Jump to content

Recommended Posts

Posted
On 3/28/2025 at 3:30 PM, SubliminalHorn said:

Sounds like I can count on you to get me out of El Salvador right

Sorry, you’re gonna have to John McAfee your way out of that situation.

Just don’t head to Spain where you might get picked up on tax charges and “commit suicide” in prison.

Marvel Studios Smile GIF by Disney+

  • Hook 'Em 1
  • Haha 1
Posted
12 minutes ago, bolverk said:

She imagines the worst. “How can girls go back to Afghanistan?” said Nilab, 30, who asked that only her first name be used to protect her identity. “What will happen to us? Rape, forced marriage and death.”

In fairness, that's the plan for the US in the coming years, too.....so turn that frown upside down, Nilab!  You're going to be a second-class citizen and chattel in either country soon!

  • Rage+1 2
Posted

Ah yes, Republicans continue to fuck over Afghanis when in power, after doing nothing but criticizing the other party for not supporting them more when that party is in power. 

  • Hook 'Em 3
  • Like 1
  • Rage+1 3
Posted
13 minutes ago, Rex Kramer said:

I know they’re morons. People equating terrorist organizations that murder people are a bit different. You lose people with such comparisons. 

Ahh, you get lost in the fallacy of degree.

These images can be of the same fire:

405.jpg

Just because one has been allowed to burn longer doesn't mean the other isn't just as great a threat.

"Only somewhat as theocratic and hasn't killed as many people yet" is not a good distinction.  Fundagelical theocratic regimes see the "other" as inferior, and almost always view women as lesser (worthy of fewer rights and such).  The common threads are in plain sight.  And waiting till the fire is burning out of control over 100,000 acres (so you can finally say "okay....NOW it's bad") is a really, really bad strategy.

  • Hook 'Em 7
Posted
3 minutes ago, Rex Kramer said:

You’re crazy and I won’t do this with you. You should send longer messages with more words in all caps. 

I'm crazy for seeing the similarities between the Taliban and the American Christofascist movement in power in many spots of our government.  Yep.  I'm clearly alone, out on an island, to be the one person to see the similarities.

GmAQm-pWEAAK_Z_.png

  • Hook 'Em 6
Posted

I dunno why some of you don't just put Rex on ignore, he's a fucking moron.  But he's not MAGA!  He just doesn't like when you compare them to terrorists or Nazis.

  • Hook 'Em 6
  • Like 1
  • Drool 1
Posted
Just now, Rex Kramer said:

You’ve totally moved the goalposts. Totally. Similarities does not equate with the fact that the Taliban will straight up murder people. Any comparison, as a result, is disingenuous as fuck. 

Huh.

I guess we should hold off on raising the red flag on oppressive, theocratic regimes, until they are fully functioning death machines.  Until then, there's no comparison.

Because no brutally oppressive, violent, murderous regime ever started off as merely autocratic and erasing the rule of law.  Nope, no pattern of that at all.

  • Hook 'Em 3
Posted
1 minute ago, Brisketexan said:

Huh.

I guess we should hold off on raising the red flag on oppressive, theocratic regimes, until they are fully functioning death machines.  Until then, there's no comparison.

Because no brutally oppressive, violent, murderous regime ever started off as merely autocratic and erasing the rule of law.  Nope, no pattern of that at all.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT!!! THAT'S CR!!!!!!

  • Haha 1
Posted

Ya know Rex, seeing how desperately you want to derail the thread and conversation to NOT be about these extrajudicial and illegal actions by ICE, one could easily support the conclusion that you're pleased with what's happening.

 

  • Hook 'Em 3
  • Drool 1
Posted
10 minutes ago, Js1 said:

I dunno why some of you don't just put Rex on ignore, he's a fucking moron.  But he's not MAGA!  He just doesn't like when you compare them to terrorists or Nazis.

He might legitimately be dumber than workswithseed.

