By Mel Gurtov
Act 1: US and El Salvador Won’t Return Wrongly Deported Man
No disgraceful act of the Trump administration is more dangerous than its denial of due process of law, judicial decisions, and unquestionable facts in the deportation to El Salvador of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Both Trump’s justice department and the El Salvador government of Nayib Bukele are refusing to return Abrego Garcia to the US for a hearing despite admitting that he was mistakenly deported and has not broken any law.
Even though two federal judges and the Supreme Court unanimously agreed that the US should facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return, both Trump (“I’m not involved”) and Bukele (“How can I return him?”) are finding every excuse to refuse to comply. The justice department says it’s not required to return Abrego Garcia, that his return depends on El Salvador releasing him, and that the US is only required to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return when he seeks to reenter the US.
Tom Homan, the border czar, boasts that if Abrego-Garcia is allowed to return, “He will be detained and removed again.” It’s a shabby, disgusting game these two authoritarian leaders are playing. And it puts us in a constitutional crisis if the administration doesn’t obey court orders.
The administration’s rationale for detaining Abrego Garcia and other Venezuelans is that they belong to a gang that is under the control of Venezuela’s government. Thus, the argument goes, we are at war with Venezuela! Surprise!
Yet the administration’s own National Intelligence Council has reported a consensus that the Venezuelan government does not control that gang. Fortunately, Maryland’s Sen. Chris Van Hollen flew to El Salvador and was able to meet with Abrego Garcia, who said the prison experience has “traumatized” him. Van Hollen also met with El Salvador’s vice president, who admitted that Abrego Garcia had not committed any crime in that country.
Two federal judges are weighing holding the government in contempt. One says the government has done “nothing” to bring the man back. She seems prepared to depose Trump officials in order to see the records of their actions.
Will the Supreme Court, which (thanks to quick action by the ACLU) has just blocked the administration from deporting another group of Venezuelans from a Texas detention center, take the next step of demanding Abrego Garcia’s return? (Trump said he would obey such a decision, but he hasn’t obeyed the order to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return.) I fear that Trump will use this case as a test of his power—just as he has done with Harvard U, Paul Weiss law firm, and Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia University, to see how far defiance of judges can go. In truth, it would take one phone call from Trump to bring Abrego Garcia back.
Similar cases are pending. A federal judge has ordered the administration to return Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University student detained being held in Louisiana, to Vermont by May 1. More Venezuelan migrants charged by the administration with terrorism under the Alien Enemies Act are reportedly being readied for deportation from other detention centers. The ACLU is prepared to defend them all.
Act 2: The Attack on Universities
As many people, including several progressive Jewish organizations, have pointed out, the attack on America’s elite universities is being carried out under the false pretext of fighting antisemitism. Donald Trump has never cared about Jewish students or faculty; to the contrary, he has peddled in Jewish stereotypes while also currying favor with Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right Israeli government.
Trump’s actual aim, conveniently lodged in opposition to woke culture, is to undermine liberal education in every way—research, teaching, admissions, student life, values—and impose conservative guardianship on our top universities. As the New York Times reported April 14, the attack is taking place from two directions: one headed by Stephen Miller, the deputy chief of staff who is determined to rid the country of immigrants; the other a secretive task force.
The attack began with Trump ordering a reduction of $400 million in federal grants to Columbia University because of its “antisemitic” policies. The order was followed up by a demand that Columbia make wholesale changes in its disciplinary and admissions policies, then by putting certain regional studies programs under “academic receivership.”
These demands hold Columbia hostage to the Trump administration, which can reverse or add to the federal grants already rescinded should it not be satisfied with Columbia’s response on “antisemitism.” Columbia—my alma mater, by the way—has surrendered without a fight.
The Columbia case is just the tip of the iceberg, a Trump test case of how much control over elite universities the administration can exercise. Harvard is a test case too, because it is Harvard.
Trump has threatened to terminate its $256 million in federal contracts, nearly $9 billion in “grant commitments,” and even its tax-exempt status. The administration has already frozen $2.2 billion in federal grant money. The administration has also demanded the records of all Harvard’s international students.
Princeton, Johns Hopkins, and dozens of other top schools have also been threatened with removal of federal funds unless they accept the administration’s conditions. Nationwide, over 1,000 international students’ visas have been revoked, and now the Chronicle of Higher Education reports that over 4,700 international student records in the federal Student and Exchange Visitor Information System database have been terminated. This is precisely what authoritarian leaders do.
