• President Donald Trump met with President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador in the Oval Office Monday. Their conversation centered on immigration, and specifically the wrongful deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man whose removal the White House chalked up to an “administrative error.” Last week, the Supreme Court ordered the administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S. But Bukele told reporters Monday he won’t send him back, and Trump said no one can make him do it. Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, talks about Trump’s expanding immigration crackdown.
• And in headlines: Harvard University rebuffed the White House’s list of policy demands to protect billions in federal funding, Trump again threatened CBS’ ’60 Minutes,’ and a man accused of setting fire to the Pennsylvania Governor’s Mansion was charged with attempted homicide and terrorism.

• Subscribe to the What A Day Newsletter – https://tinyurl.com/3kk4nyz8
• What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcast

Follow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/crookedmedia/

TRANSCRIPT

Jane Coaston: It’s Tuesday, April 15th. Happy Tax Day. I’m Jane Coaston, and this is What a Day, the show that is somewhat frightened of the AI-programmed crossing signs in Palo Alto, which over the weekend sounded like this. 

[clip of AI deepfake of Elon Musk] Wait. Hi, this is Elon Musk. Welcome to Palo Alto, the home of Tesla Engineering. You know they say money can’t buy happiness and yeah okay I guess that’s true. God knows I’ve tried, but it can buy a Cybertruck, and that’s pretty sick, right? Right? Fuck, I’m so alone. 

Jane Coaston: I get that it’s a protest, but also I don’t want to hear Elon’s voice even ironically. [music break] On today’s show, Harvard University tells the White House it can take its list of demands in exchange for billions in federal funding and, very respectfully, shove it. And President Donald Trump is once again lashing out at CBS’s 60 Minutes. But let’s start with the fun times we all had watching Trump’s Oval Office meeting with El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele Monday. And by fun, I mean terrifying and very bad. Their conversation centered on immigration, specifically the wrongful deportation of a man named Kilmar Abrego Garcia to a super prison in El Salvador. We’ve been talking about this case on the show for a few weeks. Abrega Garcia is Salvadoran, but a few years ago a judge had granted him protections from being deported back to his home country, concluding he’d likely be targeted by gangs. The White House deported him anyway. Monday’s meeting between Bukele and Trump was a journey through obfuscation and, well, absolute fucking bullshit. See, the Trump administration is paying El Salvador $6 million to hold deportees in that prison, some of whom aren’t even from El Salvador. And yet, despite an apparent 9-0 ruling from the Supreme Court saying that the White House must, quote, “facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return,” the Trump Administration is portraying the decision as a win for them, in part because the court stopped short of unambiguously ordering Abrego Garcia’s returns. Here’s Stephen Miller, Homeland Security Advisor and noted loud talker, arguing this point. 

[clip of Stephen Miller] The ruling solely stated that if this individual at El Salvador’s sole discretion was sent back to our country, that we could deport him a second time. 

[clip of unknown person] Well I–

[clip of Stephen Miller] No version of this legally ends up with him ever living here because he is a citizen of El Salvador. That is the president of El Salvador, your questions about it per the court can only be directed to him. 

Jane Coaston: Yeah, no. Basically, he’s saying it’s up to El Salvador now. Our good friend Leah Litman from Crooked’s Strict Scrutiny podcast had something to say about that. 

[clip of Leah Litman] This is a fucking absurd interpretation of the court’s order. The executive’s bad faith and the court refusal to acknowledge it are what underlies the crisis. The Republican justices are refusing to admit what we can all see. This is an executive branch that does not believe it is bound by law. 

Jane Coaston: And conveniently for the White House, President Bukele said Monday he can’t send Abrego Garcia back to the United States because he doesn’t have the power to do so. And because Abrego Garcia is a terrorist, because the Trump administration insists he’s a member of the Salvadoran gang MS-13, even though there’s little to no proof. But proof clearly isn’t going to get in the way of anyone in this room. 

[clip of President Nayib Bukele] The question is preposterous. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? I don’t have the power to return him to the United States. 

[clip of unknown reporter] Would you be releasing him inside of El Salvador? 

[clip of President Nayib Bukele] Yeah, but I’m not releasing. I mean, we’re not very fond of releasing terrorists into our country. 

