WASHINGTON (CN) - As the United States prepares to celebrate its 249th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on Friday, legal experts expressed concern that the Trump administration's immigration policies are rolling back key liberties.
As part of the so-called "Big, Beautiful Bill" passed Thursday, Congress appropriated approximately $170 billion to fund the construction of new immigration detention centers, an increased budget for Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security and additions to Trump's U.S.-Mexico border wall.
The massive increase in immigration funding comes amid growing evidence that President Donald Trump's immigration policies to date have violated the Constitution and longstanding immigration laws, and on the heels of a Supreme Court decision limiting the federal judiciary's ability to review that conduct.
In a court filing Wednesday, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the only man to return from his summary deportation to infamous Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador, or CECOT, detailed the abhorrent conditions he endured that caused him to lose 31 pounds in two weeks, which he described as "psychological torture."
"Upon arrival at CECOT, the detainees were greeted by a prison official who stated, 'Welcome to CECOT. Whoever enters here doesn't leave,'" Abrego Garcia's lawyers wrote.
Abrego Garcia was placed in a cell with 20 other Salvadoran men and forced to kneel from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m., with guards beating anyone who collapsed from exhaustion. His overcrowded cell had no windows, bright lights that remained on 24 hours a day and metal bunks without mattresses.
After his first week, he and the 20 other Salvadorans were separated into two cells: those with visible gang-related tattoos in one cell and those without - like Abrego Garcia and eight others - in another. Officials repeatedly told him he would be transferred into the cells containing gang members, "who, they assured him, would 'tear' him apart," his lawyers wrote.
Abrego Garcia's lawyers wrote that he watched prisoners in those cells repeatedly harm each other, with no intervention by the guards.
"Screams from nearby cells would similarly ring out throughout the night without any response from prison guards or personnel," his lawyers said.
Despite repeated court orders, 261 deported migrants remain at CECOT.
According to the American Immigration Council, Trump's mega-bill allocated $45 billion for construction of more immigration detention centers - a 265% increase to ICE's current detention budget and 62% larger than the entire federal prison system's budget - which could increase daily detentions to 116,000 immigrants.
Adriel Orozco, senior policy counsel at the American Immigration Council, slammed the new immigration enforcement funds in a statement.
"Throwing billions at detention centers and enforcement agents is short-sighted," Orozco said. "We don't need more jail beds and indiscriminate raids. We need balanced solutions that strengthen due process and keep families together."
The Trump administration's latest detention center in the Everglades, officially titled "Alligator Alcatraz," reportedly received the first wave of immigrants earlier Thursday according to The Associated Press. No figures have been publicly released.
The temporary detention center is already at the center of a lawsuit brought by the Center for Biological Diversity and Friends of the Everglades, which is seeking to halt its operation due to a failure to analyze its environmental effects in the protected national park as required under the National Environmental Protection Act.
The Justice Department filed a motion in opposition Thursday, arguing the Administrative Procedure Act does not apply to state agency decisions and that the environmental groups have failed to show they'd suffer irreparable harm.
In a statement, acting Assistant Attorney General Adam Gustafson of the Environment and Natural Resources Division said the suit would "imperil critical immigration enforcement efforts and endanger detainees in overcrowded detention facilities."
The Trump administration has maintained that its increased immigration enforcement is necessary to protect U.S. citizens from gang violence and crime, with DHS repeating false claims on X that Abrego Garcia is a member of MS-13 and calling his filing a "sob story."
"This illegal alien is an MS-13 gang member, alleged human trafficker, and a domestic abuser," the DHS wrote. "We hear far too much about gang members and criminals' false sob stories and not enough about their victims."
The emphasis on Abrego Garcia's unproven criminality - the government charged him with human trafficking after his return to the U.S. - comes amid an internal Justice Department memo encouraging attorneys to request naturalized citizens accused of crimes have their citizenship revoked.
The June 11 memo reasserts that immigrants found to pose a threat to national security or having gained naturalization through fraud by hiding past crimes could be denaturalized. However, the memo also advises attorneys they can see denaturalization even for those "pending criminal charges."
Joyce Vance, a law professor and former U.S. attorney appointed by Barack Obama, expressed concern regarding the memo's vagueness and wrote on Substack it could be used "for just about anything."
"Given the other priorities discussed in the memo, it could be exercising First Amendment rights or encouraging diversity in hiring, now recast as fraud against the United States," Vance wrote. "All are now vulnerable to the vagaries of an administration that has shown a preference for deporting people without due process and dealing with questions that come up after the fact and with a dismissive tone."
Source: Courthouse News Service
