Trump Says He’s Deporting “Homegrown Criminals” to El Salvador Next (2025)

Despite a court order, Donald Trump is still refusing to allow journalists from the Associated Press into the White House press pool.

On Monday, the AP was barred from the White House to cover Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s meeting with Trump, and issued a statement saying, “Our journalists were blocked from the Oval Office today. We expect the White House to restore AP’s participation in the pool as of today, as provided in the injunction order.”

Last week, a federal judge ruled that the president couldn’t bar the AP from presidential events, saying, “Under the First Amendment, if the government opens its doors to some journalists—be it to the Oval Office, the East Room, or elsewhere—it cannot then shut those doors to other journalists because of their viewpoints. The Constitution requires no less.”

Trump barred the AP in February from the Oval Office and Air Force One because the news agency refused to adopt Trump’s unilateral name change of the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America.” The AP responded by suing three administration officials on the grounds that the White House was violating the Constitution’s free press protections by trying to dictate the AP’s language.

The president’s refusal to allow the AP access to the White House on Monday escalates the matter further, as the organization would have to seek further redress in court. It’s the latest example of Trump’s attempts to intimidate and force media organizations to bend to his will, be it threatening legal action through the FCC or defamation lawsuits, or taking the unprecedented move of wresting control of the press pool away from the White House Correspondents’ Association.

An American university is finally standing up to Donald Trump’s egregious demands, amid a flurry of schools spinelessly bending to the president’s will in recent weeks.

Harvard University announced Monday it will not comply with the White House’s demands that it dismantle diversity programming and limit student protests, putting $9 billion in federal funding at risk.

“No government—regardless of which party is in power—should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” University President Alan Garber said in a statement.

On Friday, the university received a letter from the Department of Education detailing changes it deemed necessary to foster an “environment that produces intellectual creativity and scholarly rigor,” worthy of maintaining a “financial relationship with the federal government.” The demands included discontinuing diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, reforming its admissions process for international students, and dismantling programs with “egregious records of antisemitism,” among others. The letter came two weeks after three federal agencies announced a review of $9 billion in federal grants and contracts to Harvard.

“The administration’s prescription goes beyond the power of the federal government. It violates Harvard’s First Amendment rights and exceeds the statutory limits of the government’s authority under Title VI. And it threatens our values as a private institution devoted to the pursuit, production, and dissemination of knowledge,” Garber said in his statement.

Harvard’s audit is part of Trump’s larger crackdown on postsecondary institutions and academic freedom, from funding cuts to deporting international students and banning DEI initiatives.

A number of universities have crumbled under Trump’s pressure, and fast. Columbia University unfairly expelled students involved in pro-Palestine protests and agreed to policy changes in an attempt to regain about $400 million in funding. Ohio State University closed its DEI programs, the University of Iowa eliminated housing specifically designated for Black students, Latinx students, and LGBTQ students, and the University of Pennsylvania has erased any reference to DEI or affirmative action from its websites.

But the country’s oldest postsecondary institution, which has long been criticized for its questionable endowment investments and lack of diversity, is refusing to crumble—hopefully a catalyst for other universities to grow a spine and do the same.

Donald Trump plans to send as many people as he can to megaprisons in El Salvador.

In a press conference with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele Monday, Trump was asked how many “illegal criminals” he plans to export to El Salvador.

“As many as possible,” the president responded. “As many as we can get out of our country that were allowed in here by incompetent Joe Biden, through open borders.… We have millions of people that should not be in this country that are dangerous.… We have millions of people that are murderers, drug dealers.”

But the majority of the more than 200 immigrants he’s already sent to El Salvador were not murderers or drug dealers. They were ordinary people without criminal records, victim to the Trump administration’s baseless lies about their pasts.

Andry Hernandez Romero was a makeup artist who loved to do theater, Jerce Reyes Barrios was a soccer player whose innocent tattoo was flagged as a Tren de Aragua gang symbol by the Department of Homeland Security, Alirio Guillermo was a food delivery driver in Utah without a criminal record. They are now being held at the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, a megaprison notorious for human rights abuses.

Trump and Bukele’s meeting comes as the White House claims it is not obligated to return Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia after he was illegally deported to El Salvador, despite the Supreme Court ordering it facilitate his return.

The Supreme Court also ruled that the government must give enough notice to immigrant detainees to dispute their deportation, but the Trump administration clearly doesn’t care.

On Sunday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that another 10 migrants had been deported to El Salvador. Meanwhile, the president continues his threats to deport U.S. citizens to the megaprison.