This is an excerpt from a book I have just started writing. Please subscribe, share, and leave a comment. I am committing to daily writing to get my story committed to history, before it’s too late.
I am writing this because there is now a non-zero chance that the US government will make me disappear into a horrific prison. I started writing this book on April 16th, 2025 because I feel an overpowering urge to commit my story to history. I am 38 years old and never before in my life have I felt such a clear and present danger to my physical safety, nor have I felt such uncertainty about my future. I don’t want my story to be lost if they disappear me. I need the world to know that I am a human being who has served this country honorably and done my best to be a good citizen, a kind neighbor, and a compassionate human. I need the world to know that no immigrant, no human being, deserves the barbaric and inhumane treatment so callously inflicted by this tyrannical regime.
Last month the US sent 238 human beings to El Salvador, claiming that they were violent gang members and dangerous terrorists. These human beings received no due process. It has now come out that 75% of them have no prior criminal history.
They were not charged with any crimes. They were not convicted of any crimes. Most of them were documented and here legally. Yet they were sent to Centro De Confinamiento Del Terrorismo(CECOT), a maximum security prison in El Salvador. Everyday people—a makeup artist, soccer player, and food delivery worker—locked in a prison so brutal that El Salvador's justice minister is on record saying the only way out is in a coffin.
CECOT is a notorious prison known for its brutality, violence, torture, and murders. Human rights groups estimate between 261-350 people have died in this mega prison since it was opened in 2023. There’s allegations of extrajudicial mass murders within the prison. Even if there are no extrajudicial killings they are certainly intentionally killing the inmates through malnutrition, mistreatment, and lack of basic care not to mention medical care. The prisoners are fed only rice and beans, only get to leave their overcrowded cells for half an hour a day to exercise, and they never get to go outside. Ever.
In my opinion this is a death camp. Dying of starvation, illness, and brutal beatings and rapes can be written off as “par for the course” in a maximum security prison but make no mistake this is not a normal prison and even the worst of the worst offenders should not be subject to a long slow death sentence like this. This is by definition cruel and unusual punishment.
On April 10, 2025 the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in a 9-0 decision that Kilmar Ábrego García, a Maryland father and innocent man sent to El Salvador, should be returned immediately. Thus far the trump regime has stonewalled and ignored this legal court order. Six days later, Garcia still rots in that horrific prison.
Here’s an excerpt from the Supreme Court decision No. 24A949:
On March 15, 2025, the United States removed Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia from the United States to El Salvador, where he is currently detained in the Center for Terrorism Confinement (CECOT). The United States acknowledges that Abrego Garcia was subject to a withholding order forbidding his removal to El Salvador, and that the removal to El Salvador was therefore illegal. The United States represents that the removal to El Salvador was the result of an “administrative error.” The United States alleges, however, that Abrego Garcia has been found to be a member of the gang MS–13, a designated foreign terrorist organization, and that his return to the United States would pose a threat to the public. Abrego Garcia responds that he is not a member of MS–13, and that he has lived safely in the United States with his family for a decade and has never been charged with a crime.
Statement of JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR, with whom JUSTICE KAGAN and JUSTICE JACKSON join, respecting the Court’s disposition of the application. The United States Government arrested Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia in Maryland and flew him to a “terrorism confinement center” in El Salvador, where he has been detained for 26 days and counting. To this day, the Government has cited no basis in law for Abrego Garcia’s warrantless arrest, his removal to El Salvador, or his confinement in a Salvadoran prison. Nor could it. The Government remains bound by an Immigration Judge’s 2019 order expressly prohibiting Abrego Garcia’s removal to El Salvador because he faced a “clear probability of future persecution” there and “demonstrated that [El Salvador’s] authorities were and would be unable or unwilling to protect him.” App. to Application To Vacate Injunction 13a. The Government has not challenged the validity of that order. Instead of hastening to correct its egregious error, the Government dismissed it as an “oversight.” Decl. of R. Cerna in No. 25–cv–951 (D Md., Mar. 31, 2025), ECF Doc. 11–3, p. 3. The Government now requests an order from this Court permitting it to leave Abrego Garcia, a husband and father without a criminal record, in a Salvadoran prison for no reason recognized by the law. The only argument the Government offers in support of its request, that United States courts cannot grant relief once a deportee crosses the border, is plainly wrong. See Rumsfeld v. Padilla, 542 U. S. 426, 447, n. 16 (2004); cf. Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U. S. 723, 732 (2008). The Government’s argument, moreover, implies that it could deport and incarcerate any person, including U. S. citizens, without legal consequence, so long as it does so before a court can intervene. See Trump v. J. G. G., 604 U. S. ___, ___ (2025) (SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 8). That view refutes itself. Because every factor governing requests for equitable relief manifestly weighs against the Government, Nken v. Holder, 556 U. S. 418, 426 (2009), I would have declined to intervene in this litigation and denied the application in full.
