What the government can do to you without due process

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Mansa Musa:

Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa. Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a household name, and what makes him a household name is the manner in which he was kidnapped from this country and taken to El Salvador prison under the pretense that he was a gang member.

Where did the information come from to say he was a gang member? You’ll be surprised. Joining me today is Baynard Woods, a writer and journalist based in Baltimore. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian and the Washington Post, Oxford American Magazine, and many other publications.

He’s the co-author with Brandon Soderberg of I Got A Monster: The Rising Fall of America’s Most Corrupt Police Squad.

Thanks for joining me, Baynard.

Baynard Woods:

Great to be here. A long-time fan of the show.

Mansa Musa:

And so, you heard when I opened up. And the reason why I opened up because you was the one that reported on Garcia, Kilmar Garcia and the pretext that was used to initially say that he was a gang member. Talk about that.

Baynard Woods:

Yeah, so it was a couple months, actually, I think already into early May after he was first taken in mid-March off the streets, leaving a work site in Baltimore, headed down home to Prince George’s County. Pulled over into the Ikea right by the Ikea down there, parking lot. And then his family never saw him again.

And the federal government was citing a 2019 case in which he was pulled. He was stopped with three other men at a Home Depot. And one of the cops, Ivan Mendez is his name, identified and claimed that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was a gang member of MS-13.

And that was the case that banned him from being sent to El Salvador. The judge said that he couldn’t, and this was months later. He was locked up for months before the judge ruled that he couldn’t be sent back there because there was a good chance he could be tortured or harmed by a gang that he had refused to join there. Another irony of the story.

But three days later, it was only three days after writing that report that Ivan Mendez remained a police officer. He was suspended after those three days. He had already committed a crime in giving information about an investigation to a sex worker that he had a relationship with to help them avoid a police sting.

And so, he was ultimately criminally charged. The New Republic did some great reporting that revealed his name. And so, once we had that name, I was able to go in and find the do-not-call list of the Prince George’s County [inaudible 00:03:15]-

Mansa Musa:

State’s Attorney, yeah.

Baynard Woods:

… Prosecutor, State’s Attorney, and his name was on that list as someone that’s not allowed to testify.

And what that means is if they stop you for a traffic stop or anything else, their word isn’t good enough to hold you on or to be used in court. And so, the federal government was using the word of this cop that couldn’t stand up in traffic court to justify sending a man with no due process whatsoever to a offshore Gulag in the CECOT prison in El Salvador.

Mansa Musa:

And so, do you think it was in terms of that right there, because this was public information, so do you think that this was premeditated on part of federal government, one? And two, in your investigation, did they ever contact Prince George’s County State’s Attorney Aisha Braveboy to see why she put him on do-not-call list? Because they’re relying on the report of this officer. To your knowledge, one, why did they ignore it? And two, to your knowledge, did they ever contact Prince George’s County [inaudible 00:04:31]?

Baynard Woods:

I don’t think they did contact Braveboy or, I tried to speak with her and got a comment from her office, but I did get a copy. Part of it was one of the charges was redacted, but with Brandon Soderberg, who I wrote the book with, got a copy of his disciplinary, Mendez’s disciplinary charges from before.

And so, we do know that was why he was put on the do-not-call list. I don’t think that Homeland Security looked at that at all. I think they were all covering afterwards. I think they were just, we’ve over the last decades, as you well know, we’ve given up the Fourth Amendment in this country in many ways by allowing a racist drug war, making the worst assumptions about people that are arrested, newspapers running police allegation. Police say stories all the time.

And so, we have so little transparency around policing and so little accountability that I don’t think they ever bothered to look at who the cop was who wrote this. They had on paper that he was a gang member, and that’s all they wanted or needed.

Mansa Musa:

And let’s talk about that, because United States Senator Van Hollen, he had went to Visit Garcia. But he said, initially he went down there and tried to find out why, try to get them to send him back. And they pretty much ignored him because they saying, “Well, this is under Salvadoran jurisdiction. United States don’t have nothing to do with this no more.”

As it worked its way out, they just became more and more ridiculous in how they dialed down on hold on to the abuse. But he said, and I want you to address this, he said that Garcia’s, this is not unique case, that this is a particular practice that’s going on in the United States as they round up and kidnap people that they consider illegal aliens or undocumented workers.

In your investigation, have you seen that or have you maybe get a sense of that this particular mythology, and the mythology being, “Oh, you’re a gang member. You got locked up for and because of that, we can send you out.”

