LexBlog (LexBlog El Salvador)

By: Dawn M. Lurie, Alexander J. Madrak, and Selene Malench* Updates at a Glance: TPS El Salvador EAD Extension On April 28, USCIS updated its TPS website. It now notes that individuals with TPS-related EADs showing a facial expiration date of March 9, 2025 are authorized to work through July 22, 2026. USCIS has not posted any...

I recently met with the family of a man from El Salvador who we’ll call Jorge. Jorge was detained by […]

El Salvador has partnered with xAI to implement a nationwide AI-powered education program, aiming to provide personalized tutoring to over one million students across more than 5,000 public schools. Utilizing xAI’s Grok model, the initiative seeks to tailor learning experiences to each student’s pace and preferences, thereby transforming the country’s education system into a...

Kilmar Ábrego García fled El Salvador as a teenager, running from gang violence that would have consumed him. For fourteen years, he built America—literally. His hands laid the concrete, raised the steel, and constructed the roads and buildings that form the backbone of our infrastructure. He married Jennifer Vasquez Sura, a U.S. citizen, and together...

  NBC News reports Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador and accused of being a gang member, was released from federal custody this afternoon.  Abrego Garcia’s case made it to the Supreme Court, which held that the U.S. government should facilitate his return to the United States.  He was...

The misconduct claim against US District Chief Judge James Boasberg was announced by Attorney General Pam Bondi

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons Wrongfully removed to El Salvador, Kilmar Abrego Garcia has much experience in the U.S. courts.  The Supreme Court ordered the U.S. government to facilitate his return from El Salvador.  After languishing in Salvadoran prison for several months, Abrego Garcia was returned to the United States only to be charged with...

Reuters reports that over 200 Venezuelans who were deported from the United States on allegations of gang membership earlier this year and detained in an El Salvador jail arrived home to Caracas on Friday. The release was part of an exchange, with 10 Americans held in Venezuela returned to the United States.  See also here....

The New Republic reports that “Emails provided to Congress by a whistleblower and 15-year veteran of the Justice Department reveal that administration officials went to striking lengths to prop up the claim that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was a “leader” of the MS-13 gang—even as President Trump was coming under intense pressure to return him from...

They say Salvadoran officials, not US administration, have legal authority over the men

The Associated Press reports that El Salvador President Nayib Bukele denied allegations that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was beaten and subject to psychological torture in a Salvadoran prison.  In a post on the social media platform X, Bukele wrote that Abrego Garcia “wasn’t tortured, nor did he lose weight.” The post included pictures and video of Abrego...

Holy smokes, y’all. I highly recommend this New Yorker article on the life and times of Mario Guevara, an El Salvadoran national who reports on immigration in the Atlanta area. In his 20s, Guevara was a reporter in El Salvador. He and his family fled El Salvador for the US in 2004. Guevara applied for asylum,...

After coming to the U.S. as children, and living in the country for nine years, brothers Jose, 20, and Josue Lopez, 19, were detained during a routine immigration check-in and deported to El Salvador.  Read the Spanish version here. As Documented reports, “Jose and Josue had lived in the U.S. for nine years after migrating from...

Solito by Javier Zamora (2022) Publisher’s Abstract   Javier Zamora’s adventure is a 3,000-mile journey from his small town in El Salvador, through Guatemala and Mexico, and across the U.S. border.  He will leave behind his beloved aunt and grandparents to reunite with a mother who left four years ago and a father he barely remembers....

  Today, I was denied access to seeing my constituent, Mr. Kilmar Abrego Garcia. If there is nothing to hide, cut the crap. Let his lawyer and I check on him.CASAforall pic.twitter.com/V310GDmIc4 — Rep. Glenn Ivey (RepGlennIvey) May 26, 2025 The Hill reports that Congressman Glenn Ivey (D-Md) announced that he was denied access to meet...

