Two Cases That Demonstrate the Incoherence of Trump’s Immigration Policy
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.
“Today, thanks to President Trump’s leadership and commitment to the American people, the United States welcomes home ten Americans who were detained in Venezuela,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on July 18. “It is unacceptable that Venezuelan regime representatives arrested and jailed U.S. nationals under highly questionable circumstances and without proper due process. Every wrongfully detained American in Venezuela is now free and back in our homeland.”
As it turns out, one of those 10 detainees was Dahud Hanid Ortiz, a Venezuelan-born U.S. citizen who served in the U.S. Army for nearly two decades and earned a Purple Heart in Iraq. But in 2016, while Hanid Ortiz lived in Germany, authorities say he traveled to Spain and brutally murdered three people in an attorney’s office before setting it on fire to hide the evidence. Spanish officials say he suspected his ex-wife was romantically involved with the lawyer, but the three people he killed were unrelated bystanders.
Hanid Ortiz fled to Venezuela, where he was detained in 2018. While the country’s constitution forbids the extradition of Venezuelan-born citizens, it allows for them to be tried for crimes committed overseas. In January 2024, Hanid Ortiz was convicted of triple murder and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
And yet he was included as one of the 10 Americans who were, in Rubio’s words, “wrongfully detained” and repatriated to U.S. soil. The Washington Post reported on July 24 that Hanid Ortiz has not been seen since his return and “the Trump administration has refused to disclose his w
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