Jane Coaston: And in case you’re wondering, yes, the entire Trump administration appears to be all in on this guy we wrongfully sent to El Salvador is definitely a terrorist because believe us, period. Here’s Department of Homeland Security official Tricia McLaughlin telling Fox News host Will Cain that Abrego Garcia is the equivalent of Osama bin Laden. 

[clip of Tricia McLaughlin] The media would love for you to believe that this is a media darling, that he’s just some Maryland father. Well Osama bin Laden was also a father, and yet he wasn’t a good guy, and they actually are both terrorists. 

Jane Coaston: What the fuck? Let’s be super clear here. The Trump administration is defying the courts. They are doing so with the help of a foreign government the Trump administration is paying to hold detainees, some of whom aren’t even from El Salvador in a super prison. Many of those being detained in that super prison have no criminal records, and it’s still not enough for Trump, who was caught on mic saying, quote, “home growns could be next.” 

[clip of President Donald Trump] I said, homegrowns are next. The homegrown’s built, you gotta build about five more places. Yeah, that’s great. Alright. It’s not big enough. 

Jane Coaston: In case you didn’t catch that, he says, I said home growns are next, the home growns. You’ve got to build about five more places. It’s not big enough. So to talk more about everything happening right now in immigration and just how worried we should be, because I have been worried since January personally, I spoke with Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, Senior Fellow at the American Immigration Council. Aaron, welcome to What a Day. 

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick: Thank you for having me. 

Jane Coaston: So there has been a swirl of news on the deportations front, from international students being held for standing up for Palestine to supposed international criminal gang members being sent to dangerous prisons in El Salvador and more. Supposed being the very strong point here. It’s like a crazy blow-by-blow in the media every day now. So let’s start with having you clear the air. What are the biggest issues at stake right now on this front? 

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick: Oh yeah, start with the easy one. Um. So there is a lot going on in the world of immigration. Um. And I kind of like to break it down into three big buckets, the border, interior enforcement, and legal immigration. And right now, most of the attention is being paid to interior enforcement. It’s not that things aren’t happening on the other two, but all of the intention right now is on interior enforcement, ICE arresting people and deporting them. In some cases to El Salvador, to be imprisoned on dubious legal authority and at the same time ramping up arrests in the interior and going after populations that may have thought that they would be safe under a more reasonable administration, but clearly isn’t under this administration. 

Jane Coaston: Let’s talk about foreign students who have had their visas revoked or have had other actions being taken to deport them. The administration has made a wide range of claims, like some are terrorists, others are dangerous anti-semites. Some may have made some immigration missteps. What’s new that you’re seeing in these kinds of claims? 

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick: Yeah, so there is a lot that we are still learning about this as the number of students that are reportedly having their student visas stripped is going up every single day. And what it seems right now is that there’s really two groups that are having their status taken away. The first is the one that was targeted initially, those who had any kind of pro-Palestinian views. And that includes, of course, Mahmoud Khalil, Rumeysa Ozturk, Yunseo Chung, Badar Khan Suri. But that is actually the smaller group. Marco Rubio put the number of that at 300. And yet, according to Inside Higher Education, there’s now a thousand students that have already had their student visas taken away. So who are the others? Well, evidence is emerging, or at very least a pattern, is making itself revealed that the administration is running every student here in the United States on a student visa against law enforcement databases and is automatically terminating student status for anyone who has had any interaction with law enforcement and that includes things as minor as speeding tickets. So this suggests a couple of things. One, that this is automated, and then two, that there’s no human being involved, or at very least very minimal human involvement. And these students are reportedly not getting any notification. And this is pretty terrifying because if you don’t even know that you’ve had your status taken away until someone from the university reaches out and says, you’ve been deleted from the database and you didn’t even get an email from the government about this, you know every student is wondering, am I next? 

Jane Coaston: Something that’s been striking to me, and I want to check myself with you, when the Trump administration came in, they were claiming that they were going to focus their deportation efforts on quote unquote “violent criminals.” And almost every day we see the administration claiming it’s sending dozens of dangerous criminals to El Salvador or even Guantanamo Bay. How solid are those claims that these are dangerous criminals, especially when we haven’t seen the evidence of the supposed dangerous criminality. 

