AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

President Trump is meeting in the White House today with the Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, saying the two are working together to, quote, “eradicate terrorist organizations.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted Sunday on social media, quote, “Last night, another 10 criminals from the MS-13 and Tren de Aragua Foreign Terrorist Organizations arrived in El Salvador. The alliance between @POTUS and President @nayibbukele has become an example for security and prosperity in our hemisphere,” unquote.

President Bukele has been a key ally in allowing the Trump administration to remove hundreds of alleged Venezuelan and Salvadoran gang members to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison with little or no evidence or due process. When the Trump administration earlier ignored Federal Judge James Boasberg’s order that, quote, “any plane containing these folks that is going to take off, or is in the air, needs to be returned to the United States,” President Bukele tweeted in response, “Oopsie… Too late.” And that was retweeted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

This comes as the Department of Justice argued in court filings Sunday the administration is not required to return wrongfully expelled Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia, despite a unanimous Supreme Court ruling that ordered the government to “facilitate” his return but remained vague on how exactly this would happen. The husband and father of three has no criminal record.

President Trump was questioned by a reporter Friday about Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Is that the one that was not Tren de Aragua, but he was MS-13?

JEFF MASON: He’s the one that they’ve said needs to come back.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: No, but is — was he MS-13? Because I only know him by that. I mean, I don’t know which one. But if the Supreme Court said bring somebody back, I would do that. I respect the Supreme Court.

JEFF MASON: And the lower court judge, as well? He’s been asking for daily updates about Abrego Garcia.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I don’t — I’m not talking about the lower court. I would respect — I have great respect for the Supreme Court. So, I’m not — you know, I’m not totally well versed as to the specific case. But if they said to bring him back, I would tell them to bring him back.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by Maria Hinojosa, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, founder of Futuro Media, host of Latino USA, co-executive producer of the Pulitzer Prize-winning podcast Suave, which is starting its new season this week. And we’re going to talk about that soon.

But first, it’s great to have you in studio. Talk about your reporting trip to El Salvador and today’s meeting between President Trump and President Bukele of El Salvador.

MARIA HINOJOSA: Amy, it’s great to be with you.

I was in El Salvador several weeks ago. I went down to do a story, actually, that has to do with women behind bars. We’ll talk about that when we break that story, coming up soon. So I was attempting to get access to the women’s prison, as well as CECOT. And —

AMY GOODMAN: And explain what CECOT is.

MARIA HINOJOSA: CECOT is a new prison. It is a — how can you say it? It’s like an industrialized form of prison making, right? Super new, built up, lights on all the time. But the problem is not only the way in which the prison is constructed, but because of Bukele and, basically, de facto martial law in El Salvador, when you are put in that prison, you have no due process. You have no visitors, Amy. No visitors. So, when we attempted to go to another prison, Ilopango prison, which used to be the big prison until it was replaced by CECOT, that’s actually right on a major thoroughway, but there were no people coming in and out. And I just think it’s really important for people to understand that. When you are put in prison in El Salvador, you do not have rights for people to come and visit you, almost no right to even get a lawyer. It is extraordinary.

And the only person, ultimately, Amy — it’s going to sound strange; I know it sounded strange to me — was you get permission to get into CECOT by President Bukele. So, that would basically be like President Trump having to give you access to any federal prison that you want to visit. It’s an extraordinary hold on power that he controls who will be able to go into that prison. And any journalist who goes has these mixed feelings, because they know that they are being used by the Bukele administration to put images out there that put fear in a lot of people.

Let us be clear that the people who were first taken by the United States and sent to El Salvador, those people, the majority, are not criminals. They do not have a criminal record. So, this is why it should be of concern to everybody, that these are just people who are — by the way, they’re not being deported, Amy. “Deported” means you have gone through a legal process, you have seen a judge, you have been formally deported. These people were removed. It’s another way of saying it, but they were removed — no due process, no seeing a judge.

Then some people say, “Well, isn’t that really that they were kidnapped and are now being held in El Salvador?” And some people would go further and say, “Weren’t they trafficked?” If they do not know — if they don’t have access to their documents, they don’t know where they’re going, they don’t know who’s taking them, they’ve been told not to speak to anyone, and they don’t know when they’re going to be released, that is what is the label for somebody who’s been trafficked.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s amazing to watch the video footage of the men being taken to the prison. It was all — I mean, we know how Trump feels about reality television — so carefully filmed. And the images of Kristi Noem, the former South Dakota governor, head of Homeland Security, with her $75,000 Rolex, standing in front of these caged men.

MARIA HINOJOSA: Correct.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele addressing an adoring crowd at CPAC 2024 in Washington, D.C.

PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: We did the unthinkable to cleanse our society. We arrested the terrorists. But we have to remove corrupt judges and corrupt attorneys and prosecutors, these corrupt judges and prosecutors who are setting the gangs, the gang members free.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: And Nancy Pelosi!

PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: And it wasn’t just the gangs. The corrupt system work in tandem with the so-called international community, the NGOs and, of course, the fake news, just like it happens here in the United States.

