ICYMI: Former Justice Department Lawyer Keeps Blowing the Whistle On Trump Administration’s Contempt for the Law

LOS ANGELES, July 23 — The New York Times podcast “The Daily” today covered the story of Erez Reuveni. He’s the former Justice Department lawyer who filed a whistleblower complaint exposing what he calls  “an intentional effort by the Administration to ignore judges and the due process rights of hundreds of migrants.”

Mr. Reuveni was fired by the Trump Administration in April after he appeared in court in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was sent to the maximum-security prison in El Salvador called CECOT along with hundreds of others of abducted immigrants. Reuveni was fired for telling the court – truthfully – that Abrego Garcia’s removal had been a mistake.

Abrego Garcia, a union apprentice and former day laborer, was imprisoned for months in CECOT and became the face of lawless abduction and deportation of immigrants without charges, trials or convictions – without any due process at all.

“If they can do this sort of thing to Abrego Garcia, to 238 people that nobody knows, and send them to CECOT forever with no due process, they can do that to anyone,” Reuveni said in The New York Times. “It should be deeply, deeply worrisome to anyone who cares about their safety and their liberty, that the government can, without showing evidence to anyone of anything, spirit you away on a plane to wherever, forever.”

The following is a statement from Chris Newman, Legal Director of The National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON) and counsel to the Abrego Garcia family:

“The Trump Administration’s barbaric campaign targeting immigrants is a threat to constitutional order and the rule of law in the US.  While immigrants are terrorized in public spaces by masked agents, the tide of public opinion is now turning as US citizens are increasingly disgusted by what they see. But that’s not the whole story. What happens to the disappeared people inside unmarked vans and behind prison walls has been hidden in secrecy and blanketed with lies. The full story of the Administration’s assault on civil rights, of the criminal atrocities of the MAGA mass deportations, has not yet been told.

“We’re grateful that Mr. Reuveni is honoring his sworn commitment to truthtelling and the law by speaking out about his experience. We need more whistleblowers like him, more men and women of goodwill and decency, to tell what they know. Honest government lawyers – your time is now, we need to hear from you.”

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