He is not coming back to our country. President Buckley said he was not sending him back. That's the end of the story. If he wanted to send him back, we would give him a plane ride back. There was no situation ever where he was going to stay in this country. [00:00:15] None. None. He would have come back, had one extra step of paperwork and gone back again. But he's from El Salvador. He's in El Salvador. And that's where the president plans on keeping him. So this morning, Attorney General Pam Bondi doubled down on Donald Trump's [00:00:33] insistence that Kilmer Abrego Garcia, the man mistakenly deported to El Salvador in violation of a judge's order, will remain in a mass prison there despite having never committed a crime or been been convicted of a crime. But Bondi and the Trump administration are facing a fight because the [00:00:51] federal judge in charge of Abrego Garcia's deportation case, is not backing down. Yesterday, Judge Paula Zenith scolded the administration for dragging its feet in complying with the Supreme Court order that directed the white House to, quote unquote, facilitate Garcia's return, telling a lawyer [00:01:10] for the for the Justice Department. So here's what the judge actually said. She said, to date, what the record shows is that nothing has been done. Nothing. Now, she's ordered an intense two week inquiry into the Trump administration's [00:01:25] refusal to seek his return. So this is from The New York Times noting that every passing day was another that Abrego Garcia, a 29 year old father of three, suffered harm in Salvadoran custody. The judge set up a fast schedule for officials to provide documents [00:01:42] and sit for depositions. We're going to move. She said. There will be no tolerance for gamesmanship or grandstanding. There are no business hours while we do this. Cancel vacations, cancel other appointments. I'm usually pretty good about things like that in my court, but not this time. [00:01:59] So I expect all hands on deck. So she's not suffering any fools anymore. Her ruling means that senior Trump administration officials will be forced to testify about their failure to take action. And it's really not so much a failure as it is just a refusal to take that action. [00:02:16] It's willful and obstinate subordination, but in a written order granting expedited discoveries, and has said four senior officials from the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of State will have to sit for depositions by April 23rd, essentially out of court interviews in which the officials will have to answer [00:02:35] questions under oath from Abrego, Garcia's lawyers, Abrego Garcia's lawyers will also be allowed to ask the government for relevant documents about the case. At this point, three courts, including the Supreme Court, have ruled the Supreme [00:02:51] Court, by the way, was unanimous that the white House is required to take at least some steps toward freeing Abrego. Garcia. But despite initially actually admitting that they had been deported, that he had been deported by mistake. The Trump administration is still falsely insisting [00:03:07] that he is an Ms. 13 gang member. That should have been sent back to El Salvador, and we talked about this on yesterday's show. Those claims are incredibly misleading, and the judge recently argued that the evidence against him was completely vague and unreliable. [00:03:22] This morning, when Pam Bondi was pressed to release whatever evidence they allegedly had, she would not share any details. Take a look. Kill Mara Garcia in Maryland. He's in a prison now in El Salvador. He was sent there. [00:03:38] You insist the president. Everybody in the administration insist that he is Ms. 13. It appears that there's not going to be any sort of trial. He's not going to come back. DHS said he would be arrested and deported. If he comes back. Why not show the American people the evidence that he's Ms. 13 [00:03:55] so they can make an informed decision? Why not show the public the evidence? Well, he is an illegal alien who has been living illegally in our country from El Salvador. Ice testified an immigration judge [00:04:12] ruled he he was a member of Ms. 13. An appellate judge ruled he was a member of Ms. 13. Hard stop. - He should not be in our country. - Again, that is not entirely accurate. [00:04:28] But if you want to see all the receipts we got, you and I encourage you to go back and watch our segment from yesterday, which is linked in the description box down below was we're going to get into the Vice president's response to all of this in a little bit. And it is truly, I think unwell is the word I'm going to go with there. [00:04:45] But what's so baffling about this story to me is the fact that at first they sort of acknowledged their mistake, but then they were like, you know what? We just have to double down on everything because I don't know what mistakes or weakness or if they admit to have made a mistake, then it's like, obviously this is a poorly thought out and poorly executed plan [00:05:04] that we now have to cop to. What do you think? Well, they fired the guy who came out and said we made a mistake by deporting this person. I think the only. Look, I don't claim I don't know anybody in the Trump administration. I just go off of what's actually out there in the public record. [00:05:23] And it feels like what they're doing is an attempt to have the most muscular, sort of outwardly powerful response to what I would say is literally the only [00:05:38] mandate that the Trump administration has is that mass deportation or, you know, getting rid of a lot of the people that came to the country under the Biden administration is broadly popular. There's like a 55 to 60% approval for it. [00:05:56] It's literally the only thing, the only leg they have to stand on. And they think, you know, because of that, they need to show, you know, basically a show of force that we will recklessly throw you in a freaking gulag in South America. [00:06:13] The problem that they have is that they have no credibility here. One, we know that net deportations are flat, meaning Joe Biden was deporting the same amount of people as the Trump administration at the at similar rates. [00:06:34] And two, they don't have the goods. All