The following is an article that the Sheet Metal | Air | Rail | Transportation (SMART) union published on May 12, 2025. It reports that “SMART has continued to fight for Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s return home and his right to due process.” Abrego Garcia is a sheet metal worker.

“Brother Abrego Garcia is a first-year apprentice of Local 100 of [SMART] and has built a family and a life in Maryland, where he was also helping to build our nation’s infrastructure,” said a May Day statement issued by the AFL-CIO, SMART, UNITE HERE, and the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades. “Despite these critical contributions, he was deported by the U.S. government without due process or opportunity for appeal. This miscarriage of justice cannot stand.”

Other unions have joined the calls to return Abrego Garcia home and defend other immigrant workers victimized by the government. “Bring Kilmar Home,” the Association of Flight Attendants-Communication Workers of America posted on its Facebook page on April 27. “Flight attendant, union apprentice, farmworker. It doesn’t matter where you work. An injury to one is an injury to all.”

In early April, 10 national unions and dozens of locals representing more than 3 million workers also issued a statement demanding the release of immigrant workers recently snatched by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), according to an article by Labor Notes.

Abrego Garcia grew up in El Salvador and then immigrated to the United States in 2011 without papers at the age of 16 to escape gang threats. In 2019, an immigration judge granted him withholding of removal status due to the danger he faced from gang violence if he returned to El Salvador. This status allowed him to live and work legally in the United States. At the time of his deportation on March 15, 2025, he lived in Maryland along with his wife and children, all U.S. citizens, and was complying with annual check-ins with ICE.

Even after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that his deportation was illegal and ordered the White House to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return, the Trump administration has maintained a defiant stance, insisting the immigrant worker will not be coming back to the United States.

This is despite the revelation that James Percival, a Trump-appointed Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official, wrote to his colleagues on March 30 that Abrego Garcia’s deportation was due to “an administrative error.” In the days before this became public, DHS officials were trying to portray Abrego Garcia as a “leader” of the violent street gang MS-13, even though they could find no evidence to support the claim, according to the New York Times.

Since then, the Trump administration has waged a relentless campaign to slander Abrego Garcia. A tape of a 2022 Tennessee traffic stop that resulted in a ticket for driving with an expired license is presented as proof that Abrego Garcia is a “human trafficker.” Tapes of a domestic squabble, an invasion of his privacy and that of his wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, are used to bolster an image of him as a “wife-beater.”

Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador along with nearly 140 Venezuelan immigrants the White House called “illegal aliens” and accused of being members of the Tren de Aragua gang. At least 50 of these men, however, had entered the United States legally, the British daily The Guardian reported on May 19.

“The government calls them all ‘illegal aliens.’ But of the 90 cases where the method of crossing is known, 50 men report that they came legally to the United States, with advanced US government permission, at an official border crossing point,” the Cato institute said in a report it released the same day.

The Trump administration invoked a rarely used wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, to summarily deport these immigrants without due process. A number of federal courts, and the Supreme Court, have since ruled against the Trump administration’s attempt to use the law for deportations without the right to a hearing.

Trump reacted to these legal setbacks by agitating for public support for his campaign of mass deportations, aimed at scapegoating immigrants for low wages, deteriorating job conditions, crime, and other social ills. “THE SUPREME COURT WON’T ALLOW US TO GET CRIMINALS OUT OF OUR COUNTRY!” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform on May 16.

This sets the stage for further confrontation with the courts and poses the danger of diminishing the separation of powers between the judicial and executive branches of government as Trump pushes toward consolidating one-man rule.

Since taking office about three months ago, the Trump administration has taken many steps to push its anti-immigrant crusade. These include:

• Announcing that the government has deported 135,000 people in its first 100 days in office, claiming this has “already surpassed the [numbers for the] entirety of Fiscal Year 2024 .” Many news reports dispute these claims, placing the number at 72,000. Even taking the official numbers at face value, however, the average daily rate of deportations is 1% smaller than that during the last year of the Biden administration.
• Stripping Temporary Protected Status (TPS) from Venezuelan immigrants, who received that status in 2023, potentially affecting some 350,000 people, a decision endorsed by the Supreme Court on May 19; and a May 21 announcement that TPS is removed for Afghanistan as well.
• Attempting to entice or coerce other governments to accept immigrants being deported from the U.S. who are not nationals of these countries. This includes two men from Myanmar and Vietnam the Trump administration deported to war-torn Sudan in violation of a court order barring such deportations to third countries without affording immigrants due process rights, as CBS News and other outlets reported on May 20. The White House is also reportedly seeking similar deportation deals with other countries such as Angola and Equatorial-Guinea.
• Deporting hundreds of asylum seekers from various countries, most of whom do not speak Spanish, to so-called “bridge” countries like Panama and Costa Rica, where many remain in limbo. Some have been transported to makeshift shelters in the Darien Gap, the dangerous jungle between Panama and Colombia that many people cross on their way to the U.S. border.
• Offering undocumented immigrants $1,000 to self-deport. The first flight to Honduras and Colombia carrying immigrants who accepted this offer took off from Houston on May 19.
• Imposing extraordinary fines on immigrants who refuse to self deport. One notorious case is that of an undocumented mother of three kids in Florida on whom ICE has imposed a fine of $1.8 million. Not wanting to share her name out of fear of further victimization, she told Telemundo 51 on May 19 that she fled from gang violence in her native Honduras in 2005 after her brother was killed by members of the notorious MS-13 gang.
• Mobilizing 10,000 military service members, and seeking the mobilization of up to 20,000 National Guard troops, to control the borders and carry out mass deportations.
• Securing more than $150 billion in additional funding over five years for immigration enforcement, which is part of the tax bill the U.S. House of Representatives passed on May 22. This includes $59 billion to expand the border wall. The new funding will also pay for hiring an additional 10,000 ICE agents and 8,500 Customs and Border Protection officials and expand the number of detention beds from 41,000 to 100,000. These steps have already led to a dramatic decrease in unauthorized border crossings, especially at the U.S.-Mexico frontier.

All this is laying the groundwork for more mass expulsions than we have seen so far. A larger number of arrests and deportations will likely follow, although it will be very difficult to deport everyone currently in the United States without papers, about 11 million people — a goal the Trump administration had earlier proclaimed.

While there are some within Trump’s camp who actively campaign for that goal — Steve Bannon, an ultra-rightist and former White House chief strategist during Trump’s first term, is among them — that would require an unprecedented level of repression with an equally unprecedented negative impact on the economy.

What has been accomplished so far is the creation of a greater atmosphere of fear among all immigrants. This serves the interests of the capitalist class by maintaining a special, second-class segment of the working class that can be forced to accept lower wages, and substandard job conditions, making it easier to intensify the exploitation of all working people.

Even without the deportation of millions, the political erosion of democratic rights has clearly begun and will continue. Due process — which for an undocumented immigrant includes the right to challenge one’s deportation order in court and be given enough time to organize to do so — is for everyone in the country, regardless of their legal status, according to the U.S. Constitution. Exactly where this attack on democratic rights will lead remains to be seen.

The campaigns by labor unions demanding Abrego Garcia’s return and defending other immigrant workers set an example of what needs to be done to counter the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant drive and defend democratic rights.

Defense of the rights of immigrant workers, including the need for an amnesty for all workers without papers in the United States, is crucial for uniting the working class and resisting the billionaires’ drive to the bottom.

World-Outlook is publishing the article that follows for the information of our readers. We also encourage everyone to join the campaign by SMART and other unions to return Abrego Garcia home and defend the rights of all immigrant workers. The headline, video, and text below are taken from the original.

— World-Outlook editors

*

Defending our rights: Fighting for Kilmar Abrego Garcia and his right to due process

May 12, 2025

Since mid-March, SMART has continued to fight for Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s return home and his right to due process. Abrego Garcia, a sheet metal apprentice with SMART Local 100 in Maryland, was mistakenly deported to El Salvador nearly two months ago.

The latest episode of SMART News featured coverage of the ongoing case, including footage of a press conference featuring SMART General President Michael Coleman and Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer; an interview with SMART House Counsel Luke Rebecchi; and General President Coleman’s appearance on CNN’s The Situation Room.

“The principle of due process is one of the fundamental values our nation is founded upon. Every single person in America has the right to due process, the right to face one’s accusers — the guarantee that no one shall be ‘deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law,’” General President Coleman said on April 4. “When Kilmar Abrego Garcia was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, he was denied his right to due process, and we at SMART are fighting to ensure he receives the treatment he is granted under law — just like we would, and we always will, fight for the rights of every single SMART member.”

“In the blink of an eye, our three children lost their father, and I lost the love of my life,” Jennifer Vasquez Sura said during the April press conference. “His mother lost a son, his siblings lost their brother. Our entire family is broken by what, in ICE’s words, was an error.”

“We all need to imagine if this were to happen to us,” said General President Coleman during the same press conference. “One of our family members, one of our friends. Taken into custody, illegally deported and not being able to reach out to your loved ones.

“It’s just not enough to admit that you made a mistake — you need to fix it.”

On Thursday, April 10, the United States Supreme Court issued a decision that backed a federal judge’s order requiring the government to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States. Members are encouraged to send a letter to their representative and senators demanding action.

If you appreciate this article, subscribe to World-Outlook (for free) by clicking on the link below.

Type your email in the box below and click on “SUBSCRIBE.” You will receive a notification in your in-box on which you will have to click to confirm your subscription.