  • Hook 'Em 1
  • Haha 3
  • Drool 2
Posted
19 minutes ago, Rex Kramer said:

Nah, I’d just hold off comparing them to Hamas or Taliban. It’s bad enough. Why in the fuck would you derail conversations with ridiculous comparisons that will catch you no flies, and turn people off?  

Huh.  When I see a fire start, I say "fuckin' a, that's bad, we should put that out."  When someone asks "why?", the only sane answer is "because I've seen moderate fires like this turn into all-consuming infernos, and the time to put out a fire is BEFORE it gets that bad."  So, yeah....I compare a 1 acre grass fire to the Palisades fire, because.....the Palisades fire was once a 1 acre grass fire too.

We know exactly how this specific type of fire burns. We have literal books chronicling it.  When you pick one up, and you realize "holy shit, our current spreading fire looks a shitload like these past historical fires," you get a renewed sense of urgency about how dangerous these fires are.

Yet, we will all burn, because we are a nation full of Rex Kramers who will not agree that there is a problem until the fire covers 10,000 acres with 0% containment....by which point it is far, far too late, and we're going to fucking lose it ALL.  It is the same historical head-in-the-sand idiocy that gets us the same results, over and over.

But this time, I'm sure, the autocratic theocracy will be different.

  • Hook 'Em 5
  • Like 1
  • Drool 1
Posted (edited)
19 minutes ago, Rex Kramer said:

Blah blah fucking blah. I recognize there is a problem. Your histrionics and hyperbole comparing Mike Johnson or whatever GOP official you want to the Taliban inserted in a cute little meme graphic do you no favors. You don’t need to convince me. You need to convince people (admittedly, like me) that we are heading down the wrong path. You do not accomplish this by comparing the right to the Taliban or Hamas. The people we need to convince are not affected by ICE actions. So, they’ll laugh at laughable comparisons. Anyone with a brain will. Be better. 

This isn't "the right" or "my team" or "your team". This is AMERICA. AMERICA is shipping people off to labor camps in El Salvador without due process, and oopsie poopsie they scooped up a few brown citizen too. Terrorizing your political enemies and threatening them with cruel and unusual punishments like labor camps or being sent into forced marriages is not what AMERICA should be doing.

The fact that you're continually framing is as "my team" and "your team" is the whole fucking reason we're in this mess. It's not about teams. It's about what is fucking right and wrong. 

This is not right. 

Stop arguing in advance of and the benefit of your intellectual peers that this is all just overblown nonsense. It's not. You should read "They Thought They Were Free" sometime to have a better grasp of the context you're dismissing out of hand to see where that thinking can lead.

Quote

"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with their leader, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.

"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.

...

 "The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway. I do not speak of your ‘little men,’ your baker and so on; I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men, mind you. Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to.

The above is a snippet with a name genericized to better illustrate how history is rhyming.

Edited by Captainant
  • Hook 'Em 3
Posted

It's hilarious [and quite sad] that he's actually right in a way because the average American brain cannot compute a comparison of a smiling Mike Johnson to a scary, turban-clad brown person. He's, of course, completely wrong that the comparison is laughable. It's only laughable to him because his brain is hard-wired to consider Arabs/Muslims as inferior and/or subhuman.

Of course, he's obfuscating the fact that he has openly praised the Trump adminstration/ICE's actions of kidnapping/black bagging/attempting to deport legal permanent residents for protected speech because it would immediately torpedo the notion that you "don't need to convince him" that we are heading down the wrong path.

  • Hook 'Em 5
  • Drool 1
Posted
8 minutes ago, Brian Fantana said:

It's hilarious [and quite sad] that he's actually right in a way because the average American brain cannot compute a comparison of a smiling Mike Johnson to a scary, turban-clad brown person. He's, of course, completely wrong that the comparison is laughable. It's only laughable to him because his brain is hard-wired to consider Arabs/Muslims as inferior and/or subhuman.