Nevertheless, I agree with the Court’s order that the proper remedy is to provide Abrego Garcia with all the process to which he would have been entitled had he not been unlawfully removed to El Salvador. That means the Government must comply with its obligation to provide Abrego Garcia with “due process of law,” including notice and an opportunity to be heard, in any future proceedings.
So I am writing this now because I don’t know if I will be snatched away and taken to a black hole detention site in the next weeks or months because of my political activism. I feel especially vulnerable because I am not a native-born citizen. I was born in China and was adopted to the US after my family faced political persecution in China. I became a naturalized US citizen at the age of 13.
The next targets for this regime will be naturalized citizens, especially those vocal and critical of the regime along with journalists, lawyers, academics, and protestors. I know this because this is how authoritarians always operate. In order to maintain power they must silence dissent. The majority of people never support repressive, authoritarian regimes, so the only way for them to maintain legitimacy is to violently suppress all voices of dissent.
I know this because I have already lived through this. I was born in Lanzhou, China. When I was two years old, protests sparked across college campuses nationwide. Here’s an excerpt from Wikipedia summarizing the protestor’s grievances. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
The protests were precipitated by the death of pro-reform Chinese Communist Party (CCP) general secretary Hu Yaobang in April 1989 amid the backdrop of rapid economic development and social change in post-Mao China, reflecting anxieties among the people and political elite about the country's future. The reforms of the 1980s had led to a nascent market economy that benefited some people but seriously disadvantaged others, and the one-party political system also faced a challenge to its legitimacy. Common grievances at the time included inflation, corruption, limited preparedness of graduates for the new economy,[5] and restrictions on political participation. Although they were highly disorganised and their goals varied, the students called for things like rollback of the removal of "iron rice bowl" jobs, greater accountability, constitutional due process, democracy, freedom of the press, and freedom of speech.[6][7] Workers' protests were generally focused on inflation and the erosion of welfare.[8] These groups united around anti-corruption demands, adjusting economic policies, and protecting social security.[8] At the height of the protests, about one million people assembled in the square.[9]
One million people assembled in Tiananmen square. Imagine that. One. Million. People. This shook the CCP to the core. The CIA at the time projected that this was certainly the fall of the CCP, that there was no way for the government to maintain power and legitimacy.
How wrong they were.
As the protests developed, the authorities responded with both conciliatory and hardline tactics, exposing deep divisions within the party leadership.[10] By May, a student-led hunger strike galvanised support around the country for the demonstrators, and the protests spread to some 400 cities.[11] On 20 May, the State Council declared martial law, and as many as 300,000 troops were mobilised to Beijing.[11][12][13][14]
Eerie, isn’t it? How history repeats itself. As I write this, citizens across the USA are preparing for civil unrest and the potential implementation of martial law. Nationwide protests on April 5th had 5,000,000 people turn out. Every protest leader warns of agent provocateurs that will try to incite violence in the next protests in order to justify a heavy-handed government crack-down.
After several weeks of standoffs and violent confrontations between the army and demonstrators left many on both sides severely injured, a meeting held among the CCP's top leadership on 1 June concluded with a decision to clear the square.[15][13][14] The troops advanced into central parts of Beijing on the city's major thoroughfares in the early morning hours of 4 June and engaged in bloody clashes with demonstrators attempting to block them, in which many people – demonstrators, bystanders, and soldiers – were killed. Estimates of the death toll vary from several hundred to several thousand, with thousands more wounded.[16][17][18][19][20][21]
The number I always heard from living in China was 10,000+ dead. What always stuck with me was the image of tanks crushing bodies so that they could wash the bloody pulp down the drain in order to hide the scope of the massacre.
Both of my parents were university professors on our campus in Lanzhou. My father taught political science and he gave a speech in front of a crowd of thousands of students in support of the protestors. The CCP threw him in prison for his speech. He was not given due process. He was not charged. He was not convicted. He simply disappeared into a black hole.
Eventually my family was able to secure his release after two years. Two years he spent enduring god knows what horrors. I have no doubt that his time in prison led to his early death. He died when I was 13. I think he was only 39 at the time. I can’t even remember now. Again it’s eerie how the past is echoing to the present. My father only lived one year longer than I have now. I am 38 and now I worry that the US government might send me to a death camp.
I could shut my mouth and be relatively safe. I have resources. I am not latino and I don’t have an accent and I have a passport and citizenship. I could be safe, relatively. But I cannot be silent. I cannot shut my mouth when I see history repeating itself. I would rather die, today, having stood-up for the rights of other humans than to live to old age knowing that when it mattered the most I was a coward and I stayed silent.
I will not go silently into the night. I will rage, rage against the dying of the light. It doesn’t matter if all of this effort is for naught. What matters is our intention. Our integrity. Our honor. Our courage. My speaking out might do nothing to stop the rise of tyranny. But at least I will have done the right thing at the critical time, just like my father did the right thing at the critical time, knowing full-well the risks he was undertaking.