This week, Trump openly defied a unanimous Supreme Court ruling to return Kilmar to his family in Maryland after he was wrongfully deported and sent to a prison in El Salvador.
All these deportations are wrong, but even the Trump administration admitted his deportation was an error, while still refusing to return him or end their cruel practices. Instead, in his meeting with El Salvador’s President Bukele on Monday, Trump said “you’ve got to build five more places” — mega-prisons for the U.S. residents and citizens that Trump would like to send there.1
As Jews, we are raising our voices with people across the country who are fighting for Kilmar — and everyone who has been disappeared — to demand urgent action from our elected leaders.
On Wednesday, April 16, Senator Chris Van Hollen boarded a flight to El Salvador to personally fight to bring Kilmar home to his wife and son and union colleagues who are advocating for his release.2 This is the kind of leadership we need.
We need leaders who will advocate for the safe return of abducted constituents, support their families in crisis, make unannounced visits to detention centers to shine a light on the conditions, and oppose any additional funding the Trump administration requests that would enable them to detain and deport our family, friends, and neighbors.
As Jews, we’ve seen this before: First they came for asylum seekers. Then they came for visa-holding students, activists, particularly those who are Muslim or Arab. Now this administration is saying it will come for American citizens.3 We demand our political leaders protect our communities and our democracy from the assault of Trump’s disappearances.