Gang ties and birthright citizenship (04-18-2025--Hour2)

[00:00:04] What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to 3 on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to thepetekalendershow.com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free, write to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support.

[00:00:29] So Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen finally got his meeting with Kilmar Abrego Garcia down in El Salvador. He had attempted to enter the Notorious Prison. That's the name of the prison, I believe. It's called Notorious. Meaning, notorious is not allowed. Notorious. Anyway, the Democrat Senator tried to get in.

[00:00:58] They didn't let him in. And then he tried to go back after he went back to a hotel or something. And then he tried to go back and he got stopped at a military checkpoint. They're like, Notorious. And so then he went back. But then they were like, we're going to, we're going to give a furlough, I guess, to Abrego Garcia. And we're going to, we're going to bring him along with an interpreter, as all Maryland fathers need.

[00:01:25] And I'm going to bring this interpreter to the, to a hotel. And you're going to meet him at this hotel. Where they sipped on coffee, water, and apparently some margaritas. So proof of life confirmed. He's still alive. He seems healthy. No signs of torture. He did not communicate that he had been tortured or anything.

[00:01:54] So why would they do that? Why would El Salvador first say no, say no again, and then say, you know what? Why don't you guys meet at this hotel? And then when they're at the hotel, take a bunch of pictures. And then post them on Twitter. Why would El Salvador do that?

[00:02:18] Well, according to the president, Naib Bukele, who, in case you aren't aware, this guy has been leading a crackdown on crime for a few years now. And has turned El Salvador from the murder capital of the Western Hemisphere into a much, much safer place. One of the safest places in the area.

[00:02:44] Kilmar Abrego Garcia. This is according to a tweet by the president of El Salvador. Garcia miraculously risen from the, quote, death camps and, quote, torture. Now sipping margaritas with Senator Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador. See. Part of the the issue with this case here is that. Garcia is from El Salvador.

[00:03:11] He is an El Salvadorian or El Salvador, El Salvadorite. Whatever. He's from El Salvador. And. Yes, the Trump administration messed up. They said they did by sending him to El Salvador. The one country that a judge in America said, don't send him there. Like, fine, deport him, but send him someplace besides El Salvador. So they send him there anyway.

[00:03:36] Now the problem is that El Salvador, because of Bukele and the focus on making El Salvador safe. He's been imprisoning. A lot of people. Gang members, cartel members and stuff. They've been on this massive campaign. I guess that's why the jail is now notorious.

[00:03:59] It's because it's it's packed with Trende Aragua, MS-13, Barrio 18, these various criminal organizations. So the El Salvadoran government is not interested in letting this guy out if he is, in fact, a member of MS-13. And so when Chris Van Hollen says, I want to see him, they're like, no. And he says, I want to see him again.

[00:04:29] They're like, no, for the second time. And he's like, I want to see him. Like, actually, you know what? Yeah, come over here. We're going to have you take a picture with him. And this is being celebrated by Democrats. Could it be that El Salvador knows something about this guy and American authorities know something about this guy? And they're like, you want to you want to die on this hill? OK, there's the hill.

[00:04:57] Here's some here's some shoes for you to hike up it. Salvadoran president posted photos of the meeting, but then also suggested that he will remain incarcerated by his government, which is being paid by the United States to hold deportees. This is another thing in the caller in the last hour. Tyler mentioned the contract that we're paying. The contract we're paying is for TDA. Trendera. Right.

[00:05:25] That's who that's what the like. That's who we were deporting. The TDA guys. MS-13, particularly in El Salvadoran national being returned to their home country. I'm not so sure we're paying for him at all because that's one of your guys. We just had to get him out of our country. He's now back in his home country, your country. If you want to keep him in your prison for whatever charges you've got him on, that's up to them. That's a sovereign country.

[00:05:55] We shouldn't be paying to incarcerate him down in El Salvador. Therefore, Abrego's wife, Abrego Garcia's wife, Jennifer Vasquez, said in a statement after the meeting with Van Hollen that her prayers have been answered. According to CBS News, El Salvador's notorious terrorism confinement center. They actually did it twice. So they call it the notorious terrorism confinement center.