Of course, he's obfuscating the fact that he has openly praised the Trump adminstration/ICE's actions of kidnapping/black bagging/attempting to deport legal permanent residents for protected speech because it would immediately torpedo the notion that you "don't need to convince him" that we are heading down the wrong path.

I've thought about running a thought experiment with some family members.  I'd like them to finish the sentence, "We know we're not witnessing the rise of an authoritarian regime in the United States because if we were we would see ________."  I'm a little scared of what their answers could be.

Posted
18 minutes ago, Brian Fantana said:

It's hilarious [and quite sad] that he's actually right in a way because the average American brain cannot compute a comparison of a smiling Mike Johnson to a scary, turban-clad brown person. He's, of course, completely wrong that the comparison is laughable. It's only laughable to him because his brain is hard-wired to consider Arabs/Muslims as inferior and/or subhuman.

Of course, he's obfuscating the fact that he has openly praised the Trump adminstration/ICE's actions of kidnapping/black bagging/attempting to deport legal permanent residents for protected speech because it would immediately torpedo the notion that you "don't need to convince him" that we are heading down the wrong path.

All of this talk of authoritarianism is ruining his vibes, man. Can't have that. His vibes are what is most important.

Posted
30 minutes ago, Rex Kramer said:

Blah blah fucking blah. I recognize there is a problem. Your histrionics and hyperbole comparing Mike Johnson or whatever GOP official you want to the Taliban inserted in a cute little meme graphic do you no favors. You don’t need to convince me. You need to convince people (admittedly, like me) that we are heading down the wrong path. You do not accomplish this by comparing the right to the Taliban or Hamas. The people we need to convince are not affected by ICE actions. So, they’ll laugh at laughable comparisons. Anyone with a brain will. Be better. 

Which is why we're in full "leopards eating people's faces" land now.  Because the only way that people like you will EVER grasp that this regime is not just "not good government," but is actually a grave threat to us all, is when they feel immense pain of their own.

Point out policy disagreements?  That ship has sailed.  "People like you" like the policies of this regime.

Point out that other people are suffering significantly?  "People like you" either give ZERO fucks, or they actively ENJOY it ("other people suffering tells you the policies are working").

Nope.  The only possible path (and it's a narrow one, for which I have very little hope) is one where the fire burns enough people - either in somewhat targeted fashion (like a specific policy crushes them/their family) or in an all-consuming fire of collapse of the Republic and descent into full-on authoritarian hellscape -- that they go "holy fuck, that hurts!  We should stop that!"

But don't you worry your head, I'm sure that path will not bear fruit.  By the time the pain gets intense enough to actually turn people against the regime, it will be way, way too late.  We won't be altering course at all, no matter how many of us are up front correctly yelling "iceberg dead ahead!"  The rest of y'all will be in your dinner jackets, sipping brandy and saying "I don't know what they're yelling about, we haven't hit anything yet and anyway, this ship is unsinkable."  Which is stupid, because we are ALL gonna end up going down and drowning along with Leonardo DiCaprio and that's just stupid because who wants to spend eternity with him?

 

  • Hook 'Em 2
Posted

Holy shit Rex go day drink somewhere else. Please stop claiming that this thread is full of hyperbole and dismissing the actual real kidnappings our government is doing under the guise of immigration enforcement 

  • Hook 'Em 2
  • Drool 1
Posted
7 minutes ago, Rex Kramer said:

Where have I not demonstrated I don’t grasp this isn’t good government?  Try and respond in fewer than 5 paragraphs that I will not read. 

Will "this isn't good government" move the needle for "people like you?"  Of course it won't.  Not even a little bit.  Because the alternative -- that is, NOT voting for Republicans, straight-ticket -- is too unimaginably horrible.  Why, a trans kid may play volleyball in East Possum Dick on the JV squad, so......nope, "this isn't good government" is just fine, and we'll stick with what we're getting.

