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'They Just Made Sh*t Up': Declassified Spy Memo Undercuts Trump Pretext for Deportations to El Salvador
"Sunlight remains the best disinfectant for falsehoods," said one open government advocate.
May 06, 2025
A memo released Monday by the Trump administration in response to a Freedom of Information Act request confirmed that U.S. intelligence agencies never agreed with President Donald Trump's claim in March that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro controls the criminal gang Tren de Aragua—an assertion that was used to justify sending hundreds of migrants to a notorious Salvadoran prison.
The document said that "while Venezuela's permissive environment enables TDA to operate, the Maduro regime probably does not have a policy of cooperating with TDA and is not directing TDA movement to and operations in the United States."
Trump's claim about Maduro's connection to the group had been called into question by The New York Times in March, after Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act for only the fourth time in U.S. history. The law empowers the federal government to summarily expel citizens of a country that is at war with or invading the United States.
The Times reported at the time, based on interviews with officials, that the intelligence community's findings about Tren de Aragua were "starkly at odds" with Trump's claims. The anonymous officials said the gang was not taking orders from Maduro's government.
That reporting prompted the U.S. Justice Department to open a criminal investigation into the "selective leak of inaccurate" information to the Times, with the Trump administration criticizing the Times for its "misleading" report.
Attorney General Pam Bondi also said in an April memo that the department would roll back press freedom protections in leak investigations after The Washington Postreported on the memo that was declassified Monday. The Post reported on the document from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in mid-April when it was still classified.
"The declassification proves that the material should have been public from the start—not used as an excuse to suppress sharing information with the press," Lauren Harper, the Daniel Ellsberg chair on government secrecy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, told the Times. The group filed the FOIA request for the memo, dated April 7, to be released.
A declassified ODNI memo disclosed in response to a @Freedom.Press FOIA request confirms a @nytimes.com report from March: U.S. intel agencies rejected the claim Trump made to justify deporting Venezuelans to a prison in El Salvador. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/05/u...
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— Alexander Howard (@digiphile.bsky.social) May 5, 2025 at 10:27 PM
The memo noted that the FBI partially dissented with the intelligence community's findings about Tren de Aragua.
Analysts at the FBI agreed with the agencies' overall assessment but believed "some Venezuelan government officials facilitate [Tren de Aragua] members' migration from Venezuela to the United States and use members as proxies in Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and the United States to advance what they see as the Maduro regime's goal of destabilizing governments and undermining public safety in these countries."
"Most" of the intelligence community "judges that intelligence indicating that regime leaders are directing or enabling [Tren de Aragua] migration to the United States is not credible," the memo reads.
Intelligence agencies also noted in the memo that detainees accused of being members of the gang could have been motivated "to make false allegations about their ties to the Venezuelan regime in an effort to deflect responsibility for their crimes and to lessen any punishment by providing exculpatory or otherwise 'valuable' information to U.S. prosecutors."
Analysts said they had not collected information about communications or funding exchanges between Venezuelan officials and leaders of Tren de Aragua.
"So you mean kidnapping folks off the streets and sending them to a foreign gulag was not justified by our own intelligence?" said the Arkansas Justice Project. "They just made shit up to dog whistle their base. The AEA argument was never legitimate and they knew it all along."
After the memo was released, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said it was "outrageous that as President Trump and his administration work hard every day to make America safe by deporting these violent criminals, some in the media remain intent on twisting and manipulating intelligence assessments to undermine the president's agenda to keep the American people safe."
Courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have blocked the Trump administration from sending more migrants to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act, and the ACLU last month asked a federal judge to facilitate the return of all Venezuelans sent to the country's Terrorism Confinement Center to ensure they have due process via immigration hearings.
But judges hearing cases regarding Trump's mass deportations under the Alien Enemies Act have not yet questioned the administration's debunked claims about Tren de Aragua and the Maduro government.
Writer and open government advocate Alexander B. Howard said the release of the memo proves that "sunlight remains the best disinfectant for falsehoods."
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Michigan's Democratic AG Under Fire After Armed Agents Raid Homes of Palestine Defenders
"We are totally convinced that, but for their viewpoints, these students would not have been targeted," said one attorney.
Apr 23, 2025
Federal and local law enforcement officers smashed their way into the Michigan homes of pro-Palestine student organizers on Wednesday in what the state attorney general's office said was a vandalism probe—but critics called an attack on dissent against Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza.
Backed by FBI agents, officers broke into homes in Ypsilanti, Canton, and Ann Arbor on Wednesday morning. Video uploaded to social media by Students Allied for Freedom and Equality, a Students for Justice in Palestine chapter, showed officers battering down the door to a Ypsilanti house before others rushed into the home barking commands with guns drawn and pointed at the residents.
