Trump’s Deportation State Abuses the Rights of Not Just Immigrants But Citizens, Too: An Executive Watch Roundup
Our mid-March selection of the president's latest and greatest assaults on the rule of law
The UnPopulist, along with its parent organization, the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism (ISMA), launched Executive Watch early in Trump’s second term. This project, which tracks presidential abuses of power in real time, has been meticulously documenting the illicit actions emanating from the White House.
Below is our biweekly selection of new entries posted in Executive Watch. You should bookmark this page that contains a chronological scroll of the abuses and this post that sorts and lists them under our 5 P categories:
After reading this roundup, tell us in the comments: Which of these abuses is the most troubling, and why?
March 11, 2026
Nobody Knows What Happened to the Mega Donations for Trump’s Presidential Library
Category: Personal Grift
Presidential libraries have long carried the potential for corruption, allowing former presidents to solicit vast donations with no transparency. Donald Trump has taken this legal loophole and exploited it to a whole new degree. Early in his second term, he has already coerced vast sums in bogus legal settlements—and no one is quite sure where the money went.
The Washington Post reports:
[ABC, Meta, Paramount, and X] each committed millions of dollars to the project through legal settlements with Trump in the months after the 2024 presidential election, seeking to resolve claims they had harmed him by restricting his access to social media or defaming him in their coverage. The commitments totaled at least $63 million, according to company statements and media reports.
But the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Fund, Inc., which was set to receive at least some of the settlement funding, was administratively dissolved in September by Florida officials after it did not submit a mandatory annual report. …
A second nonprofit, the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Foundation, Inc., was created last year and reported in December that it received $50 million in contributions but has yet to confirm publicly that it took possession of the settlements. Federal rules do not require presidential library nonprofits to disclose their donors. …
Trump has said that he plans to use his planned Miami-based library to take possession of a Boeing 747-8 aircraft given by Qatar and valued at $400 million, among other gifts. The president’s allies have also worked to acquire prized real estate for the site.
Everything about the “imperial presidency” has become bloated and exaggerated, including the vast monuments presidents erect to themselves. But no one has yet matched Trump in turning the presidential library into a vehicle for soliciting bribes and as a permanent personal slush fund for his own aggrandizement.
March 11, 2026
In an Ongoing Attack on the Media, Hegseth Bans Press Photographers from the DOD for Not Making Him Look Glamorous Enough
Category: Power Consolidation
Tough-guy Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is about as insecure about his appearance as the average middle-school girl. So in a comical twist—with a serious underlying point—he is now banning press photographers from the Pentagon for taking unflattering photos of him.
The Washington Post reports:
The Defense Department has barred press photographers from briefings on the ongoing U.S.-Israeli military conflict with Iran after they published photos of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that his staff deemed “unflattering,” according to two people familiar with the decision who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation. …
The National Press Photographers Association (NPPA), which advocates for photographers’ rights, condemned the Defense Department’s decision in a statement after this article was published, and called upon the Pentagon to restore access to banned photographers. The group also said retaliation against photographers raises fresh First Amendment concerns.
“Excluding photographers from Pentagon briefings because officials did not like how published images portrayed them shows an astonishingly poor sense of priorities in the midst of a war and is, for a public servant, not a good look,” NPPA President Alex Garcia said. “A free press cannot function if government officials decide that only favorable images of public officials may be created or distributed.”
The serious point beneath this little comedy is that it is part of a wider war against an independent press. These photographers were only recently let back in after Hegseth banned most of the press from the Pentagon in favor of toadies from often obscure right-wing outlets.
March 10, 2026
DOGE Bro Who Stole Our Social Security Data to Illegally Transfer it to His Company Said He Expected a Presidential Pardon
Category: Personal Grift
When DOGE went rampaging through the federal bureaucracy, one of the first things it did—on its way to not actually cutting government spending—was to trample flat all the institutional safeguards meant to protect our data from being stolen, especially in big databases used for Social Security numbers.