Who knew that WIRED magazine–with its focus on “how technology is changing every aspect of our lives”–would become a go to for immigration news? Here are two of their latest immigration & tech stories. First, Hackers penetrated GlobalX, the company behind the ICE Air. For a three paragraph story, it contains a plethora of fascinating...

John Oliver is always a solid bet for discussion of immigration & deportation issues. I, for one, learned that I missed out on the fact that the White House used Closing Time by Semisonic in one of their anti-immigration videos, which the band was not well pleased about. I was, though, on top of the...

My colleague Chimene Keitner (Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s wrongful deportation case is more about individual rights than the Trump administration’s foreign policy) answers some questions about the wrongful deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia for The Conversation.  Her bottom line:  The Trump administration claims that judges’ orders in the cases of immigrants deported to a prison in El...

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons News flash (and here)!  A federal court held that President Donald Trump unlawfully invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to summarily deport (i.e., remove without due process) Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador.  The court enjoined the administration from further deportations under the Alien Enemies Act. The decision from U.S. District...

  The saga of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who the U.S. government wrongfully deported to El Salvador, is not going away and will be a topic of scholarly commentary for years to come.   The Supreme Court has ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his Abrego’s return to the United States.  In the latest chapter, in...

The wrongful deportation case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia remains in the news. NPR reports that the Trump administration received bipartisan criticism over the weekend for the removal of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran who lived in Maryland and was deported in El Salvador due to an “administrative error.” Senator John Kennedy (R-Louisiana), called the deportation a...

  Bukele shares images of Kilmar Abrego Garcia meeting with Sen. Van Holland https://t.co/y11HASNjBw — Joshua Collins (murosinvisibles.bsky.social) (InvisiblesMuros) April 18, 2025   Senator Van Holland : “I’ve been in El Salvador all day fighting for the return of Mr. Abrego Garcia. The Trump Admin can lie all they want, but the Court said they...

The Trump administration’s claim that it canot do anything to free Kilmar Abrego Garcia from an El Salvador prison and return him to the U.S. “should be shocking,” a federal appeals court said today in a ruling.   The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit unanimously refused to stay a...

Cassandra Burke Robertson The saga continues.  The Conversation explains the latest in the attempt of the Trump administration to seen Venezuelans to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act.  Federal judge finds ‘probable cause’ to hold Trump administration in contempt – a legal scholar explains what this means Here is The Conversation description of the...

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the U.S. government’s request to reverse a district court order requiring the administration to “facilitate and effectuate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who the U.S. government admits was wrongfully removed from the United States. “The judge had issued the order in response to a lawsuit filed by...

  Mistakes will be made?   The Supreme Court last week addressed the case of the “mistaken” removal of a noncitizen to El Salvador. Here is another mistake by immigration authorities.  This story (“DHS told her to leave the country. She’s a citizen — and an immigration attorney‘) about Massachusetts immigration attorney Nicole Micheroni received an...

A familiar story from Documented: “On March 15, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained [a Venezuelan father’s] 19-year-old son, Merwil Gutiérrez, and another 237 Venezuelans. He had no criminal record, neither in Venezuela nor the U.S., nor did he have any tattoos — one of the features that the U.S. police used to link...

    NPR’s Code Switch looks at  at how the Trump administration is testing the legal limits on immigration enforcement.  Listen to the story of one family trying to find their 18-year-old son after immigration officers showed up at their door, arrested him, and removed him to El Salvador.  The claim made — without proof...

    Immigration Hub had this to say about the “60 Minutes”segment about the Trump administration’s removals of Venezuelans under the Alien Enemies Act: “Washington, D.C. –  On Sunday night, 60 Minutes aired a searing report on the mass removals of Venezuelan immigrants to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador. The report revealed that the...

Jennifer Selin in The Conversation (“Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans to El Salvador sparks legal questions likely to reach the Supreme Court“) considers the case involving the Trump administration’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans without due process.  A federal appeals court upheld a temporary block on...