AMY GOODMAN: So, as you have Bukele going after the NGOs, the “fake news,” the same language Trump uses, Bukele calling himself “the coolest dictator.” The significance of this meeting today, Maria? Who’s modeling themselves on who?

MARIA HINOJOSA: So, Amy, you and I have been covering the story of El Salvador and the United States involvement in politics in El Salvador since the 1980s.

AMY GOODMAN: When the U.S. funded death squads, paramilitary organizations.

MARIA HINOJOSA: There were four Maryknoll nuns who were raped and murdered by men who were, in fact, de facto trained by the United States, right? People, many young people don’t know this. But never, Amy, did I imagine that we would be in a situation where the Trump administration, the United States, is looking to El Salvador, to the Bukele administration, and saying, “Huh, we kind of like what you’re doing. Maybe we should take a cue from you. Why don’t we just declare our own form of martial law and deny due process not just to people who were not born in this country, but to everyone?”

But it’s important to know that like any dictatorship, it is not forever. And what’s happened now because of Bukele’s administration allowing itself to be used by the Trump administration to house undocumented people, there are cracks that are starting to show. You would not have seen a protest against Bukele in El Salvador. You have in the past month. So people are taking to the streets. The cracks are beginning to show, because you cannot have a carceral country without people saying, “Hey, this is too much. You have taken people with no due process, who are innocent, and holding them behind bars for decades.”

AMY GOODMAN: And hundreds of people have died in Salvador’s jails, in their prisons.

MARIA HINOJOSA: Yeah. And so, there are people who are dying right now, Amy, on U.S. territory in detention camps or when they are attempting to cross the border. So, death because you’re an immigrant, because you were not for in this country, is a reality for people here. And the horror that, you know, in our country now, there are firing squads. So, it is a very dystopian.

I have to say, being in El Salvador, where you only use dollars, it’s just — it’s El Salvador, but the only currency that is used is dollars. It’s very strange. I do know how quarters are going to survive in the world. It’s because people use quarters to buy pupusas in El Salvador. And it’s just like you’re using American dollars.

Also, Bukele is a mastermind of public relations. He’s attempting to change the entire country of El Salvador to a “Surf City.” Go surfing. Just go surfing.

AMY GOODMAN: The country of El Salvador is called “Surf City”?

MARIA HINOJOSA: Basically, that is the new public relations. And he’s selling this to American retirees to go and buy up land in El Salvador and make that their home of retirement.

AMY GOODMAN: So, when we see the men with their heads shaved, not having due process in the United States, most don’t know most of the names of the hundreds of people who were sent, and this question of whether Kilmar will be released — you can’t have a higher meeting than President Trump with Bukele today. The U.S. paying millions of dollars to imprison the refugees, if you will, those who are kidnapped — we’ll see what happens. We’ll follow this up tomorrow. But the effect it’s having on immigrant communities in the United States? Like Chicago, what, canceled its Cinco de Mayo celebration?

MARIA HINOJOSA: You know what, Amy? That was — first of all, the fact that the United States government is resisting returning Kilmar should be of concern for every single one of us. For myself, not being born in this country, there’s a heightened interest, but everyone should care about the fact that the United States is just taking people and removing them without due process.

When I read that Chicago, my hometown, where I was raised, South Sider, that they are canceling the Cinco de Mayo celebration and parade — and what struck me was, we don’t have anything to celebrate.

And this is something, Amy, that, as a journalist covering last year, deeply covering the Latino and Latina vote and being in Latino and Latina communities and hearing Latino voters saying, “Oh, we like Trump, because our economy is terrible, and he’s a great businessman, and I want to be like him. Let’s get him in,” and it’s like, did you not — did you already forget what happened? This is not new. Our communities have lived through this. But the heightened police state, that all of us are living in, by the way, Amy — everyone is only talking about, like, focusing on immigrant communities. We already know that American citizens are being taken out of the country, mistakenly being deported. Oh, whoops. Again, “Oopsie.” We know now that — 

AMY GOODMAN: And the lawyer who admitted, the Justice Department lawyer, that they’re being so-called deported by mistake has been suspended, put on leave.

MARIA HINOJOSA: Correct. So, everyone in the country now, Amy, has to be thinking, “Do I have a copy of my passport with me? Where’s my birth certificate? Wow! Where is my birth certificate? Do I know?” It is not enough in the United States now to be walking around with your driver’s license.

And that is the thing, Amy, that I have been talking about for decades, which is, “Oh, you think it’s only impacting people like me who are immigrants? It’s impacting you.” Who were the secret police who were taking protesters off the streets in Seattle and Portland at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020? They were Border Patrol. What is the largest law enforcement agency in the United States? Border Patrol. Which has the least amount of oversight? Border Patrol. That impacts all of us, not just those of us who were not born in the United States.

AMY GOODMAN: This is a conversation we will continue. Maria Hinojosa is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and founder of Futuro Media. She’s the host of Latino USA, co-executive producer of the Pulitzer Prize-winning podcast Suave, which is where we’re going next. Tomorrow, Suave, on the second season of this podcast, is being released. Stay with us.