Not saying how the resolution of the case nor the fact that they saying, “I’m going to take you before the court and let the court, was supposed to make the determination on whether or not you had probable cause to proceed with this act.”

Have you in your investigation or do you see this as something that’s developing as we speak?

Baynard Woods:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s both a new strategy and the same old strategy of criminalizing street culture and street fashion. One of the reasons he was deemed a gang member was because he was wearing Chicago Bulls hat and jacket. And there’s been some great reporting on all of the Venezuelan… The signs of Venezuelan street culture that don’t necessarily have anything to do with gangs have been used as evidence to deport the hundreds of Venezuelans that have been just snatched up in exactly that same way.

The real difference with Abrego Garcia’s case is that there was a protective order prohibiting him from being sent to El Salvador. So, when they sent the Venezuelans to El Salvador, many of them thought they were being sent home, and so their mothers were preparing their rooms for him. They called, “I’m coming home,” and then they get sent to a prison for indeterminate length of time in El Salvador instead.

The reason that we know Abrego Garcia’s name, one of the main reasons is that it was illegal to send him to El Salvador, which was his country of origin because he had to flee from threats on his life for not joining a gang.

Mansa Musa:

And I read in your article where you cited that his family had a business. The gang was extorting them. They was paying. The gang wasn’t satisfied with that. They wanted the family members to join. Eventually he wound up in the United States. And Garcia, they paid to try to prevent him from being recruited by the gang.

When that didn’t work, they sent him them to the United States. So, all this information came out. All this was evidence initially, but let’s talk about now fast-forward. Okay, so after all this, they finally, in the face of being cited for contempt and possibly being the consequences of that being more severe than maintaining this farce, they finally sent him back. Where’d they send him back to?

Baynard Woods:

So, they sent him back to Tennessee, central Tennessee district, which is a pretty white and very conservative district, federal court district, much more so than Maryland where Judge Xinis is the one who’s been really at war with the administration to make sure that they facilitate his return. The Supreme Court agreed with Judge Xinis. So, the last thing they wanted to do was give him a fair due process in Maryland.

He was pulled over and videotaped in Tennessee in 2021 with a car of people. And the troopers believed that they were undocumented and that he was transporting them. They’re now using that. Just the same way that they used his earlier encounter in Maryland, they’re now using that as part of a two-count criminal indictment, charging him with trafficking. With transporting, not trafficking, they keep using the word, but of transporting undocumented people.

What they did, though, as they do in so many federal prosecutions especially, and they made it a conspiracy case, so it’s much harder for him to beat, and then they threw out all of these allegations and the indictment that they’re not charging him with, which means that they don’t have the evidence. They claim that he was transporting children. So, then they bring up both, child trafficker. They say that he was alleged to have abused women.

No evidence for any of these things. And this is what they do, as you know, in so many, especially in federal conspiracy cases, they’ll just load the indictments with other information that the press can pick up and use. And it colors our understanding of not only the individual case, but the way that justice works.

And so, it’s a real miscarriage. And they say they’ll be trying him in Tennessee, and they want him to remain incarcerated there until the trial.

Mansa Musa:

Right. And that right there, to your point, that discourages people from wanting to participate in the process. That discourage people from supporting people like Garcia because the arbitrary nature of the charges, one. And for the benefit of our audience, it’s standard procedure in this country that you be having the right due process of the law, the 14th Amendment.

It’s standard procedure that once you’re allegedly charged with something, then in order to be charged, they have to bring evidence, information to support those charges. This is standing practice in the country. You can’t just come up and say, “Oh, a person is a pick-pocketer or a shoplifter,” and then put me on a plane to El Salvador or put me or take me to a prison in California.

You have to have bring me before someone that’s going, and the accusing party got to submit their information to say, “This is why we believe that he fit this criteria to be sent to El Salvador.”

But they avoided that and avoided detention because they could never present that information. So, going forward, how do you think it’s going to play out now? Because now seem like, well, initially the reports were, and President Trump and the president of El Salvador, Bukele, I think is, pronounce his name, they was in the White House. And both of them was like, “Well, he not coming back,” or, “He’s not a United States citizen.”

I mean, so therefore we’re entitled to it. But going forward, how you think it’s going to play out in terms of what I just said? Because now it comes down to, okay, he had a day in court where he pled not guilty, but now it comes down to is he going to be allowed to submit information to exonerate him of this? Is the information that they had going to be looked at in order to exonerate him? Or are they going to still play this tape out and just keep throwing paint at the wall, and paint at the wall in this case be just different narrative, different charge narrative. What you think?