To his credit, Harvard’s president Alan Garber has chosen to defy Trump’s attack, saying on April 14: “No government—regardless of which party is in power—should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.” Some 800 Harvard professors have joined him in defending academic freedom, led by Prof. Steve Levitsky, author of How Democracies Die on Trump’s autocracy. “We are currently witnessing the collapse of our democracy,” Levitsky says.
Levitsky and Garber are not alone in their criticisms. For example: “I’ve never seen this degree of government intrusion, encroachment into academic decision-making — nothing like this,” said Lee C. Bollinger, former president of Columbia and the University of Michigan. M. Gessen wrote on the Times opinion page (April 14) that the attack on higher education is “driven by anti-intellectualism and greed. Trump is building a mafia state, in which the don distributes both money and power. Universities are independent centers of intellectual and, to some extent, political power. He is trying to destroy that independence.”
But wait: Late Friday the Trump administration said the letter to Harvard with all those demands about admissions and curricula should not have been sent! It was “unauthorized,” sent (it is said) by an official at the Dept of Health and Human Services, a member of the antisemitism task force. The gang that can’t shoot straight was apparently at it again. Can you believe such incompetence?
Never mind: Universities are starting to unite in protest and resistance. A Mutual Defense Coalition has formed, composed of several Big Ten schools and a number of others. The coalition is in the mold of NATO: a group pledged, just as in Article 5 of the NATO charter, to come to the aid of any university that is attacked by Trump. Harvard faculty who receive federal research grants have sued the administration for redress. Hopefully, they too will coordinate with other university faculty in similar circumstances.
I think the elite universities can survive Trump’s bombardment. They have billion-dollar endowments and access to top-dollar supporters. The real challenge for them is to demonstrate, with student and faculty support, that they can get along just fine without Trump.
But they will also need to gain public support. Universities are not valued the way they once were. Defense of “free speech” and independent research don’t galvanize people into action. In many parts of the country, universities and colleges, especially the private ones, are easy targets for the MAGA-ites and others who see higher education as a luxury, a waste of public funds, and a service to the privileged few.
Act 3: Trump Corruption
Part 1: Market Manipulation? Shortly after US markets opened on Wednesday morning, Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social: “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT”. Less than four hours later, he shocked investors by announcing a 90-day pause on additional trade tariffs on most countries except China, sending share indexes soaring. Sen. Chris Murphy asked: “Trump’s 9:30am tweet makes it clear he was eager for his people to make money off the private info only he knew. So who knew ahead of time and how much money did they make?”
Well, Marjorie Taylor Greene for one. She made a bundle. And of course Trump himself. His media and technology company jumped 21 percent after he announced the 90-day pause on tariffs.
Part 2: Tariff Reductions for Sale? No sooner did the Trump administration add to its tariff rate for China than an exception was granted for electronics imports. Was this a gift to Microsoft, Nvidia, and Apple?
Apple was reported to be in danger of huge losses if the 145 percent tariff on China stuck, since the price of iPhones would have been beyond reach. Expect a big donation from Apple and the others to Trump’s war chest.
But as for those not exempted from the new tariffs? Sen. Elizabeth Warren said: “Investors will not invest in the United States when Donald Trump is playing ‘red light, green light’ with tariffs and saying, ‘Oh, and for my special donors, you get a special exemption.”
Act 4: Targeting of an International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor
Earlier this year, the Trump administration ordered economic and travel sanctions against a leading prosecutor of the ICC, Karim Khan, for successfully bringing a war crimes charge and an arrest warrant against Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The order also prohibits US citizens, permanent residents and companies from providing the prosecutor with services and material support.
Now, two international lawyers have brought suit against Trump, arguing that his order is “unconstitutional and unlawful,” and would put a chill on the lawyers’ efforts to work with the ICC. One of the lawyers has been working with the ICC on the Rohingya genocide case in Myanmar, and the other has been seeking prosecution of the Taliban in Afghanistan for its oppression of women and girls. The first lawyer said that Trump’s executive order “doesn’t just disrupt our work – it actively undermines international justice efforts and obstructs the path to accountability for communities facing unthinkable horrors.”
In Short
These are stories that can’t be explained by incompetence, misunderstandings, or bureaucratic dysfunction alone. They are part and parcel of a concerted Trump campaign directed at insufficiently loyal officials, immigrants of color, foreign policy critics, and judges who make disagreeable decisions. At the same time, Trump and Co. allow nothing to stand in the way of personal and oligarchic enrichment.
Words such as disgraceful, shameful, and deplorable are hardly sufficient to characterize this administration’s behavior.
Mel Gurtov, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Portland State University and blogs at In the Human Interest.
This article was sent on April 20, 2025 to peacevoiceeditors by Tom Hastings on behalf of Mel Gurtov.