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick: Yeah, um they’re as solid as a soap bubble. The reality is, is that when you look at the cases, there are 238 people sent to El Salvador. CBS’s 60 Minutes found 12 of them had serious criminal records total, twelve. Um. And of course, even if somebody does have a serious criminal record, that is not grounds for them to be imprisoned for life in a foreign prison. But, you know, making sure that I say that, the evidence is clear that most of these people had no criminal records at all. Of course, there are some. There’s 13 to 15 million undocumented immigrants. In any population of 13 to 15 million people, just statistically, some of them are going to have some pretty heinous crimes on their record. But the administration that wants to just ramp up deportations as fast as they can is not actually going against people with the most serious records. 

Jane Coaston: What do we know about how the administration is determining alleged gang membership? 

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick: We know the administration’s gang ties are shoddy because in general, a lot of government allegations of gang ties, are very limited. And here, what we’re seeing with the people sent to El Salvador, is a lot of them were put there allegedly on the basis of tattoos and associations with other individuals and images on social media. Like one guy who was sent there, he had a tattoo of a soccer ball with a crown over it cause he’s a Real Madrid fan and a photo of him on social media and that’s really it. 

Jane Coaston: It seems the administration’s been moving beyond claims that it’s sending so-called bad people packing overseas. Even on Monday morning, the administration argued the federal courts just need to stay in their lane, as in it doesn’t even matter if they did anything that was bad. The president gets to say who’s a threat to the country and can take action without court interference. Who is winning this argument right now? The courts or Trump? 

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick: So far the courts are winning this battle in court. Every single judge to have looked at, for example, the case of Mr. Abrego Garcia, the Maryland dad wrongfully deported to El Salvador, has said that the courts can order the Trump administration to facilitate his return and his release from El Salvador. The problem they’re running into is that he is currently in the custody of President Bukele of El Salvador who said on Monday at the White House, essentially, that he was not going to release Mr. Abrego. 

Jane Coaston: Monday morning you wrote on Blue Sky that the Abrego Garcia situation has brought us to quote, “a dangerous dangerous moment in US history.” It seemed dangerous for at least a few weeks now Especially I think for many people after seeing the Turkish PhD student being basically rounded up by plain clothes officers, but what what’s changed to ratchet things up even more? 

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick: Yeah, the situation with Rumeysa Ozturk is dangerous because of what it says about the First Amendment. But under immigration law, what they did was legal. There is a ground of deportation that permitted them to arrest her. And because of that, her detention probably violates the First amendment, but it was on its face at least legal. What they’re doing with Mr. Abrego Garcia and others they’re sending to El Salvador isn’t legal. And here the Trump administration is now saying, look once we send them there, they’re in Bukele’s custody, and if Bukele doesn’t want to have them back, we just can’t do anything. The judges can’t do anything. And that is an argument that could be used for deporting a citizen there as the Trump administration is pretty clearly flirting with the idea. 

Jane Coaston: Right. Trump was overheard on Monday telling President Bukele that quote, “home growns are next” and that El Salvador needs to build at least five more high security prisons. I think you and I can both interpret what he means by home growns, but what do you make of those comments? 

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick: The Trump administration has been flirting with this idea of sending US citizens to El Salvador for a while now. When Secretary Rubio first visited El Salvador over a month ago, the idea came up and President Bukele said he’d be happy to do it. And various reporters have asked the president about this over the week since then, and he’s continued to flirt with the idea as he did today. I don’t think that says that the administration is going to do this. I think that hopefully some adults within the room remain and that they know that if they did that, it would be an even greater outcry and that the Supreme Court would probably be forced to take even broader steps against them. But the fact that they’re even flirting with the idea is particularly concerning, especially because Bukele has been at this point pretty clear that he’d be happy to do that and be happy to play along and say there was nothing he could do. These people are in Salvadoran custody. He’s not going to send them back. 

Jane Coaston: There are a lot of Americans for whom this feels like an issue for other people. It’s an issue for international students who must be fucking terrified right now. This is an issue for migrants, some who might have legit asylum claims who are terrified, for legal immigrants with green cards. So for Americans who are watching this happen but don’t feel like they fit into those camps, why should they be paying more attention? 