[00:06:25] And then later on, they call it the notorious supermax prison. It's notorious. Terrible things going on in the prison. Yes. Let me go over and I'll talk to this. Cohen. Sure. Hello, Cohen. Welcome to the show. Thank you, Pete. Listen, talking about the tattoos on that guy's fingers from on his pointer. He has a marijuana leaf and then he has a smiley face in the one.

[00:06:54] And then, well, what's the first letter of marijuana? M. You know, what's the first letter of a smiley face? I kind of feel like I said this already. Smile, S, smiley, S. Yep. Yeah. You know, A, S, one, three. Yeah, the one is a cross. Right. MS-13 uses the cross to hide the one. And then they have the skull where they make the three inside of the skull. And so, yes, that's the MS-13. Correct.

[00:07:24] You have cracked the code, Cohen. Well, it just came to me. There you go. All right, Cohen. I appreciate the call. Have a great weekend. Yeah. The administration admitted in court papers, Abrego Garcia was sent to El Salvador with hundreds of other Salvadoran and Venezuelan migrants due to an administrative error.

[00:07:48] U.S. District Court Judge Paula Zinnis, or maybe that would be formerly known as Twitterinus, ordered the government to facilitate Abrego Garcia's return to the United States. And the Supreme Court backed up that order. But he has remained in El Salvador since then, with Twitterinus suggesting that the government hasn't complied with her order and demanding regular updates on his status.

[00:08:15] The Trump administration has pushed back, arguing it's up to El Salvador to decide whether to return Abrego Garcia, an argument that an appeals court called shocking yesterday. The government has also alleged Abrego Garcia is linked to the Salvadoran gang MS-13, citing a confidential informant. Though his attorneys have denied that allegation and noted that Abrego Garcia has not been charged or convicted of any crimes. Spoiler alert, he does not need to be.

[00:08:44] He does not need to be convicted of crimes in order to get a deportation order against him. You know what you need to get a deportation order? To be in the country illegally. Which he admitted to. Abrego Garcia, born in El Salvador, entered the U.S. illegally in 2011 at the age of 16. He was arrested outside of a Maryland Home Depot in 2019. This is CBS News.

[00:09:12] But a judge barred the government from deporting him to El Salvador. Yes, but not any other country, CBS. Warning he could be persecuted by gangs in his home country. That was his fear. Years later, which by the way is based on this story that he told that a gang, Barrio 18,

[00:09:35] was trying to shake down his mother who was selling food out of her apartment or something. And they were going to kill him if she didn't pay them. But she doesn't sell food out of her apartment building any longer. And the Barrio 18 gang has been smashed by the new president, Bukele, who has been cracking down on the gangs. So I'm not sure if that threat is still viable as it was back in 2019 or so.

[00:10:05] He was detained by immigration agents in Maryland and sent down to the Salvadoran detention center. The notorious detention center, I should say. So we do have evidence of his connections to MS-13, which is what the original judges heard when they determined that he should be deported. All right, so spring is here. A time of renewal and celebrations.

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[00:11:27] Get all the details at createavideo.com. Got a message on Twitter from Russ, responding to caller Tyler in the last hour, who said he was a libertarian, I think. And by the way, because he said, you're a libertarian to me. And I said, well, I didn't say this to him, but I have often said I am a lowercase L libertarian because I disagree with the capital L libertarian party.

[00:11:56] A lot of their platforms or planks in their platform, I should say. And one of the biggest ones is on foreign policy. I tend to view things the way they are. I hope for better, but I tend to view things the way they are. And the way things are on the planet, we, you know, to quote Rush Limbaugh, the world is governed by the aggressive use of force.

[00:12:25] Now, you may not like that. That may not comport with, you know, the libertarian principles of non-aggression and everything else, but that doesn't make that true. It doesn't mean that everybody else abides that. And so one of the things is we have these things called countries. They have borders.

[00:12:52] And I think that you don't have a country if you don't have borders. And I think that these countries that are, you know, made up of usually a homogenized kind of people, a population, whether it's through ethnicity or heritage or race or, you know, mainly culture, language, or concepts, philosophy, which is what America was founded to be, right?