That's the point -- this is not just a case of "this isn't good government."  It's a case of "what we're getting is the kind of thing that destroys republics."

It's the difference between eating a McDonald's hamburger and saying "this isn't good food" and eating a McDonald's burger loaded with salmonella which will fucking kill you.  You'll sit there and keep munching your Quarter Pounder saying "I know this isn't good food," when the point is "dude....that particular burger is loaded with salmonella and is going to kill you."

And your response is the same as all the people like you - "look, we know that mickey d's isn't great for us, but you're coming off like a stick-up-the-butt puritan telling us what we should or shouldn't eat."  So, you keep scarfing down the salmonella, and making sure the rest of us have to eat it too.  Completely missing the point that what we're warning about isn't garden-variety "make healthy choices," it's "this shit is actual poison and it is going to kill us all."

Posted (edited)

Not hyperbole: the feds are deporting now and asking questions later. Facts and evidence be damned.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/an-administrative-error-sends-a-man-to-a-salvadoran-prison/682254/

Quote

Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, Abrego Garcia’s attorney, said he’s never seen a case in which the government knowingly deported someone who had already received protected legal status from an immigration judge. He is asking the court to order the Trump administration to ask for Abrego Garcia’s return and, if necessary, to withhold payment to the Salvadoran government, which says it’s charging the United States $6 million a year to jail U.S. deportees.

Trump administration attorneys told the court to dismiss the request on multiple grounds, including that Trump’s “primacy in foreign affairs” outweighs the interests of Abrego Garcia and his family.

“They claim that the court is powerless to order any relief,’’ Sandoval-Moshenberg told me. “If that’s true, the immigration laws are meaningless—all of them—because the government can deport whoever they want, wherever they want, whenever they want, and no court can do anything about it once it’s done.”

Court filings show Abrego Garcia came to the United States at age 16 in 2011 after fleeing gang threats in his native El Salvador. In 2019 he received a form of protected legal status known as “withholding of removal” from a U.S. immigration judge who found he would likely be targeted by gangs if deported back.

Abrego Garcia, who is married to a U.S. citizen and has a 5-year-old disabled child who is also a U.S. citizen, has no criminal record in the United States, according to his attorney. The Trump administration does not claim he has a criminal record, but called him a “danger to the community” and an active member of MS-13, the Salvadoran gang that Trump has declared a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

This shit is actually happening. Please stop thread shitting and doing the baghdad bob, Rex.

Edited by Captainant
  • Hook 'Em 1
Posted
Not hyperbole: the feds are deporting now and asking questions later. Facts and evidence be damned.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/an-administrative-error-sends-a-man-to-a-salvadoran-prison/682254/

Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, Abrego Garcia’s attorney, said he’s never seen a case in which the government knowingly deported someone who had already received protected legal status from an immigration judge. He is asking the court to order the Trump administration to ask for Abrego Garcia’s return and, if necessary, to withhold payment to the Salvadoran government, which says it’s charging the United States $6 million a year to jail U.S. deportees.

Trump administration attorneys told the court to dismiss the request on multiple grounds, including that Trump’s “primacy in foreign affairs” outweighs the interests of Abrego Garcia and his family.

“They claim that the court is powerless to order any relief,’’ Sandoval-Moshenberg told me. “If that’s true, the immigration laws are meaningless—all of them—because the government can deport whoever they want, wherever they want, whenever they want, and no court can do anything about it once it’s done.”

Court filings show Abrego Garcia came to the United States at age 16 in 2011 after fleeing gang threats in his native El Salvador. In 2019 he received a form of protected legal status known as “withholding of removal” from a U.S. immigration judge who found he would likely be targeted by gangs if deported back.

Abrego Garcia, who is married to a U.S. citizen and has a 5-year-old disabled child who is also a U.S. citizen, has no criminal record in the United States, according to his attorney. The Trump administration does not claim he has a criminal record, but called him a “danger to the community” and an active member of MS-13, the Salvadoran gang that Trump has declared a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

This shit is actually happening. Please stop thread shitting and doing the baghdad bob, Rex.

