A Tattoo of a Soccer Ball Is Enough to Get You Deported to El Salvador

Some of the undocumented immigrants that the Trump administration deported to El Salvador were not hardened criminals or gang members, as it claims, but rather people without criminal records whose gang affiliations are dubious at best.

Linette Tobin, an attorney for detained Venezuelan immigrant Jerce Reyes Barrios, released a sworn statement about the accusations against her client Wednesday night. Reyes Barrios, her statement says, was a professional soccer player in his native country but sought asylum in the United States after being detained and tortured for marching in two political demonstrations against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Reyes Barrios’s petition for asylum was pending, with a hearing scheduled for April, when he was deported March 15 to El Salvador without any notice to his family or attorney. Tobin only was able to reach an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official three days later.

The government accuses Reyes Barrios of being a member of the Tren de Aragua gang based on two “Gang Membership Identification Criteria.” The first was a tattoo on his arm of a crown on top of a soccer ball with a rosary and the word “Dios,” which is Spanish for “God.” Reyes Barrios chose this tattoo because it resembles the logo for Spanish soccer team Real Madrid. The second was a social media post with a picture of Reyes Barrios making “rock and roll” or “I love you” hand gestures.

Reyes Barrios’s account is one of many sworn statements from immigrants detained and immediately sent off to El Salvador as part of an agreement with the country, without any due process. Some, like Reyes Barrios, were detained merely because they have tattoos that look suspicious to immigration officials but are in fact harmless. Many had pending hearings about their asylum claims.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has pursued a hard-line immigration policy that disregards due process in favor of swift deportations, cutting a deal with a friendly autocrat in El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele without much in the way of legal justification. Unlike any of President Trump’s other Cabinet picks, Rubio got the vote of every single Senate Democrat in his confirmation. Some Democrats now regret their votes, and it’s easy to see why.

Corporate executives are allegedly trying to talk the president “off the ledge” of his tariff plan, according to an ex-Trump official.

In an interview with MSNBC Wednesday, former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci claimed that Donald Trump’s weekends are consumed by fearful phone calls from CEOs looking to reverse the clock on the president’s trade war.

“Remember, he’s living alone in the White House, Nicolle,” Scaramucci, who was fired after serving just 11 days during Trump’s first term, told host Nicolle Wallace. “I think it’s important for people to understand that there’s nobody there to hand-check him. There’s no family in there.

“And so he’s taking calls over the weekend from various CEOs that I know that are trying to talk him off the ledge of this sort of stuff,” Scaramucci said.

Scaramucci further predicted that Trump’s economic actions won’t only fail to bring manufacturing back to American shores but could also lead to a recession—something that he argued won’t bode well for the president or his allies in upcoming elections.

“The stock market will. I mean, you take the market down another 15 percent, we go into a recession, you’ll flip the Congress, even though the Democrats weren’t really doing so well from an approval rating right now,” said Scaramucci. “You knock the economy off the grid, the Democrats will be back in power, and that will liquidate some of President Trump’s power.

“So he’s doing this thinking that it’s going to restore manufacturing, but it’s actually going to have the opposite effect, and market participants know this,” Scaramucci said, pointing to the flow of capital into European markets since Trump announced the tariffs.

Trump has repeatedly attempted to spin the tariffs to claim that foreign countries will pay the difference on the rising cost of goods, but economists point out that’s not how tariffs work. Instead, Trump’s global tariff war is expected to affect just about every sector of life for the average American.

Products that will see prices rise include groceries such as avocados, maple syrup, ground beef, cherry tomatoes, sugar, bananas, nuts, cooking oil, squash, cucumbers, strawberries, and pineapples. The order also had immediate ramifications for countless other business sectors, raising the price on everything from liquor to gas.

Children’s toys, shoes, beer and alcohol, and crude oil were all hit in Trump’s 25 percent tariff hike on Canada and Mexico, alongside an additional 10 percent tariff on China. Car manufacturers BMW, Audi, Nissan, and Mazda were also affected, as was American-owned Ford. And every industry that relies on lumber, aluminum, and steel—from artisan goods to construction—will see markups as the materials themselves become more costly.

Four major political organizations focused on young voters—the Sunrise Movement, College Democrats of America, United We Dream of Action, and Voters of Tomorrow—are calling on Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to either stand up to Donald Trump or step down from leadership.

“Chuck Schumer, your leadership is failing to meet the moment. Your decision—along with nine other Senate Democrats—to cave and support the MAGA budget bill is just the latest example of how you and other Democratic leaders are driving young people away from the Democratic Party,” the groups wrote in a joint letter released on Thursday. “Instead of taking a stand against Trump’s illegal actions to gut our healthcare, dismantle public education, attack immigrants and trans people, and tear up climate action, you supported a budget that gave tax cuts to Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and their billionaire buddies. You sided against us.”

This is just the latest call for Schumer’s resignation. Representative Glenn Ivey was the first national elected official to call for him to step down as Democratic Senate leader, with Representative Delia Ramirez following soon after. Even Nancy Pelosi recently expressed her doubts in Schumer. While the longtime Democratic Senate leader insists that a shutdown would have granted the Trump administration control of the narrative, Democrats young and old are begging him to resist rather than capitulate.