[00:13:20] It's an idea that we are united in this idea. And so the world has always had countries that project their power beyond their own borders. Always. That has always been the case, even before there were countries. And so my simple question to, you know, capital L libertarians has always been the same, which is if you don't want us to do it, and you can make all the arguments about how terrible we've done it and all of that,

[00:13:50] fine, I will cede all of that. I'll concede every one of those things to you, right or wrong, doesn't matter. Who do you prefer does it? Because somebody will do it. Tell me another country that you would prefer to project its power beyond its borders onto us. Who would you prefer that be? And this is, so that's one of the disagreements I have. There are some others, but that's one of the big ones, is on the foreign policy front.

[00:14:17] And illegal immigration, the Libertarian Party on illegal immigration, has not always been where I land either. So anyway, Russ says, Tyler's call is why I can't go full capital L libertarian. I agree with almost all of the principles, but they always seem to reach a point where they cannot lead to any meaningful action. Also, his principled libertarian stance led him to government intervening to care for people who have, by their own actions,

[00:14:45] rejected our national social contract. Yeah. I did find it, that's why I asked Tyler one of those questions, because I found it sort of interesting that he was advocating that the government should take care of somebody in another country. That we need to make sure that he's being cared for and all of this. And then it turned into a morality argument of, like, this is who we are as Americans.

[00:15:10] Well, you can stuff a lot of government intervention under that category. You know, if that's your overarching philosophy, you can justify a lot of stuff. You know, beware the government that tells you they're doing this in order to help you or to protect you. Because that's usually not government's jam. Just saying. The thing that they're good at, again, to quote Rush, is military action. And the military is there to, right, kill people and break things.

[00:15:40] They do a pretty good job at it. And that's what's needed. Because the ability to say no, it carries with it an implied use of force. Because if you cannot say no without that implication, then you can't really say no. And anybody who has had any interaction with MS-13 or the mob or anybody, any, you know, government agency,

[00:16:06] if you are up against somebody or some entity that's got the ability to force you to do something, then you really don't get to say no. All right. If you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events. And I know you do, too. And you've probably heard me say, get your news from multiple sources. Why? Well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with Ground News.

[00:16:36] So you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check.ground.news slash Pete. I put the link in the podcast description, too. I started using Ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The Blind Spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself. Check.ground.news slash Pete.

[00:17:05] Subscribe through that link and you'll get 15% off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature. Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports Ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. All right. Let me jump over and get to Steve on the line. Hello, Steve. Welcome to the show. Hey, Pete. Hey. Steve, how you doing, brother? I'm all right. How are you? I'm doing great, man. Good, good. I got a question about this senator. All right.

[00:17:36] And plus, we've wasted two weeks with this one topic. It's ridiculous. But who paid for his trip, Pete? Do you know? My understanding is that it was paid for out of his taxpayer-funded Senate funds. Great. Great. So, in other words, the State Department, DOJ, nobody authored him to go there. He chose to do it on his own and used our money to do it, right?

[00:18:05] I mean, that's my understanding. I've not seen the accounting for it, but that would be my guess is that it was an official, you know, trip and that he used all of the – all senators and congressmen, they get an allocation to their individual offices so they can, you know, buy furniture and whatever. And, like, every year Rand Paul refunds a bunch of the money back that he didn't use. And so I suspect that's what he used to pay for it. But I don't know that for sure. Yeah. Okay.

[00:18:34] Well, I think we're missing the whole reason of his trip. His whole reason for that trip was to get votes in Maryland to show he stood up for that – for the Latino side of things. That's the only reason that man went down there. Well, but here's the thing. I would tend to agree with you. It was a PR move on his part. I agree with you.

[00:19:00] But the problem is that Hispanics don't dig MS-13 either because the people that are terrorized by MS-13 are generally Hispanics in the communities where MS-13 takes over. Well, that's true. Yeah, it's one of these disconnects that – on this illegal immigration story that Democrats have never seemed to understand that when you allow, you know, illegal aliens, criminal aliens to come in,

[00:19:28] they prey upon the very people you claim to be trying to protect. So, yeah, it's one of those things that, you know, Democrats – but I want – you know, keep making the same mistakes, Democrats. Just don't change. You're doing great. Steve, I appreciate the call, buddy. Have a great weekend. Um, regarding the caller in the first hour, Tyler. Jason writes in to Pete at thepetecalendershow.com.