of these gang members, all of these violent criminals, all of these illegal aliens who are, you know, poisoning America's streets and making our children unsafe and, you know, threatening to kill our babies in their cribs. [00:06:50] They don't have a shred of evidence. You know, the one guy they said was the Ms13, ringleader in Virginia. They said, oh, he was like a a kingpin and coordinated this. All they got him on was a gun charge. They got the governor of Virginia to show up to this guy's trial. [00:07:07] Basically, he was a show pony. Like, look, we got a we got a ringleader. Nothing. They they don't have a wiretap. They don't have pictures. They don't have snitches. Fellow miss 13 guys that are like, no, no, this was my boss. They have nothing. And so all they can fall back on is this double down because they've [00:07:24] been caught with their pants down. There's there's there's just no substance here. And the crazy thing for them is that the one thing that is broadly popular about their entire harebrained agenda, they are losing credibility on it by the day. [00:07:41] They're sending barbers, they're sending makeup artists instead of like, I go to the jails where these guys are in county lockup, or these guys are on Rikers Island or something like that, and they're awaiting trial, and it's for violent crimes. I scoop those guys up. I bet you the country would be broadly behind [00:07:58] even this crazy non due process thing. But they're not. They can't they literally can't come up with these people. Yeah, and I thought it was funny also, and I mentioned this on yesterday's show, but they did have one instance recently of terrorism that was actually reported [00:08:13] as being terrorism in the news, but that was that MAGA guy who said, Governor Shapiro's house on fire in Pennsylvania. He was charged with terrorism. So, I mean, they really just have to build this whole narrative around terrorism and gang violence because they know that if people are afraid enough, [00:08:31] then they will support things and they will, including things like the suspension of due process. But actually, speaking of due process, while some in the administration are now just like some some people, including the vice president, they're just pretending that due process just really isn't that important [00:08:49] or it isn't anything that needs to happen in illegal immigration cases specifically. Of course, the issue there is that you don't know if people are illegal or criminals without that due process. But in a long diatribe on ex Vice president JD Vance wrote this, [00:09:05] he says to say the administration must observe due process is to beg the question what process is due is a function of our is a function of our resources, the public interest, the status of the accused, the proposed punishment and so many other factors. [00:09:22] To put it in concrete terms, opposing the death penalty on an American citizen requires more legal process than deporting an illegal alien to their country of origin. Here's a useful test ask the people weeping over the lack of due process, what precisely, [00:09:37] they propose for dealing with Biden's millions and millions of illegals, and with reasonable resource and administrative judge constraints? Does their solution allow us to deport at least a few million people per year? If the answer is no, they've given away their game. [00:09:53] They're given their game away. They don't want border security. They don't want us to deport the people who have come into our country illegally. They want to accomplish through fake legal process what they failed to accomplish politically the ratification of Biden's illegal migrant invasion. [00:10:09] President Trump and I will not stand for it. That is interesting. That entire tweet. Like it was it was very strange. But to Nawaz's earlier point, it does feel like this is something that the Trump administration can really get behind and support in a way that they can't with [00:10:26] some of their other policies right now. Right now, I know we're going to get to this later on in the show, so I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself. But some of his other policies, specifically his tariff policy, he is seeing a plunging in. He's plunging in the ratings right now. His approval rating is diminishing because of that. [00:10:44] And because right now, things like the economy, it's harder and harder for the Trump administration to blame that on the Biden administration, because everyone can see what Trump is doing to affect it directly. In this case, they still can just blame everything on the Biden administration [00:10:59] and everybody's happy. So anyway, the Trump administration's refusal to return Abrego Garcia to the states is now landing other Republican lawmakers in very hot water. Yesterday at a town hall, attendees grilled Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley about Trump defying the Supreme Court. [00:11:16] And it's crazy. Look at this. You're going to bring that guy back from El Salvador. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Why not? Because that's not a that's not a power of Congress. [00:11:32] Supreme court said to bring him back. Judges are. Yeah. And the president isn't upholding the Constitution. He's defying the Committee on the Judiciary Committee. Trump don't care if I get an order for $1,200. [00:11:48] And I just say no. Does that stand up? Because he's got an order from the Supreme Court and he's just said no. Yeah. Yeah. - Screw it. - I'll be able to answer your question. You ignored my letter. The president of that country is not subject to our US Supreme Court. [00:12:16] In case you missed it, what he said was that the president of this country is not subject to the Supreme Court, which is literally not how our government works. It's not how our government was designed to work. Nothing. So today, Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen made it to El Salvador, [00:12:32] where he was denied a meeting and a phone call with Abrego Garcia. Van Hollen and Salvadoran Vice President Felix Ulloa told him the government had no information connecting Abrego Garcia to Ms. 13, but could not accommodate a visit to the notorious secret prison. [00:12:49] And here