“Gen Z voters want leaders with a backbone who will stand up to billionaires and fight for working people,” the letter continued. “If you want our support, it’s time to get bolder, get louder, or make way for leadership who will. If you don’t get this right, we are ready to take the reins of this party ourselves to shape it into a force that can fight for working people and defeat growing authoritarian power.”

After Donald Trump’s surreal turn as a car salesman last week, the president’s Cabinet members are now also taking turns as shills for Elon Musk.

During an appearance on Fox News Wednesday, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick gave a pitch for buying the billionaire bureaucrat’s struggling Tesla stock. 

“I think if you wanna learn something on this show tonight, buy Tesla! I think it’s unbelievable that this guy’s stock is this cheap. It will never be this cheap again,” Lutnick said, appearing on-screen beside footage of burning electric vehicles—the results of protests at Tesla dealerships across the country. 

“When people understand the things he’s building, the robots he’s building, the technology he’s building, people are gonna be dreaming of today and Jesse Watters, and thinking, ‘Gosh, I should have bought Elon Musk’s stock!’” Lutnick said, some laughter leaking through his desperate bid. 

“I mean who wouldn’t invest in Elon Musk, you gotta be kidding me!” Lutnick continued. 

Cantor Fitzgerald, the financial services firm once run by Lutnick but now helmed by his children, also upgraded Tesla stock from “neutral” to “overweight” Wednesday, citing a buying opportunity. At the end of 2024, Cantor Fitzgerald held roughly 740,000 shares of Tesla stock. So it seems Lutnick is trying to rescue Musk’s falling stock to the benefit of his family business.  

Despite an initial “Trump bump” after Election Day, Tesla shares have fallen more than 40 percent since Trump took office, shedding nearly $121 billion of Musk’s personal net worth. 

The hit to Musk’s popularity resulting from his antics with the Department of Government Efficiency has also coincided with the release of competitive technology in China. Investors who once needed to play ball with the erratic Musk may be starting to realize that they might not have to. 

Last week, after Musk saw a huge drop in a single day (not unrelated to the market-wide fall caused by Trump’s tariffs and recession waffling), the president refashioned the White House into a car dealership and held an eerie promotional event where he pretended to drive a Tesla. 

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell told the country Wednesday that Donald Trump’s tariffs are partially to blame for rising prices, and that the likelihood that the country will enter a recession has grown, but the president doesn’t seem ready or willing to confront that reality.

In an interview with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham that night, the MAGA leader once again ducked and dodged direct questioning on whether his policies would result in an American recession.

“There is a lot of talk about a possibility of a recession, and CNBC had a report from the Fed saying they can’t rule it out. It could actually happen,” Ingraham said, before Trump interjected that “everything could happen.”

“What can you say to Americans tonight who are concerned about the possibility of a recession, given the fact that you’re trying to reorient the economy to a manufacturing economy again?” the Fox host continued.

“I think, if I didn’t get elected, our country would be finished, to start off with,” Trump said. “And I think I—now that I did get elected, I think we’re going to have the strongest economy in the history of the world. And I had that economy in four years. With all the harassment, with all the crazy people after me, with all of the things that went on, even with Covid, I had the strongest economy in the history of our country.

“I had a stock market that went up 88 percent: 88 percent, number one in history. The other markets went up 66 percent, and I think like 71 percent,” he continued.

But that didn’t answer the question.

“Will we see a recession in 2025? Are you ruling it out?” Ingraham pressed.

“We’re going to have the strongest economic country in the history of the world, of the planet. We are taking in so much money,” Trump said.

“Now, some people are unhappy, because it has to come from somewhere. Some of it’s going to come from Europe, because not everybody’s going to be doing as much business maybe in Europe and other places. But I can only speak for the United States. And I am a nationalist, and I’m proud of it. I love this country. And I want to help other countries too.

“Look, I’m the one. If it wasn’t for me, they wouldn’t be talking peace in Ukraine and Russia, because there are not Americans being killed. They’re Ukrainian soldiers and Russian soldiers, and I’m trying to make peace. And, again, it has not that much to do, other than, we don’t want to be paying,” Trump said, before continuing to blame former President Joe Biden for the cost of the conflict.

In just a handful of weeks, Trump’s global trade war has weakened America’s relationships with some of its longest allies, compromising strategic military alliances while also sparking fears of a forthcoming recession as the market slumps hundreds of points in reaction to his whiplash tariff negotiations.

Economic experts have always cautioned that Trump’s tariff plan would hurt the country. In a joint letter released before the election, nearly two dozen Nobel Prize–winning economists formally warned against Trump’s economic plan, arguing that the MAGA leader’s stiff tariff increases and tax cuts would spell disaster for the average American.

Once Trump began to formally enact his tariffs in February, that concern went into overdrive.

“This is a ‘Stop or I’ll shoot myself in the foot’ threat. It defies economic logic,” economist Larry Summers told CNN at the time. “It means higher prices for consumers. It means more expensive inputs for American producers.”

Earlier this month, Trump floated that the “little disruption” caused by his aggressive trade policies could go on for quite a bit longer, suggesting that Americans should model their economic projections on a 100-year model—like China—rather than assess his performance on a quarterly basis.