[00:19:51] I think what Tyler was saying – let me translate for you – is I want things my way and I'm going to spin in cycles verbally until we get there. Ultimately, I want open borders and to break this country in ways that can only be solved by my special all-knowing white progressive mind. Well, he claimed to be a libertarian, Jason. So, I think he was a libertarian. So, I'm not sure if he's progressive. And then, yes, Allison, the tattoos on this guy's knuckles.

[00:20:21] My – and I started the program with this, the MS-13. That's what the symbols mean on his knuckles. And by the way, law enforcement recognized this, too. They have the – it was the gang information something or other report that they had put together. Um, because they had picked him up with two other known MS-13 gang members.

[00:20:47] Oh, and by the way, when Donald Trump – he was apparently doing some swearing in or something today. And somebody asked him, you know, because they – he always opens the floor for questions. And somebody asks him about this meeting and this guy, Abrego Garcia. And here's how MSNBC covered it as Donald Trump started to outline the evidence against Abrego Garcia connecting him to MS-13.

[00:21:15] In 2019, Garcia was issued a deportation order. Two separate judges affirmed Garcia was a member of MS-13, which is a gang that may be even worse. We've been watching President Donald Trump there swearing in the new administrator of the CMS, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, Dr. Mehmet. There you go. Dr. Oz getting sworn in. But as soon as he started talking about the facts of the case, which if you're MSNBC, don't you want to know the facts of the case?

[00:21:45] No, of course not. That just makes your narratives harder to spin. I can disagree with the Trump administration's approach to fixing their mess up. And they did mess up. They said they messed up. I'm not attacking the Trump administration for this. I'm just pointing out that they said they messed up by sending him to El Salvador.

[00:22:09] Not that they deported him, but that they deported him to that specific country because a judge said he can be deported. Another judge said, yes, deport him. And then a third judge gave him this. This ruling that said, OK, yes, you can deport him, but only to El Salvador. And then the Trump administration threw him on a plane to El Salvador. And that's the violation. See, like that to me is the only due process argument to be made.

[00:22:38] And all Trump has to do is give the guy a bus ticket to get him out of the country and to ask the president of El Salvador, hey, can you let the guy go? Or better yet, give him gas money and drive him to the border. Dump him out. Let him go.

[00:22:55] But I think the administration is testing the bounds of these courts that are issuing these rulings that are encroaching into the Article 2 powers, the presidential powers. Article 3 in the Constitution is the judicial powers. And I think that they want this fight because they are testing where that line is for the Supreme Court and these district courts.

[00:23:24] We want you to say it. What exactly is it you want us to do? Do you want to write some foreign diplomatic cables for us? Would you like to get on the phone with the president of a foreign nation and act as a surrogate of the people of America, even though you were not elected to that position? Would you like to do that? No, because that would be an encroachment into the Article 2 powers. Just the News.com, Stephen Richards.

[00:23:54] He reports that an immigration judge held that the determination that the respondent is a gang member appears to be trustworthy and is supported by other evidence in the record, namely information contained. Here it is in the Gang Field Interview Sheet or the GFIS.

[00:24:11] Although the court is reluctant to give evidentiary weight to the respondent's clothing as an indication of gang affiliation, the fact that a past proven and reliable source of information verified his gang membership, his rank in the gang and his gang name. That is sufficient to support that Garcia is a gang member. And the respondent has failed to present any evidence to rebut that assertion.

[00:24:39] And in fact, they're like, he was picked up with these two other known MS-13 gang members. And one of the things about MS-13 is you're not allowed to hang out with anybody besides gang members or recruits. That's one of their deals because they don't want you talking with other people outside the gang. That's how they keep control of the gang. So he just happens.

[00:25:02] Oh, he and I went over yesterday that he got busted running a van down to Texas and picking up a bunch of people. He had seven people in his car. I think one or two of them may have been MS-13. I don't remember. But the but he's driving him up to Maryland. No license pulled over in Tennessee. They call up Department of Homeland Security and the FBI. And they're like, yeah, we'll check into it. And then they call back like an hour or so later. And then they're like, yeah, let him go.

[00:25:30] The Biden administration let him go. To go to Maryland. That's like a human trafficking operation. Here's a great idea. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina? Just a quick drive up the mountain. And Cabins of Asheville is your connection. Whether you're celebrating an anniversary, a honeymoon. Maybe you want to plan a memorable proposal or get family and friends together for a big old reunion.

