Trump invokes wartime powers to deport hundreds of alleged members of a Venezuelan gang

PBS News Hour Full Episode- Monday March 17, 2025

Monday on the News Hour, the Trump administration invokes wartime powers to deport hundreds of alleged members of a Venezuelan gang. The President dismantles Voice of America and the news and information it provided to people in autocratic countries. Plus, despite an increase in autism diagnoses, law enforcement often lacks training to respond effectively to people with developmental disabilities.

You can also watch the entire report on the PBS website by clicking this link.

Below are some quotes from the episode:

“More than 200 immigrants deported en masse from the U.S., shackled, their hair shaved off, and now locked in one of El Salvador’s most infamous mega prisons. It came after president donald trump invoked the alien enemies act of 1798, a sweeping wartime authority allowing the president to detain and deport citizens of an “enemy nation” without a hearing of any sort.”

“The U.S., paying six million dollars to El Salvador to detain the migrants. One part of the president’s mass deportation plans playing out in spite of a federal judge’s quick weekend order to temporarily block it.”

“… Judge Boasberg verbally ordered the planes carrying the deportees turn around immediately. But later that night, El Salvador released video of the immigrants being frog walked off busses and into jail. The next morning, El Salvador’s President, Nayib Bukele, posted a headline about the judge’s order, writing “Oopsie … too late” with a laughing emoji. Secretary of state Marco Rubio reposted the tweet from El Salvador’s President mocking the American judge’s order…”

The Department of Justice now refuses to answer questions about how many deportations flights took place over the weekend.

The DOJ now wants to remove Judge Boasberg from the case entirely after the judge refused to cancel the court hearing about the unauthorized deportations. No names of deportees have been released despite president trump claiming them all to be criminals.

People living in the U.S. on green cards and valid work permits are also subject to this wartime act. Four key examples of this are two Columbia University students (one from Palestine, one from India) who were detained for protesting against the mass murder of Palestinian people. A green card holder from Germany (who renewed his green card recently with no issues) was ‘violently interrogated’ , stripped and detained, while flying back to the U.S. from Luxembourg. A kidney transplant doctor at Brown University with an H-1B visa from Lebanon was deported last week when returning from visiting family for allegedly having ‘sympathetic’ photos of Hezbollah leaders.

This opens up a pipeline and sets a worrying precedent for the possible deportation of students and immigrant doctors (and other professionals) who come to train in the U.S.