Problem: Rex and “people like him” like this. Because let’s be honest, brown folks like Mr Garcia aren’t real people anyway and aren’t entitled to any legal protection.
Want to avoid trouble with the law? Then don’t do stupid things, like not being an affluent white person.
  • Hook 'Em 3
Posted
It bears noting that the government’s not arguing that they don’t have to bring him back because he’s not a citizen. They’re arguing that they don’t have to bring him back because a court can’t compel them to force El Salvador to give him back. They’re saying they can kidnap citizens and send them to a concentration camp they pay another country to run and there’s nothing the kidnapped citizen can do about it.
The Nazis literally gave their victims more due process than this.

This.
If the Trump regime can disappear someone and not be subject to court enforcement because “oh well, we don’t have our hands on him anymore,” they can do and say that as to anyone and everyone. Including you.
This is how it goes, and this is how it ends. The Trump regime now has full power - with no accountability or consequences - to disappear US citizens, political opponents, or anyone it doesn’t like.
It will use that power.
  • Rage+1 4
Posted

the fucking problem with Brisket's fucking over-the-top gotdamn never-ending litany of bitching and moaning doomsday hyperbole...is he's basically been right about everything.

 

we-get-it-david-rose.gif

200 (13).gif

  • Hook 'Em 2
  • Like 1
Posted
6 hours ago, wildcat09 said:

It bears noting that the government’s not arguing that they don’t have to bring him back because he’s not a citizen. They’re arguing that they don’t have to bring him back because a court can’t compel them to force El Salvador to give him back. They’re saying they can kidnap citizens and send them to a concentration camp they pay another country to run and there’s nothing the kidnapped citizen can do about it.

The Nazis literally gave their victims more due process than this.

But some college students protested.

Posted
7 hours ago, wildcat09 said:

It bears noting that the government’s not arguing that they don’t have to bring him back because he’s not a citizen. They’re arguing that they don’t have to bring him back because a court can’t compel them to force El Salvador to give him back. They’re saying they can kidnap citizens and send them to a concentration camp they pay another country to run and there’s nothing the kidnapped citizen can do about it.

The Nazis literally gave their victims more due process than this.

It's so very Trump.  He and his cabal have figured out that they can try and encant the magic words "national security" and "foreign affairs" and it makes everything he does untouchable.  It's not that far from "Hannibal Lecter."

  • Hook 'Em 1
  • Like 1
Posted
On 3/27/2025 at 5:02 PM, wildcat09 said:

"Existential" and "external" are different words that mean different things. You're really not beating those illiteracy allegations. 

I’m a bit behind on this thread, but in short, an external threat is like space aliens or something, and existential threat is Jean-Paul Sartre pulling a gun on you. It’s a pretty simple distinction.

  • Hook 'Em 1
  • Haha 3
  • Rage+1 1
Posted
33 minutes ago, Mole said:

I’m a bit behind on this thread, but in short, an external threat is like space aliens or something, and existential threat is Jean-Paul Sartre pulling a gun on you. It’s a pretty simple distinction.

I wouldn’t call aliens a threat. More like salvation at this point. 

  • Hook 'Em 4
Posted

In case anyone missed it, in response to the Salvadoran man that ICE admits was deported by mistake, our VP chimed in with lies and deflection:

 

Quote

"My comment is that according to the court document you apparently didn't read he was a convicted MS-13 gang member with no legal right to be here," he wrote.

"My further comment is that it's gross to get fired up about gang members getting deported while ignoring citizens they victimize."

https://www.newsweek.com/jd-vance-ice-error-man-deported-2053429

The guy was never charged with any crime, let alone convicted of being a gang member.  An immigration judge determined he would face threats from gangs if deported to El Salvador. 

