Attorneys for Venezuelan man imprisoned in El Salvador say his detention is ‘lawless’
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(WASHINGTON) — Attorneys for a Venezuelan man who is currently imprisoned in a notorious Salvadoran prison filed a habeas petition on Wednesday, asking a federal judge to order the immediate release of their client.
Instead of deporting Edicson David Quintero Chacon to Venezuela, the government is “paying” for his “torture in El Salvador with U.S. taxpayer dollars in flagrant violation of the United States Constitution,” his attorneys said in the filing.
According to the habeas petition, on June 13, 2024, Quintero Chacon went to his routine check-in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in North Carolina where he was detained and taken into custody and transferred to a detention center in Georgia. Then, in September 2024, an immigration judge ordered him removed from the U.S. to Venezuela.
On February 10, 2025, he filed a habeas petition challenging his detention in Georgia, saying he “was not fighting [his] case anymore” and that he “just wanted to go home.”
A month later, after being transferred to a detention center in Texas, Quintero Chacon was put on one of the first flights to El Salvador with more than a hundred other Venezuelan migrants.
“Mr. Quintero’s continuing detention—now approaching a year—is lawless,” his attorneys said in the petition. “There is no statutory authority that could possibly justify his continued custody under or by color of the authority of the U.S. government, let alone at CECOT.”
The government’s decision to transfer Quintero Chacon to CECOT, his attorneys said, “will amount to an effective life sentence—and possibly a death sentence.”
Quintero Chacon’s attorneys said in the filing that he has not been charged with or convicted of a crime in any country.
“He is a loving husband, father of two small children, brother, and son, and a skilled carpenter and fisherman,” his attorneys said in the petition.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment on the habeas petition and questions about Quintero Chacon.
In a 5-4 decision earlier this month, the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration could resume deportations of alleged Venezuelan gang members under the Alien Enemies Act, but said detainees must be given due process to challenge their removal.
Attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union said on Wednesday they plan to refile more than a hundred habeas claims in Washington for the men who were deported on March 15.
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump is hosting South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa at the White House on Wednesday amid tensions between the two nations over the U.S. resettlement of white South Africans.
Trump and other top officials have claimed that a race-based “genocide” is unfolding against white farmers in the country. South African officials, including Ramaphosa, have vehemently pushed back, arguing that is not the case.
“It’s a genocide that’s taking place,” President Trump said last week. “Farmers are being killed. They happen to be white. But whether they are white or Black makes no difference to me. But white farmers are being brutally killed, and their land is being confiscated in South Africa.”
That same day, the first flight of Afrikaners arrived at Washington Dulles International Airport.
Ramaphosa responded that the individuals who went to the U.S. “do not fit the definition of a refugee” — someone who is leaving their country out of fear of persecution due to race, religion, political opinion or nationality.
“And I had a conversation with President Trump on the phone, and I — he asked, he said, ‘What’s happening down there?'” Ramaphosa said. “And I said, ‘President, what you’ve been told by those people who are opposed to transformation back home in South Africa is not true.'”
The South African government, in a statement last week, said its police statistics on farm-related crimes “do not support allegations of violent crime targeted at farmers generally or any particular race.”
The dozens of Afrikaners who arrived in the U.S. last week had their applications fast-tracked under an executive order issued by Trump in February titled, “Addressing Egregious Actions of the Republic of South Africa.”
The order contends the South African government passed a law allowing it to “seize ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property without compensation” in a “shocking disregard of its’ citizen rights.” It instructs that the U.S. will not provide aid or assistance to the nation, and that the U.S. “promote the resettlement of Afrikaner refugees.”
The law passed by South Africa cited by the administration aims to address land injustices established during apartheid. It states land can be expropriated in the public interest and in most cases must be subject to compensation, the amount of which must have been agreed to by the owners or approved by court. Experts say the law is comparable to similar legislation around the world regarding eminent domain.
In addition to Trump’s executive order, his administration expelled South Africa’s Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool from the U.S. earlier this year.