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick: Yeah, I mean, I wanna be clear. I don’t think that there is a serious risk that he’s gonna start rounding up random Americans and shipping them to El Salvador. But the fact that he is flirting with this idea, and not just once, not just twice, but over and over coming back to this idea is extremely concerning. One of the reasons we founded this country, it’s in the Declaration of Independence against about one of the things that King George III did was to take Americans abroad and try them overseas for pretend crimes. That’s in the allegations that we leveled against King George III. So here we have the president of the United States threatening to do the exact thing, one of the exact things that caused us to break away from the United Kingdom and form our own nation built on the rule of law. And that is a dangerous point for us to be at when you have a president openly talking about, you know, sending his political opponents or people that his administration deems undesirable to foreign prisons, to be imprisoned potentially for life, not on the basis of any crime they committed in the United States, but just because the president says so, because he wants them out.

Jane Coaston: Aaron, thank you so much for being here. 

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick: Thank you very much for having me. 

Jane Coaston: That was my conversation with Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. We’ll get to more of the news in a moment, but if you like the show, make sure to subscribe, leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, watch us on YouTube, or else you won’t see JD Vance drop something important later, and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. [music break]

[AD BREAK]

Jane Coaston: Here’s what else we’re following today. 

[sung] Headlines.

Jane Coaston: [indistinct chanting] Protesters gathered outside a courthouse in Vermont Monday in support of Rumeysa Ozturk. That’s the Turkish doctoral student at Tufts University facing deportation after the White House accused her of, quote, “engaging in activities in support of Hamas.” Ozturk was arrested near her home outside Boston by six immigration agents in plain clothes last month. Her lawyers say she was targeted over an op-ed she co-wrote for Tuft’s student newspaper last year, criticizing the university’s response to pro-Palestinian student protests. In a recent court filing, Ozturk said the arresting officers terrified her that day, and that she was, quote, “sure they were going to kill me.” She also called the conditions of her detainment inhumane and unsafe. She alleges that her hijab was forcibly removed and that she has not received proper treatment for her asthma. A federal judge heard arguments in Ozturk’s case Monday. Her lawyers argued her arrest was unconstitutional. Also on Monday, The Washington Post raised serious questions of whether the White House had sufficient grounds to revoke Ozturk’s visa. The paper found a State Department memo that said that there was no evidence that Ozturk engaged in anti-Semitic activity or expressed support for a terrorist organization. The paper says the memo was drafted days before Ozturk’s arrest. Ozturk’s story mirrors that of Mahmoud Khalil. That’s the Palestinian graduate student at Columbia University who also faces deportation. He stands accused of engaging in pro-Hamas activities. Harvard is refusing to bend the knee to the White House. The university on Monday said it would not accept the Trump administration’s proposal to make sweeping policy changes or risk losing billions in federal funding. The rejection sets up a face-off between an administration that hates being told no and one of the country’s most influential Ivy League schools. And within hours, the education department announced it was freezing more than $2 billion in grants to the university. Saying Harvard’s refusal to cooperate, quote, “reinforces the troubling entitlement mindset that is endemic in our nation’s most prestigious universities and colleges.” But let’s back up and explain how we got here. On Friday, the Trump administration sent a letter to Harvard with a swath of demands. It asked the university to implement merit-based admissions and hiring reforms, screen prospective international students for views, quote, “hostile to the American values and institutions inscribed in the U.S. Constitution.” And hire an outside group to audit students, staff, and leadership for quote, “viewpoint diversity.” But in a letter made public Monday, Harvard president Alan Garber said, no way. He wrote quote, “no government, regardless of which party is in power should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue. And in a letter to the Trump administration the same day, lawyers for Harvard said, quote, “the university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.” Harvard is just one of several universities the Trump Administration has threatened to pull funding from in a bid to eradicate diversity efforts and root out what it says is rampant anti-Semitism on campuses. Just last month, Columbia University gave in to an ultimatum by the administration and decided to overhaul its policies on campus protests. A man accused of breaking into and setting fire to the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion early Sunday is facing a slew of charges, including aggravated arson, attempted homicide, and terrorism. Court documents released Monday say that suspect Cody Balmer turned himself in and admitted to setting the mansion on fire with Molotov cocktails. Police asked Balmer what he would have done if he had been spotted by its residents, namely Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro. Balmer allegedly said he would have beaten Shapiro with a hammer. The governor and his family were evacuated without interacting with the alleged arsonist. Balmer did not enter a plea during an arraignment hearing Monday and was denied bail. The attack on Governor Shapiro’s home is the latest example of political violence in the US. It follows two assassination attempts on President Trump during the 2024 campaign. Trump told reporters Monday a motive for the attack on Shapiro’s home hasn’t been determined yet but–

[clip of President Donald Trump] The attacker was not a fan of Trump, I understand. Just from what I read and from what I’ve been told, the attacker basically wasn’t a fan anybody. He’s probably just a whack job. And certainly a thing like that can not be allowed to happen. 