Baynard Woods:

I think they’re going to do the latter there. I mean, his lawyers are really fighting here in Maryland to have the case that they sued the government to bring him home not dropped, and to have sanctions brought against the government because of discovery violations, not giving them the information that they need to be able to work on their client’s behalf.

And I suspect, as is so often the case in our criminal system, that there will continue to be discovery violations. But it’s ultimately to say when they’re charging him simply with transporting undocumented people, I think they’ll be able to prove that relatively easy, that he had a car that had people in it, including himself, that were undocumented.

And so, they made it a charge that would be a really difficult charge for him to beat while then making all of these other unfounded insinuations. And so, I think what they’ll try to do is, especially with probably a white conservative jury in central Tennessee there, and then I think they will try to just deport him. And instead of deporting him to El Salvador, because there is that rule against deporting him there, I think they’ll try to deport him to-

Mansa Musa:

Somalia or something.

Baynard Woods:

Yeah, one of the other places that they’re looking to prisons that they’re setting up. And I think it’s a really good example of how the xenophobia of this administration is really mixed with some of the worst surveillance state techniques of the Bush administration with extraordinary renditions and sites that are off the country to use for all kinds of torture and stuff.

And so, I know his family are still quite concerned about his safety.

Mansa Musa:

As they should be.

Baynard Woods:

And there was, in Tennessee, there was a riot in one of the private prisons there last week because people were being on lockdown for 21 hours a day because they’re not paying enough guards to be there, COs to deal with the prison conditions. The food is terrible. And so, there was a big protest last week. So, it’s another prison for profit system just like Bukele is doing in El Salvador with the Trump administration that’s happening to him in Tennessee.

Mansa Musa:

And even further, these private prisons, all of them have always been cited for being inhuman and dehumanized. And because the prison industry is heavily regulated in this country, they were taking shortcuts.

But now because of this roundup call on behalf of the president saying that he want over 3,000 undocumented or illegal aliens or whatever he called them, locked up. He want ICE to lock up 3,000 of them a day. And he targeted New York, California and Chicago as blue states saying that that’s the area he going to go in.

But even with Trump doing what he doing, Obama was considered, he was the forerunner for Trump because he was sending people out left and right. And it was like it’s a standard practice. I think with this administration recognized because it was done, I think this administration and Trump being a lightning rod, I think this administration’s position is not going to, it’s no pretense, “We are not pretending that we are doing anything other than what we’re doing. We’re arbitrarily rounding people up. We are sending them to where we want to send them at. We investing a lot of money in private prisons.”

In theory it’s a private prison, but in fact it’s a place where they’re warehousing people, and because they don’t have no oversight, they’re able to get away with it. But talk about when they initially got, because I was reading an article about how when they got him at the Home Depot. Talk about who was in the car with him when they initially arrested him and how that played out so we can give our viewers a sense of how vicious this whole thing is. It’s not just no, somebody just put handcuffs on and round them up.

Baynard Woods:

Yeah. So, the initial case goes back to 2019, and he was going to the Home Depot to do day labor, wait out, and get picked up for a job. And so, he was standing with four other guys. And the same as they’re doing now, like you say, and it was in Trump’s first term, but they came through and just rounded these guys up and then brought them in and started questioning them.

As so often happens, an unnamed confidential informant was the person who said, “Oh, he’s a high ranking member of a gang.” His hoodie and hat linked him, they said with a clique of MS-13 that operated in upstate New York, where he’d never been before. So, not a very good informant there.

Mansa Musa:

Right, right.

Baynard Woods:

But as so often happens, whatever you get someone to say, that’s all you need is to have someone say it. In this recent case, they say they have six co-conspirators that they have their word that I guess they’ve been talking to, but of course none of them are named.

Mansa Musa:

Right, right.

Baynard Woods:

So, in both cases there’s no ability to face your accuser. And that’s just a problem that is so, about law enforcement in general of course, is the reliance on confidential informants in which you can basically make up what they say.

Mansa Musa:

Right, right, right.

Baynard Woods:

If you’re the officer because there’s so little scrutiny if you just say they’re a reliable confidential informant. So, they held them for, he was held at that time for a number of weeks in prison waiting to finally get this trial. His son was born. He got married. His wife was pregnant. They got married in the Howard County Detention Center so that they would be married before the son was born.

And so, he wasn’t able to see his son. His son has special needs and is nonverbal. And the most heartbreaking thing, in his wife’s court documents is that the son is not being verbal, hasn’t been able to express how much he misses Abrego. And so, he just holds his shirts up to his face to smell them and get the scent of them.