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[00:26:46] Or check out all there is to offer at cabinsofashville.com and make memories that'll last a lifetime. One other note here. The report that was submitted to the court included information, intelligence from the Prince George County Gang Unit and the Prince George's County Police Gang Unit, according to them, Abrego Garcia was validated as a member of MS-13.

[00:27:14] He was identified as a member of Chicao. I think that was Chicao was the rank from the Western clique of MS-13, and I believe his moniker was Chile, C-H-E-L-E. So you can argue he went to the wrong country, but you cannot argue that he wasn't ordered deported

[00:27:41] and he didn't have due process for those orders to be issued. Now, the Supreme Court announced yesterday that it's going to hear arguments in May on President Trump's proposed limits on birthright citizenship. But it's not clear whether they would weigh in on the constitutionality of Trump's proposal or instead decide only whether it can be blocked nationwide by a single federal district court judge. This is the parallel path.

[00:28:11] Okay? You're arguing this one issue, but there are other issues involved, and they may be of equal or even greater importance than the case being argued. Ed Morrissey at HotAir.com. He said the easiest action to take would have been for the Supreme Court to ignore the request and just let the cases play out. But instead, the court decided to consolidate these, I think there are three of them,

[00:28:42] they combine these three cases, and they're going to hear them all. And the New York Times says, The move is a sign that the justices consider the matter significant enough that they would immediately consider it rather than letting it play out in the lower courts. That means that the executive order will remain paused in every state while the court considers the case.

[00:29:05] Because these injunctions were issued by, in three different lawsuits, three different complaints, three different judges, they issued injunctions across the entire country. And the Trump administration is arguing a single judge doesn't have that authority, essentially. Right? But this was also the status, if they just let the stay remain in place, that would have also affected the same outcome.

[00:29:33] The Supreme Court could have just left it alone to achieve the outcome by default, right? So why do this? It means that at least four of the judges on the Supreme Court want to debate this case. Now, rather than later. But are they debating the merits of the order on the birthright citizenship? Or are they going to be debating the reach of the stays issued by the judges? And maybe both.

[00:30:00] Occasionally, the court will consider and issue an order defining the scope of its review. They'll say, we're just looking at this one part. But this order contains no such limitation. It appears the Trump administration wants to challenge district courts in their habit these days of applying stays and injunctions nationally, or at least more broadly than just, you know, affecting the parties involved. But that doesn't mean that the Supreme Court has to limit itself to those issues.

[00:30:29] They have plenary jurisdiction over cases anywhere in the federal judiciary, and they can decide to hear all issues at hand if four or more judges want to. ABC reports, This court should declare that enough is enough. This is according to the administration's briefing that they filed.

[00:30:51] This court, the Supreme Court, should declare that enough is enough before district courts burgeoning reliance on universal injunctions becomes further entrenched. The court should stay the district court's preliminary injunctions except to the individual plaintiffs and the identified members of the organizational plaintiffs. In other words, if you sued, if your organization sued, then that's what the stay, that's what the injunction should apply to, not to the entire country.

[00:31:23] One point to bear in mind, the court has had ample opportunities to address jurisdictional limits and other recent challenges, right? They rebuked Judge James Boasberg for proceeding in an improper venue, and that did seem to have an impact on two other court hearing challenges in the separate issues of the use of the Alien Enemies Act for accelerated deportations.

[00:31:47] Those other cases seem better for a more direct declaration of jurisdictional limitations. But maybe this is just the first case or set of cases to annoy enough justices to warrant a long-needed intervention to discourage venue shopping, right? That's what this is about, venue shopping.

[00:32:10] Plaintiffs going to find judges that they know will issue broad orders so they can get national injunctions or rulings. Through a single judge, right? With an allied ideology.

[00:32:32] Ed Morrissey concludes this piece at HotAir.com by pointing out it appears to be a recognition that only the Supreme Court can effectively resolve the debate over the language and meaning of the citizenship clause in the 14th Amendment. So, you've got two issues. They may be of equal importance. And the Supreme Court said, yeah, we're going to hear it next month. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening.

[00:33:00] I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast. So, if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepetecalendorshow.com. Again, thank you so much for listening. And don't break anything while I'm gone. Thank you.