Deported by Fallacy

ICE's Cruel Circular Logic for Sending Hundreds to a Brutal Salvadoran Prison

Part one in a four-part series examining the Trump administration’s violation of logical, legal, and ethical principles in unilaterally deporting hundreds of men to a Salvadoran maximum security prison.

On March 12, 2025, Kilmar Abrego Garcia finished up at his job as a sheet metal worker, picked up his 5 year old, and was heading to his Maryland home. Garcia, a legal U.S. resident, was then pulled over by Homeland Security agents. They informed him that his “status has changed” and arrested him.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents allegedly told Garcia that his child would need to be picked up within ten minutes or would be handed to Child Protective Services. His wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, arrived to find her husband “confused, distraught and crying,” but, like the spouse of the Columbia University student, Mahmoud Khalil, she was given no explanation for his arrest. Days later, Garcia was put on a plane along with hundreds of other alleged gang members to a maximum security prison in El Salvador, a country with a record of violating the rights of its prisoners.

Garcia’s deportation occurred in spite of the fact he was under the protection of a 2019 court order. Protected from what? From being sent to his home country, El Salvador, a country his lawyers say he fled after being threatened with death by gang members attempting to extort his parents.

The U.S. government admitted, in court filings, that they were aware of Garcia's protection from removal to El Salvador but claimed he was deported anyway due to “administrative error.” Thus the government sent a working father and husband who came to the United States fleeing gang violence to a prison specializing in incarcerating the most violent gang members. Garcia’s case exemplifies the Trump administration’s prioritization of political aims over legal and ethical integrity.

A Maryland father protected by court order was shipped to a Salvadoran prison over an “administrative error” — while ICE admitted knowing his life was in danger.

In mid-March 2025, the Trump administration deported more than 200 Venezuelan nationals alleged to be members of the gang, Tren de Aragua (TDA) to El Salvador. The men, who included non-Venezuelans like Garcia, were sent to the maximum-security prison “Terrorist Confinement Center” known by its Spanish acronym CECOT. A 2023 U.S. State Department report concluded that El Salvador had" “[s]ignificant human rights issues” that include “credible reports of: unlawful or arbitrary killings; enforced disappearance; torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by security forces; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions…”

Men deported by the United States are received at into custody by the Salvadoran government.

In a March 16 post to Truth Social, President Donald Trump shared an El Salvadorian propaganda video showcasing detainees being received from the United States. The footage showed the men Trump called “monsters” shackled, shoved around, and forcefully shaven.

In 2022, El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele declared a state of emergency and oversaw a rounding up of more than 80,000 people suspected of gang membership. According to the Central American human rights group, Cristosal, at least 265 people have died in state custody or shortly following their release. The group presented evidence that prisoners have been subjected to “the use of torture, as well as other forms of cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment.” Interviewees reported “being hung by the wrists” and extreme forms of physical abuse. One woman described being forced to perform 1,200 squats and was then hung by her wrists when she dared to advocate for a fellow detainee.

An aerial view of CECOT.

From Japanese Internment to Salvadoran Deportations: The Alien Enemies Act Reborn

President Trump has invoked the Aliens Enemies Act of 1798, declaring wartime authority to exercise maximum unilateral action against TDA. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, the Alien Enemies Act provides presidents’ wartime authority “to detain and deport natives and citizens of an enemy nation.” Under the law, the president is entitled to target people for arrest and deportation based on of their country of origin.

Prior invocations of the law occurred during the War of 1812, World War I, and World War II. During World Wars I and II, the executive branch directed the detention and expulsion of immigrants from Germany, Austro-Hungary, Japan, and Italy. During World War II, more than 100,000 people of Japanese descent were incarcerated, a majority of whom were U.S. citizens.

Many legal experts believe Trump's enactment of the Alien Enemies Act is illegitimate since it requires a declaration of war. Congress, not the executive branch, is singularly entitled to declare war. And the U.S. Congress has not declared war on the TDA.

Even if the United States was at war with TDA, the government is failing to treat the accused gang members with the same legal respect Nazis were extended during World War II. During a late March hearing on the deportations before the U.S. Court of Appeals, Judge Patricia Millett observed that “Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act” than the people flown to a Salvadorian prison in mid-March without due process.