"No search warrant was provided," someone says in the video as the invaders crashed through the homes' locked front door. People in the house said their phones and other electronic devices and possessions, including vehicles, were taken.
🚨BREAKING | Officials Confirms Raids in Multiple Cities; TAHRIR Coalition Says FBI Agents, Michigan State Police, and Local Officers Targeted Pro-Palestine Organizers
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— Drop Site (@dropsitenews.com) April 23, 2025 at 12:44 PM
MLivereported that people inside the home were handcuffed and moved to the porch outside before being released about 15 minutes later.
The pro-Palestine advocacy group TAHRIR Coalition rallied supporters to two of the homes. Video posted on YouTube shows members of a crowd that gathered outside the Ypsilanti house taunting the agents as they came in and out of the home.
According toDrop Site News, Ann Arbor police said that the investigation involves "reported crimes" committed in the city and other jurisdictions.
An FBI spokesperson confirmed bureau agents took part in the raids, which he described vaguely as "law enforcement activities."
Danny Wimmer, a spokesperson for Democratic Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, who is Jewish, told the Detroit Free Press that the raids "were not related to protest activity on the campus of the University of Michigan," but were "in furtherance of our investigation into multijurisdictional acts of vandalism."
"There is no immigration enforcement angle to the execution of these search warrants," Wimmer added.
However, Liz Jacob, an attorney with the Sugar Law Center in Detroit, noted that "everyone who was raided has taken part in protest and has some relationship to the University of Michigan."
"We are totally convinced that, but for their viewpoints, these students would not have been targeted," Jacob added.
Jacob said seven people were targeted in Wednesday's raids. No arrests were made. The attorney also noted that the warrants were signed by Judge Michelle Friedman Appel, whose jurisdiction includes Huntington Woods, where vandals painted graffiti and inflicted other damage at the home of University of Michigan Regent Jordan Acker while the Jewish man and his family slept inside last December.
Last month, vandals also damaged the Ann Arbor home of Provost Laurie McCauley.
The Graduate Employees' Organization, a union affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers, said one of its members was detained during Wednesday's raids.
"We strongly condemn the actions taken today and all past and present repression of political activism," the group said. "We urge University of Michigan administrators, the regents of the University of Michigan, and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel to end their campaign against students and stop putting graduate workers in harm's way."
Dawud Walid, the Michigan director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said in a statement that "we call into question the aggressive nature of this morning's raids of activists' homes, which follows the recent misuse of prosecutorial power in Michigan and throughout our country against pro-Palestinian activists."
"In any other context, such minor infractions would be handled by local law enforcement or referred to local, elected prosecutors—not escalated to federal intervention," Walid added. "This disproportionate response further fuels the perception that Muslim and Arab students, and those who stand in solidarity with them, are being treated overly hostile by law enforcement compared to those who commit harm toward American Muslims."
According to CAIR:
This recent escalation comes on the heels of prior arrests and charges brought by the Michigan attorney general's office against University of Michigan student protesters for minor, nonviolent infractions—including misdemeanor trespassing—during peaceful demonstrations advocating for Palestinian human rights, an end to the genocide in Gaza, and for the University of Michigan to divest from companies complicit in the occupation and violence.
After Nessel announced criminal charges—some of them felonies—for 11 University of Michigan Palestine defenders last September, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the only Palestinian American member of Congress, said the attorney general was "going to set a precedent, and it's unfortunate that a Democrat made that move."
"We've had the right to dissent, the right to protest. We've done it for climate, the immigrant rights movement, for Black lives, and even around issues of injustice among water shutoffs," Tlaib said. "But it seems that the attorney general decided if the issue was Palestine, she was going to treat it differently, and that alone speaks volumes about possible biases within the agency she runs."
At the federal level, the Trump administration has been arresting and initiating deportation proceedings against international students who have taken part in pro-Palestine campus protests. Although the government admits the targeted individuals have committed no crimes, immigration law allows the removal of foreign nationals deemed detrimental to U.S. foreign policy objectives.
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The Essence of Tyranny: Trump Is Rapidly Gaining a Monopoly on the Use of Force
In every part of the government that involves the use of force, Trump is putting into power people who are more loyal to him than they are to the United States.
Feb 26, 2025
What is occurring now in the United States has very little to do with making the government more “efficient,” or rooting out “incompetence," or “depoliticizing” parts of government that should be nonpartisan.
Nor is it motivated chiefly by President Donald Trump’s desire get rid of “DEI” and “woke,” or “weaponize” law enforcement, or establish white Christian nationalism, or wreak vengeance on his enemies.
The real story is this.
In every part of the government that involves the use of force—the military, the investigation and prosecution of crimes, the authority to arrest, the capacity to hold individuals in jail—Trump is putting into power people who are more loyal to him than they are to the United States.
