What Next | The Lives Ruined by Trump's Deportation Machine

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4 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 3 April 2025

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Trump campaigned on deporting dangerous criminals, but in his administration’s haste to deliver on that promise, men with no criminal records or who are in the United States legally have been taken to a prison in El Salvador, which even the administration admits was a mistake. Guests: Jonathan Blitzer, staff writer at the New Yorker, author of Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis. Nick Miroff, staff writer for The Atlantic covering immigration. Want more What Next? Join Slate Plus to unlock full, ad-free access to What Next and all your other favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the What Next show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/whatnextplus to get access wherever you listen. Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, Ethan Oberman, and Rob Gunther. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:36.4	Here's a question I've been asking myself.
0:38.4	As I watch U.S. courts try to figure out what to do, about 238 men who got shipped
0:45.6	off to El Salvador without so much as a hearing.
0:49.9	Is the U.S. just doing black sites now?
0:56.6	So I called up Jonathan Blitzer, who covers immigration over at The New Yorker.
1:01.4	And I put this question to him.
1:03.9	I don't think that's an exaggeration.
1:07.3	Little refresher here.
1:08.6	A black site is defined as a clandestine detention center for prisoners who are being held without due process.
1:15.6	The U.S. is accusing people of a crime, or not even a crime specifically, of an identity that they are not presented with evidence of, and that they're not allowed to contest.
1:26.6	And then they're being
1:27.7	summarily sent to a place in El Salvador where, yes, they are effectively being held in a
1:33.3	black site. So, you know, I don't think, I don't think your formulation is off the mark. I think
1:38.7	it's exactly what's happening. The Salvadoran detention facility that's received these people has been called a mega prison.
1:48.0	It's known as SICOT.
1:50.4	SICOT is the acronym for what in Spanish translates to the center for the confinement of terrorism.
1:58.7	And this is a prison that was built in the middle of this so-called state of
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