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Nevertheless, the Trump administration continues to unilaterally deport members of gangs it insists the United States is “at war” with El Salvador, denying them due process proceedings. On the last day of March 2025, the administration announced that it deported an additional 17 people to El Salvador. The men were alleged to be “violent criminals” and members of TDA and the MS-13 gangs.

Given the risks posed to those sent to El Salvador and the rushed nature of their deportations, family members and friends of the deported have demanded to know what evidence the Trump administration is relying on to determine TDA gang member affiliation. On April 1st, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) asked the Supreme Court to uphold a prior judge's order that the Trump administration halt it's deportations under the Alien Enemies Act.

Human rights groups and people of humanistic conscience are further demanding to know on what legal and ethical grounds anyone regardless of criminal history can or should be sent to a nation credibly accused of violating essential human freedoms. Such inquiries may prove of importance to U.S. citizens in light of El Salvador’s president’s offer to the Trump administration to jail U.S. citizens if asked to do so. The publicly available answers reveal fallacious and unethical reasoning and an authoritarian overreach of executive power.

Circular Logic: How ICE Officials Defend the Indefensible

During an interview with ABC’s This Week ICE’s acting director, Tom Homan, declared everyone sent to El Salvador by the Trump administration were gang members. “That plane removed 240 terrorists from the United States,” said Homan.

When asked how the Trump administration determined gang membership, Homan equivocated, refusing to specify the criteria used by the government. Instead of listing the criteria, Homan said he noticed many in the media highlighting that many of those deported did not have criminal records. “Well, a lot of gang members don't have criminal histories. Just like a lot of terrorists in this world, they're not in any terrorist database, right?” Homan evaded the question at hand to observe that gang members don’t always leave evidence of their gang membership.

Though Homan’s observation is accurate, it doesn’t answer the question of how the administration determines gang membership. Homan appears not to have considered that sometimes evidence isn’t found because, well, a crime hasn’t been committed. Most of us don’t leave evidence of gang membership because most of us aren’t gang members. Those of us who don’t leave evidence of gang membership who are gang members are a much smaller group. And it is the job of law enforcement to ascertain the evidence to prove the conclusion rather than to assume the conclusion in question. Homan, it seems, prefers to deploy the fallacy of begging the question.

Trump’s Affinity with Autocracy and the Humanities’ Struggle for Life-Affirming Values

Arguing From Absence: When No Evidence Becomes “Proof”

Homan isn’t the only Trump administration figure deploying fallacies to defend unilateral deportations of people to a prison system known for allowing its people to be brutalized and killed. Robert Cerna, the acting Field Office Director of Enforcement and Removal Operations for ICE, insisted that the administration was justified in sending the Venezuelan nationals to the Salvadorian prison because many of the men are “terrorists.” What supports this claim? According to Cerna, the evidence is the lack of “specific information about each individual.”

In a sworn declaration, Cerna argued that “the lack of specific information about each individual (alleged gang member) actually highlights the risk they pose' and 'demonstrates that they are terrorists with regard to whom we lack a complete profile.”

But an absence of evidence that these men committed a crime no more proves their guilt than proves their innocence. Cerna committed—some might say deployed—the appeal to ignorance fallacy, also known as arguing from ignorance. This is the fallacy of using a lack of evidence as proof for our claim.

Imagine Samantha claims the BeeHive restaurant is amazing because no one has written any bad reviews for the restaurant. Samantha's friend, Ryan, asks what the good reviews say about the restaurant. Samantha replies that no one has yet written any reviews, good or bad, about the place. But the absence of reviews doesn't prove anything. That absence is just a question mark. Maybe the BeeHive will be great, maybe it will be bad or just mediocre.

As scientist Carl Sagan put it, echoing many before him, “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” We aren’t obligated to assent to a claim until its supporters have presented evidence that proves the point. The lack of evidence for a given claim proves, well, nothing.

Thus, Cerna proves nothing about the guilt of the men in question when he cites the government’s lack of evidence regarding their criminal activity. And in a society where people are deemed innocent until proven guilty, the absence of evidence of wrongdoing entitled us to retain our freedom. That people like Garcia and many others would be taken from their homes and families on suspicion and a lack of evidence merits an outcry from all who values fairness and liberty.

If this piece left you with more fury than hope, transform it. Contact your elected officials to educate them on the issue and tell them where you stand. Silence is the ally of injustice. Speak.

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