Much of President Donald Trump's second term has been characterized by a hard line on immigration: deporting the undocumented as quickly and recklessly as possible to protect the American homeland from dangerous criminal aliens.
As it turns out, a couple of cases recently in the news complicate this narrative and show that the administration seems to care much less about someone's actual criminality than their citizenship status.
Earlier this month, the U.S. released 252 migrants back to Venezuela in exchange for 10 American citizens and permanent residents being held in that country. The Venezuelans had been arrested and deported under Trump's invocation of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act and were being held in El Salvador's Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), a maximum security prison.