Trump has been scrutinized for prioritizing Afrikaners while moving to restrict immigration from elsehwere, including from Afghanistan, Venezuela and Haiti.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio was asked to defend the administration’s position while testifying before a Senate panel on Tuesday.
“I think those 49 people that came strongly felt they were persecuted, and they passed every sort of check mark that needed to be checked off,” Rubio said. “The president identified it as a problem and wanted to use it as an example.”
Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia said he believed the claim there is persecution of Afrikaner farmers was “completely specious” and noted the U.S. hadn’t let in Black South Africans during apartheid.
“I think that the United States has a right to allow into this country and prioritize the allowance of who they want to allow it come in,” Rubio responded.
Elon Musk, a South African native and a top adviser to the president during his second term, has also been vocal about the plight of South African landowners, amplifying claims of “white genocide.”
Ramaphosa on Tuesday projected optimism about the upcoming talks with Trump.
“We’re always ready and we hope to have really good discussions with President Trump and his fellow government colleagues. Looking forward to a really good and positive meeting, and we’re looking forward to a really good outcome for our country, for our people, for the jobs in our country and good trade relations,” Ramaphosa told reporters as he arrived at the South African Embassy in Washington.
He said trade is the “the most important, that is what has brought us here” and that they want to strengthen economic ties between the two nations in a video posted to X. Ramaphosa also said he and Trump will discuss Israel as well as Russia and Ukraine.
Ramaphosa didn’t mention the United States’ prioritization of the resettlement of white South African refugees in the videos posted to social media, though he vowed to protect South Africa’s sovereignty.
“We will always do what is best for South Africans,” he said.
ABC News’ Shannon Kingston contributed to this report.
(MILWAUKEE, WI) — A reserve judge will be appointed to take over the cases of Judge Hannah Dugan, who was arrested by the FBI over allegedly helping an undocumented immigrant, according to a Milwaukee County official.
The county’s chief judge, Carl Ashley, said late Sunday that a reserve judge would take over Dugan’s calendar on Monday morning. The reserve judge was not named in the statement released to media.
Dugan, a judge on the Milwaukee County Circuit Court, was arrested on Friday over allegedly helping an undocumented immigrant “evade arrest” the week prior, FBI Director Kash Patel said.
Patel said on social media that the FBI believes “Judge Dugan intentionally misdirected federal agents away from the subject to be arrested in her courthouse.”
U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement that two FBI agents arrested Dugan “for allegedly helping an illegal alien avoid arrest” by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“No one is above the law,” Bondi said on Friday.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — In a speech to a joint session of Congress in March, President Donald Trump took direct aim at diversity, equity and inclusion policies, saying hiring and promotion practices should be based on merit, not race and gender.
“We’ve ended the tyranny of so-called diversity, equity and inclusion policies all across the entire federal government and indeed the private sector and our military. And our country will be ‘woke’ no longer,” said Trump, using the term some conservatives have adopted to negatively describe progressive values.
In the first 100 days of his new administration, Trump has wielded the power of the Oval Office in an attempt to root out DEI programs beyond the federal government, threatening to withhold billions of dollars in federal funding and grants from universities, including Harvard University, unless they fall in line.
A new ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll released on Sunday indicated that the country is almost evenly split on the issue. While 51% of respondents said they believe DEI efforts help level the playing field, 47% said such policies create unfair discrimination.
Despite the president’s claim that DEI in America is history, supporters say Trump’s war against what they refer to as “wokeism” is far from over.
“It’s definitely not over. And those of us who want to see corporate America get back to neutral and focusing on uniting Americans around creating value rather than dividing us on the basis of race and sex, we have a long, long way to go,” said Stefan Padfield, executive director of the Free Enterprise Project, which is part of National Center for Public Policy Research, a non-partisan conservative think tank in Washington, D.C.
