a judge’s request for additional information about who was deported. He wrote, “Unreal. ICE implies that MOST of the Venezuelans sentenced to hard labor in a brutal Central American prison without charge or trial or so much as a cursory hearing had never been convicted or even charged with ANY CRIME whatsoever, not even a trivial one.”
Watch the clip above via CBS News.