And that’s his son who’s now not seen him since March the 15. So, it’s been three months now. And people who’ve never been taken away from their families and stuff might think, “Oh, only three months.” But that’s a tremendous amount of time.

Mansa Musa:

Nah, trauma.

Baynard Woods:

And tremendous number of things can happen within your life in that amount of time that you’re not there for, and you’re not able to help your family in any of the ways that you need to.

And so, yeah, that one allegation by an officer that was only going to be an officer for three more days, acting as an officer, has trailed him now for six years and has led to all of this, which just gave them, and the gang databases, they do this in so many cities all the time. They’ll come through, take pictures of people. And then if you’re seen with another person that’s in those pictures, then you have gang affiliations.

Mansa Musa:

Right, right.

Baynard Woods:

Then if someone else is seen with you, then they have it, even if it’s never been proven that you were a member of a gang in any way. And so, we’re really using that as a way to just criminalize entire populations.

Mansa Musa:

And I was reading in the article when they arrested him for this or kidnapped him for this, he had his child with him in his car. And he told ICE, said, “Look, I’ve got my kid in the car with me. He’s special needs.”

So, they called. They in turn called the wife and gave her a timetable, “You’ve got five minutes to come and get your kid or we going to send them to protective services.”

This right here, okay, you are locking someone up for allegedly being in this country illegally. This is what you’re saying, that they’re in this country illegally or they’re affiliated with element that this country don’t recognize. You’re not saying nothing other than that. And so much so you’re saying that, “Because of this we’re going to send you up to another country.”

But you’re not saying that this person represents that much danger, that you can’t allow for his wife to have ample enough time to come and get their child and find out what’s going on with him. You made it where as though, and this is the attitude that I think they’re creating in this whole system, is the fear mechanism, where, “I’m coming ti your neighborhood, I’m coming deep, I’m taking whoever I want to take. I’m going to the elementary school, I’m grabbing the elementary kid. I’m going to the church, I’m grabbing your grandparents, whoever I got to grab to put the fear of you all in to be more inclined to cooperate with us,” as opposed to giving me due process of law.

But closing out, what do you want to tell our audience about this system? Because you done did, you dealt with the police, you’re real familiar with the lack of what they call law enforcement. But I’m calling it the lack of enforcement. And you deal real well with that. Talk about what you think about that.

Baynard Woods:

To me, this case hits at a lot of the problems with policing and authority and authoritarianism, which policing is a variety, in America because we’re so used to, we see it here in Baltimore all the time where the police say, “If I have to follow the Constitution, then everything’s just going to be crazy. Everyone will kill each other.”

And they take their violation of the Constitution as a minor matter. They’re broken windows on everything else except the Constitution. And then you can violate it with impunity. And that’s what the Trump administration did here, violated the most foundational principles of this country of due process. And snatched people up without any due process, without even habeas corpus and send them away.

And you act like the issue of coming here to save your own life is a worse crime than you kidnapping someone and sending them away to a concentration camp in a country where they’ve been prohibited by a judge to go, then defying a Maryland federal judge and then defying the US Supreme Court, while joking with the proud dictator of El Salvador, who called himself the world’s coolest dictator.

While you all joke about how neither of you can bring him back, it’s a special atrocity. And what Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s family is going through is just unimaginable and irreducible, but it is also part of what we’re all facing here and what we’ve all allowed to happen over generations of letting the drug war and our deference to police departments erode the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, which should protect us all from illegal search and seizure such as these seizures that ICE is committing all around the country right now.

Mansa Musa:

There you have it. Illegal search and seizures. We look at this case of Garcia, and we think that, oh, that’s just his situation. But the reality is that this president unleashed the ICE and weaponized the Justice Department to go out and round up anybody and everybody, regardless of what your situation is, and not allow you to have a right to a hearing before you’re being punished.

Because this what’s happening now. You’re being punished, and then you had to fight your way back to get a hearing to undo what they did to you. We ask that you look at what’s going on, Garcia. Garcia is just, not the case in of itself. You’ve got Garcias throughout this country that they rounding up. You’ve got Garcias throughout this world that they rounding up. The xenophobia mentality of this country has become indefinite.

We ask that you look at this and you evaluate. We thank Baynard for coming in to educate us on this issue. Get up, stand up. Don’t give up the fight. Get up, stand up, fight for your rights. That’s what we ask that you do today.

And guess what? We ask that you continue to watch and listen to the Real News and Rattling the Bars because after all, we are the real news.