  • Hook 'Em 1
  • Rage+1 6
Posted
14 minutes ago, fuggled said:

In case anyone missed it, in response to the Salvadoran man that ICE admits was deported by mistake, our VP chimed in with lies and deflection:

 

https://www.newsweek.com/jd-vance-ice-error-man-deported-2053429

The guy was never charged with any crime, let alone convicted of being a gang member.  An immigration judge determined he would face threats from gangs if deported to El Salvador. 

Well, our VP lies.  It's kinda what they do.  It's kinda what they are.  Same dude who just said "Greenlanders want us to take over" in the face of an election just a couple of weeks ago where Greenlanders overwhelmingly voted the other way.  We need to quit using the term "misinformation" -- they are liars who traffic in lies, it is their very essence.  If you took lies away from them, they would have nothing, do nothing, and say nothing.

  • Hook 'Em 5
  • Like 1
Posted (edited)

@Rex Kramer This isn't an attack, so don't worry about putting your guard up -- I do have a genuine question.

Scenario: I fully accept your word that you're not happy about the unconstitutional and, therefore, illegal deportations of migrants who have their proper paperwork. For the moment, let's also say you have a friend or coworker who had done everything right but had a tattoo or something akin to it that, for whatever reason, got them locked up in the Salvadoran prison, which makes you get worked up (I know that you aren't but indulge me and just pretend for a moment), and this causes you to try to convince some of your more skeptical friends that it's unjust and/or dangerous.

Question: What kind of argument would you use with those same friends so that you wouldn't come across as hyperbolic but still be persuasive? This isn't a snarky, gotcha kind of question at all. I'd genuinely like to get your perspective on how to be more effective in communicating concerns with friends and neighbors who may not "get it." I'd consider it a favor if you could help me formulate a good response.

Thanks in advance.

Edit: If you need to think about it for a while, take your time. There's no rush. I understand you have a life outside of Surly.

Edited by bolverk
  • Hook 'Em 1
  • Like 1
Posted
2 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

Well, our VP lies.  It's kinda what they do.  It's kinda what they are.  Same dude who just said "Greenlanders want us to take over" in the face of an election just a couple of weeks ago where Greenlanders overwhelmingly voted the other way.  We need to quit using the term "misinformation" -- they are liars who traffic in lies, it is their very essence.  If you took lies away from them, they would have nothing, do nothing, and say nothing.

The truth is whatever they say it is. End of story 

Posted
12 minutes ago, Rex Kramer said:

I do not think I’d have to do anything hyperbolic whatsoever. There’d be enough HP / HPUMC mafia to intercede. We certainly would not waste time comparing the admin to terrorist groups that, again, might simply behead these people. 

So your line is beheading? Kidnapping doesn’t reach the line of terror?

Posted
21 minutes ago, Rex Kramer said:

I do not think I’d have to do anything hyperbolic whatsoever. There’d be enough HP / HPUMC mafia to intercede. We certainly would not waste time comparing the admin to terrorist groups that, again, might simply behead these people. 

Thanks for the response. Okay, so you're confident your social crowd, church group, work colleagues, etc., would mobilize if it happened to someone they know firsthand and care about and would not need convincing. Empathy is a completely natural human response in that case so that response obviously checks out.

Barring that personal connection, do you believe those folks would be persuadable otherwise? If so, how?

Posted
10 hours ago, Rex Kramer said:

Enough would, yes. Without a personal connection to an unfairly jailed Mexican?  Probably not. 

Good question. There are probably enough connections to the administration that they’d somehow get him/her out of their hypothetical situation. Absent that, a pressure campaign. Maybe it has no affect whatsoever. 

lol you are describing an oligarchy. you know that right? "enough connections to the administration" lol DO YOU MEAN WHITE PEOPLE?