is some from Van Hollen at a press conference that he held today in El Salvador. Well, I asked the vice president if Abrego Garcia has not committed a crime, and the U.S. [00:13:04] Courts have found that he was illegally taken from the United States, and the government of El Salvador has no evidence that he was part of Ms. 13. Why is El Salvador continuing to hold him in secret? [00:13:21] And his answer was that the Trump administration, is paying El Salvador, the government of El Salvador, to keep him at court. [00:13:39] All right, so in addition to that, this is reporting from the Hill. It says Van Hollen said embassy staff members informed him that they have received no directive from the Trump administration to make outreach on Abrego Garcia's behalf, despite a Supreme Court order to facilitate his return. [00:13:57] So was that was a crazy response that we heard, not just from the vice president, but also from Senator Chuck Grassley also. I think this is also coming up later on in the show, but Jesse Watters on Fox News said that, you know, this guy was obviously Mis 13 because he was obviously wearing a Chicago [00:14:15] Bulls hat or jersey, whichever one. It was as if like, like all of us weren't walking around wearing Chicago Bulls merch back in the 90s, right? So ultimately, this is making Republicans look really bad. We're seeing that backlash at these Republican town halls. That was a Chuck Grassley town hall. [00:14:31] So, you know that that's a very, very red district. So do you think Republicans at large are going to face any kind of backlash from their base over the Trump administration's decision not to abide by court orders, because it really seems like it's bothering a lot of their constituents. [00:14:48] I think the minute that people realize that the immigration stuff is business as usual, there's going to be a backlash. I don't think it's particularly going to be because some guys got deported that shouldn't have. [00:15:03] I don't know that the Republican base really cares all that much about due process for people they deem to be, quote unquote, illegal aliens. But I think when they do get around to noticing that there are no immigrants actually leaving the country, and I think J.D. [00:15:18] Kind of gives the game away like he, in his parlance, in his statement when he says, oh, we don't have the resources. And oh, we can't, bro. You guys have majorities in the Senate and the freaking Congress. Okay. [00:15:33] Why don't you pass a bill appropriating more moneys, more resources to Ice so that you guys can do your mass deportation, put more money behind it? You guys are these guys are allocating, you know, $1 trillion budget for the Pentagon and the military industrial complex. [00:15:54] They're slashing benefits like Medicare. They're doing they're doing all kinds of stuff financially up the Ice budget while you're at it. Okay. And if this is supposed to be about these horrible, allegedly horrible illegal aliens. [00:16:09] Why are we sending six Ice agents at a time to get Columbia students to deport them? Why are we doing this? To protest student protesters of a foreign countries horrific government's actions. [00:16:25] Why are we dedicating resources, these precious resources, to activists against the Israeli government and their regime in the Gaza Strip? It's like these people have no leg to stand on. And the truth of the matter is, I promise you, if these guys rounded these [00:16:42] folks up and just sent them back to El Salvador, Venezuela, people would be like, well, that's what we voted for. It's not what they're instead, they're doing this fake show of force. They're trying to look like tough guys. So they're sending them to these freaking prisons where people are getting [00:16:58] dying all the time, being beaten to death. Sometimes they go starving. They're sending these people to concentration camps, essentially, instead of just doing the thing they were elected to do, which is like, look, people do want to see deportations, but they're not doing that. [00:17:14] So again, they have to do the show pony stuff in order to seem tough when realistically, again, go look at the deportation numbers. They're flat. Biden deported as much people as Trump did, which is insane when you really sit and think about this. [00:17:30] I read so much of this is insane. Like there's so many different aspects of this story that it kind of it feels like you're being gaslit and just, like, spoken to you like you're an idiot this whole time. And that's what our government's doing. This is coming from our elected leaders, which is. Yeah, it's just like, mind blowing. [00:17:45] The longer you sit in this space and like, I know for us, we sit in we like, live in this space. I know a lot of our audience members also live in that space. It's crazy. There's so much going on right now to consider. And yeah, you're absolutely right. This feels like a very fake show of force, right? [00:18:01] They cannot look weak. They can't back down from anything right to the point where they can't. Instead of just admitting that one person that they deported should not have been deported, which is honestly, it happens, right? Like sometimes things happen, things slip through the cracks. [00:18:17] Even if you have such a tight operation running one one mistake, that's understandable, right? But as long as you, once you find out that you made that mistake, you have to rectify what you've done. But instead they just have to double down to the point. Now that they're calling things like due process into into question. [00:18:36] And they're saying, you know what? Look at how great these Salvadoran prisons are that we're sending all these people to. Trump said in an interview that they're they're great. They're a lot of fun. It's a really nice place to be. People want to be in these prisons. These prisons have been flagged by international human rights [00:18:51] organizations for human rights violations, several for years. This is nothing new. So that's where we're sending our people, whether they're supposed to be there like no one's supposed to be in a prison camp. Every time you ring the bell below, an angel gets its wings. [00:19:06] Totally not true. But it does keep you updated on our live shows.