Jane Coaston: At least we can agree on something, Mr. President. Trump wants CBS News’ 60 Minutes to pay a, quote, “big price” for its recent coverage of him. And he went as far as to say the Federal Communications Commission should fine the network. Trump said all this so very eloquently in a Truth Social post after Sunday’s broadcast, referencing two segments that featured criticisms of his administration. One was an interview with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who criticized Trump’s claim that Ukraine, not Russia, started the war. Here is host Scott Pelley interpreting. 

[clip of Scott Pelley interpreting for Volodymyr Zelensky] How is it possible to witness our losses and our suffering, to understand what the Russians are doing, and to still believe that they are not the aggressors, that they did not start this war? 

Jane Coaston: The other segment was about how people in Greenland feel about Trump’s push to acquire the territory and, um, they aren’t thrilled about it. 

[clip of unnamed Greenland representative] When he mentioned Greenland, like it was a toy or something. 

[clip of 60 minutes host unnamed] You noticed that? 

[clip of unnamed Greenland representative] We all noticed that in Greenland. All of us. And it was ugly. 

Jane Coaston: Trump is already suing CBS for $20 billion over its 60 minutes interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris last year. He alleges that the network heavily edited the segment while the two of them were running for president. CBS denies this, but there are reports of settlement talks between the two sides. And that’s the news. [music break] One more thing. I think we can agree that Monday was not our best day as a country, and there really isn’t anything I can say to make the President of the United States keeps toying with the idea of sending U.S. citizens he deems to be evil criminals to foreign super prisons sound any better than it is. But something else happened Monday, something that filled me with, not joy exactly, but enjoyment. See, on Monday, the Ohio State University football team visited the White House. Despite losing to the University of Michigan 13 to 10 back in November, Ohio State did win the College Football Playoff National Championship or whatever. And then during the White House visit, Vice President JD Vance, who attended the Ohio State University, dropped the trophy. If you’re listening to this episode, I highly recommend hopping over to our YouTube channel to really get the whole experience of Vance dropping the College football Playoff national championship trophy. The look of horror in his eyes, the concern in the eyes of the players, just terrible. Because that’s what happened. The vice president of the United States dropped the national championship trophy in front of the entire Ohio State football team, the coaching staff, many of that team’s weirdo fans, and all of America to a strange musak version of Queen’s We Are the Champions. That trophy came apart like Ohio State’s offense against a Michigan defense that didn’t even have some of its best players. Sad. Now does the fact that Vance fumbled that trophy onto the ground like he was the world’s worst running back change anything else that happened Monday? Has the rule of law returned? No, unfortunately not. But nothing can change the fact that Vice President JD Vance is a trophy dropper and Michigan beat Ohio State in Columbus 13 to 10 on November 30th, 2024. These are simple and yet very important facts that I am privileged to share with you. [music break]

[AD BREAK]

Jane Coaston: That’s all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, celebrate the fact that singer Katy Perry sort of went to space and safely returned, and tell your friends to listen. And if you’re into reading, and not just about how during her 10-minute spaceflight aboard the Blue Origin capsule with TV host Gayle King and Lauren Sanchez, Jeff Bezos’ fiancée, Perry reportedly sang, What a Wonderful World, like me, What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at Crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Jane Coaston, and I’m just saying, if you sing What a Wonderful World at Me in a confined space, even 62 miles above the earth, I’m going to open the door. No. [music break] What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producers are Raven Yamamoto and Emily Fohr. Our producer is Michelle Eloy. We had production help today from Shana Lee, Johanna Case, Joseph Dutra, and Greg Walters. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison, and our executive producer is Adriene Hill. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. [music break]

[AD BREAK]