  • Like 1
Posted (edited)

No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.

welllll ackshually.....

https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/the-austin-area-teen-trump-disappeared-to-el-salvador/

Quote

The day before federal agents arrested him, Carlos Daniel Terán Aguilar got his first American bike. He bought it at the local Goodwill store in Cedar Park—baby blue, BMX-style—and rode it around the neighborhood, doing wheelies in the parking lot of the local Chevron station. A friend took a video to mark the occasion. “¡Ándale!” his friend narrated, laughing as the eighteen-year-old circled on the pavement, adding, also in Spanish, “Baby Jesus arrived late this year, but he arrived!” 

That was Saturday, January 25. On Sunday morning, just past eight, three officers gathered at the Cedar Park home where Daniel—as his family calls him—lived with his father and stepmother, Juan Carlos and Marian Terán, and their two-year-old son, Juan Felipe. They were all from Venezuela, and all were in the country legally. Still, Marian felt nervous when she opened the door and saw the ICE jacket on the lead agent. They were there to arrest Daniel, he said. She asked why, and the ICE agent said they had video footage of him with drugs and guns. The agent didn’t show her a warrant.

She went to Daniel’s bedroom, but he initially refused to come out. “He was really scared,” she told me. “He kept saying, ‘I haven’t done anything.’ ” Finally, he opened the door, and the officers took him outside to put him in handcuffs. By this point, a flurry of vehicles had swarmed the house and ten agents were on the scene. They put him in one of the vans, took his photo, and drove away. (Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to interview requests for this story.)

Three weeks later, ICE put out a news release announcing the arrest, saying Daniel was a member of the notorious Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and that he was wanted in Chile for “narcotics and weapons trafficking.” In the photo that accompanied the release, Daniel, all of five feet five and 125 pounds, looked even younger than his eighteen years, with short hair, large brown eyes, and a baby face. He looked terrified. He looked like he was about to cry. 

Then, on March 15, Daniel became unreachable. His name has since appeared on a list of 237 other Venezuelans deported to El Salvador and taken to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), a megaprison built by the country’s authoritarian leader, Nayib Bukele, to house the thousands of alleged gang members he had arrested in a 2022 crackdown. CECOT has a capacity for 40,000, making it the largest prison in Latin America and one of the largest in the world; it is, according to a former member of the United Nations Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture, a “concrete and steel pit.” Human Rights Watch, meanwhile, has said it is not aware of any prisoners having ever been released from the complex. Inmates, who are not allowed visitors, are kept in overcrowded cells that are lit around the clock, and they are let out for thirty minutes a day. Philip Holsinger, a photojournalist from Time, was at the prison when the new residents arrived; he reported how they were kicked, slapped, shoved, and stripped naked; their heads were shaved and they were thrown into cells jammed with some eighty other men to sleep on steel slabs. 

Juan Carlos Terán knew all about CECOT and was devastated when he found out where his son was. Daniel wasn’t a member of Tren de Aragua, he said. Daniel wasn’t a gunrunner or a drug trafficker; he had gotten into trouble in Chile when he was sixteen, when he and a couple of other teens were caught with drugs and a gun, but that didn’t make him part of a dangerous crime syndicate. He was a teenager who loved playing soccer with his cousins in the front yard. He had a girlfriend. He had a new bike. 

“My son made a mistake,” said Terán, “smoking marijuana and having the kind of friends who have a gun. But that doesn’t mean that he deserves this kind of injustice, to be in such a prison, somebody who is just a kid who didn’t do anything. He didn’t do anything wrong here.”

Terán, despite being in the country lawfully, is terrified that he and his wife and their toddler son could be next. They’ve talked about returning to Venezuela, where life is dangerous but not as fickle as it is in the U.S., once their visas expire. Terán dreams of Daniel being freed and meeting them there. “I’m thinking like a father,” he said, “which is that my son needs me. He needs me to be present and be supporting him.” He told his son, when Daniel was still in detention, that he would make sure his bike was waiting for him.

Edited by Captainant
  • Like 1
  • Haha 1
  • Rage+1 3

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.



×
×
  • Create New...