As he tries to consolidate power, we must protect the institutions in our society still able to oppose Trump’s tyranny—independent centers of power that can stop or at least slow him.
He has purged (or is in the process of purging) at the highest levels of the Department of Defense, the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the Inspectors General, and the FBI, anyone who is not personally loyal to him.
Trump is rapidly gaining a personal monopoly on the use of force. This is his most fundamental goal. This is the essence of tyranny.
On Friday, he fired Air Force General CQ Brown Jr. as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—the nation’s highest-ranking military officer, as well as the principal military adviser to the president, secretary of defense, and National Security Council.
This was followed by the firings of Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Lisa Franchetti and Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force General Jim Slife.
The media sees the firings as “part of a campaign to rid the military of leaders who support diversity and equity in the ranks.” This may be part of Trump’s motivation, but it is not the major driver. The firings are part of a campaign to purge the Defense Department of leaders who are not totally loyal to Trump.
For Brown’s replacement, Trump has nominated retired Air Force Lt. General John Dan “Razin” Caine—a career fighter jet pilot.
Caine has not served in any of the positions—Joint Chiefs vice chairman, chief of staff for one of the branches of the armed service, or head of a combatant command—that nominees are legally required to have held in order to be nominated. By law, a president may waive those requirements if he “determines such action is necessary in the national interest.”
Trump isn’t putting Caine in this pivotal position because of the national interest. He’s putting Caine there because of Caine’s unequivocal personal loyalty to Trump. Trump boasted to an audience at last year’s Conservative Political Action Conference that Caine had told him, “I love you, sir. I think you’re great, sir. I’ll kill for you, sir.”
The same is occurring at the Justice Department, where Emil Bove, Trump’s former criminal lawyer who’s now the chief enforcer there, is imposing a Trump loyalty test on prosecutors—demanding they comply with Trump’s demands, however unacceptable and incompatible with norms, or leave.
It’s no accident that Bove has targeted the Justice Department’s most powerful officials and divisions—shaking up the national security division, insisting that the FBI’s acting leadership turn over a list of agents who worked on the Capitol riot investigations, and targeting the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York (the most prestigious U.S. attorney’s office in the country, known for guarding its independence).
Trump says he’s “depoliticizing” law enforcement in response to former President Joe Biden’s supposed bow to partisan politics. But Biden’s actions had nothing to do with partisan politics. And, ironically, neither are Trump’s: His are about personal loyalty.
On Sunday night, Trump announced that MAGA podcaster Dan Bongino will be deputy director of the FBI, alongside newly installed chief Kash Patel. Bongino is a former cop, Secret Service agent, conspiracy theorist, and Fox News commentator who joined Trump’s MAGA world in the 2010s and now hosts a popular podcast.
The media sees this as another example of Trump embracing Fox News (Bongino is the 20th ex-Fox News host, journalist, or commentator to bag a senior job in the new Trump administration).
But that’s not it. Bongino’s most important attribute is the same as Patel’s—unswerving personal loyalty to Trump. As elsewhere, Trump is turning the FBI into an extension of his personal will.
Every tyrant throughout history has gained a personal monopoly on the use of force so he can impose his will on anyone, for any purpose. Tyrants achieve this by delegating power only to people personally loyal to them.
Trump is even testing the personal loyalty of federal judges.
“He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” Trump recently posted on social media (a direct nod to Napoleon and other dictators), attached to a headline that his administration refuses to obey a district court order unfreezing billions of dollars in federal grants.
All this is happening just as Trump is effectively handing over large swaths of the world to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping—the only world leaders he respects and understands, because they, too, are tyrants.
On the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the United States voted with Russia, North Korea, Iran, and 14 other authoritarian Moscow-friendly countries against a United Nations resolution condemning Russian aggression in Ukraine and calling for the return of Ukrainian territory. The resolution passed overwhelmingly nonetheless.
Why am I telling you this when you’re probably already feeling rage and despair over what’s happening? Because seeing the whole for what it truly is — rather than being upset by this or that part of it — is essential for fighting back.
We—the vast majority of people in the United States—do not want to live in a dictatorship. Yet we now have a president and a regime bent on an authoritarian takeover of America and on joining the other major authoritarians of the world.
As he tries to consolidate power, we must protect the institutions in our society still able to oppose Trump’s tyranny—independent centers of power that can stop or at least slow him. Not this Congress, tragically, but federal courts and judges. Many of our state governors and attorneys general, state legislatures, and state courts. Perhaps even our state and local police. Hopefully, our communities.
Ultimately this will come down to our own courage and resolve: To engage in peaceful civil disobedience. To organize and mobilize others. To fight against hate and bigotry. To fight for justice and democracy.
Remember this: Tyranny cannot prevail over people who refuse to succumb to it.
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