Spirit 🇺🇦

Not Criminals—Targets of Vulnerability 2/10: They weren’t taken because they were criminals. They were taken because they were vulnerable—asylum seekers, migrants, dissidents—fleeing persecution, hoping for protection under American law. Instead, they were swept up under a statute from 1798—the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime relic once used by John Adams to jail immigrants. The Trump administration revived it and reinterpreted it to enable a deportation machine without trial, judge, or oversight. This wasn’t a crackdown on MS-13. Most had no criminal records. Some were flagged only for tattoos—like Jefferson José Laya Freites, deported because of a lion on his forearm. It was assumed to be gang-related. It was actually a tribute to his Christian faith. Or Arturo Suárez Trejo, a Venezuelan singer living in Houston, legally awaiting an asylum hearing. One morning, ICE agents came to his door. “He’s being transferred to finish processing,” they told his daughter. He never came home. His family later identified him in a prison photo—head shaved, shackled, kneeling in the white uniform of El Salvador’s mega-prison. theintellectualist.com/the-d…