Padfield said one of his primary focuses is on “reversing what we might refer to as the woke capture of corporate America” by filing shareholder proposals, engaging in litigation and conducting educational research across the nation.”
“One of the things that I and others on our side are concerned about is this idea and this notion that somehow we’ve won,” Padfield told ABC News.
Using the analogy of the Allied troops storming the beach at Normandy during the 1944 D-Day invasion, Padfield said, “Could you imagine if the Allied forces just packed up and left and claimed to have won World War II after they took Normandy beach? It would be a very different world.”
“So, we’ve got a very long march to go and certainly the proponents of DEI and related ESG [environmental, social and governance] agendas, they’re making very clear that they’re not going to go quietly, certainly,” Padfield said.
Target boycott
In a letter dated Feb. 12, 2025, a coalition of the nation’s largest civil and human rights organizations, including the NAACP and the National Urban League, asked for an urgent meeting with congressional leadership “to discuss actionable steps to protect diversity, equity, and inclusion programs to ensure equal opportunity for all Americans.”
The letter was addressed to House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-South Dakota, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y. “We are deeply concerned about the recent executive actions by the Trump Administration that seek to undo decades of bipartisan support for civil and human rights,” the coalition wrote.
“Diversity is and will always be one of America’s greatest strengths because a diverse America is an innovative and prosperous America,” the letter said. “Diversifying our institutions, providing opportunities, and working to ensure that everyone is included are not partisan values. These values strengthen our nation and are rooted in our country’s history of advancing equal opportunity and ‘liberty and justice for all.'”
The letter goes on to characterize the actions taken by the Trump administration as “misguided” and, according to the coalition, “seek to erode progress and stifle opportunity for all.”
The letter emphasizes that America’s strength and leadership “in an increasingly diverse and competitive world depends on our ability to be an inclusive society.” It goes on to say that history has shown that without clear-cut guidelines that encourage diversity, equity and inclusion, institutions will “continue discriminatory and exclusionary patterns that hold us all back.”
Some corporations have taken Trump’s cue and have started to eliminate or roll back DEI programs. After Minnesota-based retailer Target announced in January that it would phase out some of its DEI initiatives, the Rev. Jamal Bryant, senior pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, a megachurch in the Atlanta suburb of Stonecrest, Georgia, organized a 40-day “fast” of Target.
Bryant said he encouraged followers of his movement to fight back with their pocketbooks and not shop at the chain’s stores from the first day of Lent, March 5, until Easter Sunday.
In an interview with ABC News, Bryant said he announced at his church on Easter that the “fast” is now a full-fledged boycott of Target.
“We began the boycott against Target because the Black community felt betrayed,” Bryant said.
Among the programs Target said it is phasing out is one established in the wake of the 2020 police-involved killing of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African American man. The program assists Black employees in building meaningful careers and promoting Black-owned businesses.
“For them to roll back DEI, it was felt as a slap in the face,” Bryant said.
Bryant noted that the Montgomery bus boycott led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1955 and 1956 lasted 381 days.
“We have just been boycotting Target for 10 weeks and I think that the African American community is resolved that we’re not going back into the store until we see a market change,” Bryant said.
In response to the boycott, Target, which has 2,000 stores nationwide and employs more than 400,000 people, said in a April 23 statement, “We have an ongoing commitment to creating a welcoming environment for all team members, guests, and suppliers.”
“It’s core to how we support and grow our business,” Target said. “We remain focused on supporting organizations and creating opportunities for people in the 2,000 communities where we live and operate.”
But Target isn’t the only major U.S. company scaling back on DEI programs. McDonald’s, Meta, Walmart, Ford, John Deere and Harley-Davidson have all announced they are eliminating some DEI programs.
Some of the companies changed their DEI programs after coming under pressure from conservative groups.
Conservative political commentator and anti-woke activist Robby Starbuck publicly attacked Walmart’s DEI programs. This prompted the big-box retail giant to announce it was rolling back diversity policies and pivoting from the term DEI in internal communications.
After Walmart said it was eliminating the use of the phrase “DEI” altogether, Starbuck said in a social media post, “This is the biggest win yet for our movement to end wokeness in corporate America.”
In a statement to ABC News, Walmart said, “Our purpose, to help people save money and live better, has been at our core since our founding 62 years ago and continues to guide us today. We can deliver on it because we are willing to change alongside our associates and customers who represent all of America.”
Universities under fire
The Trump administration has also threatened to withhold federal funding and grants from universities nationwide that decline to roll back DEI programs or curb protests on campuses, including pro-Palestinian demonstrations that the administration deems antisemitic.
Some universities have fought back against the administration.
The Trump administration threatened to withhold from Harvard University $2.2 billion in multi-year grants and $60 million in multi-year contract value after demanding that the school end its DEI programs, adopt what the administration deems merit-based admissions, and cooperate with immigration authorities.
But Harvard President Alan Garber has refused to give in to the White House’s demands, writing in an April 14 letter addressed to members of the Harvard community, that the school “will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights” by agreeing to the terms proposed by the Trump administration.
On April 21, Harvard sued the Trump administration, asking a Massachusetts federal judge to block Trump’s funding freeze, arguing that it is “unlawful and beyond the government’s authority.” Harvard also argued that by withholding funds, the Trump administration is violating the First Amendment, flouting federal law, and threatening life-saving research.
“All told, the tradeoff put to Harvard and other universities is clear: Allow the Government to micromanage your academic institution or jeopardize the institution’s ability to pursue medical breakthroughs, scientific discoveries, and innovative solutions,” Harvard’s lawyers wrote.
Trump’s Department of Education has also attempted to pressure public schools K-12 to do away with DEI programs or risk losing federal funding. Education groups sued the administration over the move.
Federal judges in both Maryland and New Hampshire issued rulings this month siding with the education groups.
“This Court takes no view as to whether the policies at issue here are good or bad, prudent or foolish, fair or unfair,” wrote U.S. District Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher of Maryland, a Trump appointee, on Thursday. “But this Court is constitutionally required to closely scrutinize whether the government went about creating and implementing them in the manner the law requires. The government did not.”
New Hampshire U.S. District Court Judge Landya McCafferty also issued an order Thursday partially blocking the Department of Education from withholding funding to public schools that did not end DEI programs.
“Ours is a nation deeply committed to safeguarding academic freedom, which is of transcendent value to all of us and not merely to the teachers concerned,” McCafferty wrote, adding the “right to speak freely and to promote diversity of ideas and programs is…one of the chief distinctions that sets us apart from totalitarian regimes.”
The Department of Education did not immediately respond to the rulings on Thursday.
Two sides, similar arguments
Supporters of doing away with DEI programs claim the policies are racist, discriminatory and further divide the nation, while advocates for keeping the programs argue it is racist, discriminatory and divisive to end them.
Rev. Bryant told ABC News that he believes Trump is pursuing his “war on woke” to appeal to his base.
“I think he’s playing to his base of uneducated white males, who for some reason feel threatened,” Bryant said. “They’re getting ready to see that America is better when we’re together, not when we are segregated.”
Bryant said Trump’s fight against wokeism has been an attack on civil rights that demonstrators have shed blood and died for going back to the 1950s and 1960s.
“It looks like we’re going back to yesteryear and it’s a very disturbing probability,” Bryant said.
On the other hand, Padfield described most DEI programs in corporate America as “overt racial discrimination.”
“It’s problematic because it sets the corporation up for legal liability and it’s problematic on a moral basis because that’s not the country that we want to live in, where some of our most powerful institutions have decided that the way to get what they want in terms of demographic outcomes is just start brazenly and, in fact, proudly, discriminating on the basis of race and sex,” Padfield said.
Padfield added, “The problem is that the pro-DEI solution actually makes things worse and divides us further. And what I’m hoping for is that ultimately corporate America wakes up and starts addressing these inequalities on a colorblind basis.”