The Washington Post reports on a previously buried allegation that this is precisely what happened:
According to the disclosure, the former DOGE software engineer, who worked at the Social Security Administration last year before starting a job at a government contractor in October, allegedly told several co-workers that he possessed two tightly restricted databases of U.S. citizens’ information, and had at least one on a thumb drive. The databases, called “Numident” and the “Master Death File,” include records for more than 500 million living and dead Americans, including Social Security numbers, places and dates of birth, citizenship, race and ethnicity, and parents’ names. The complaint does not include specific dates of when he is said to have told colleagues this information, but at least one of the alleged events unfolded around early January, according to the complaint. While working at DOGE, the engineer had approved access to Social Security data.
According to the complaint, he allegedly told the whistleblower that he needed help transferring data from a thumb drive “to his personal computer so that he could ‘sanitize’ the data before using it at [the company.]” The engineer told colleagues that once he had removed personal details from the data, he wanted to upload it into the company’s systems. He told another colleague, who refused to help him upload the data because of legal concerns, that he expected to receive a presidential pardon if his actions were deemed to be illegal, according to the complaint. …
A separate complaint, made in August by the agency’s former chief data officer, Charles Borges, alleges members of DOGE improperly uploaded copies of Americans’ Social Security data to a digital cloud, putting individuals’ private information at risk. In January, the Trump administration acknowledged DOGE staffers were responsible for separate data breaches at the agency, including sharing data through an unapproved third-party service and that one of the DOGE staffers signed an agreement to share data with an unnamed political group aiming to overturn election results in several states.
The Trump administration claims this allegation was investigated but dropped for lack of evidence—but after gutting its independent inspectors general, this is not an administration that can be trusted to investigate itself.
March 9, 2026
Trump Keeps Illegally Appointing Unqualified US Attorneys Even as Courts Keep Swatting Them
Category: Policy Illegality
The central goal of Donald Trump’s second term in office is to bypass the legislative branch entirely, figuring out how to govern without Congress. One way he is doing this is a concerted attempt to bypass the Senate confirmation process for his appointees, particularly those in the Department of Justice, where he wants pliant lackeys to persecute his opponents.
Trump had one of his DOJ appointments in New York ruled unlawful, but when a panel of judges appointed a replacement, Trump fired him. Now another judge has ruled that after Trump’s pick for the U.S. Attorney’s office in New Jersey was disqualified as an unlawful appointment, Trump illegally installed her successors as well.
The Washington Post reports:
A federal judge upended the leadership of New Jersey’s U.S. attorney’s office again Monday, ruling for the second time in less than a year that the Trump administration had illegally sought to bypass Congress and install its own picks to head the prominent prosecutorial outpost.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann said that a trio of Justice Department lawyers who have been leading the office since late last year had been unlawfully serving in their positions. Attorney General Pam Bondi appointed them after Brann disqualified Alina Habba, President Donald Trump’s previous choice for U.S. attorney in the state, in August amid similar questions over the legality of her appointment. …
Typically, U.S. attorneys, who have broad authority to oversee all federal criminal and civil cases in their districts, are nominated by the president and must be confirmed by the Senate. But Trump, facing pushback over some nominees, has adopted several legally questionable tactics to keep his unconfirmed picks serving in their roles. …
Across the country, courts have disqualified a half-dozen of Trump’s picks to lead U.S. attorney’s offices on an interim or acting basis, finding that each had served well beyond the statutorily defined limits of their temporary appointments or were never legally appointed in the first place.
The power to initiate federal prosecutions is easily abused, since the resources of the federal government are so vast that even if a defendant is acquitted, he is already punished by the process itself. This is why the president’s appointments are supposed to be constrained by federal law—an inconvenience only to a president who craves the latitude to abuse his power.
March 8, 2026
ICE Isn’t Targeting the Worst But Legal Immigrants Playing by the Rules, Including Musical Stars Who Visited the White House
Category: Policy Illegality
The big lie of Donald Trump’s mass deportations is that they would only target criminals, the “worst of the worst.” Instead, Trump has overwhelming targeted legal immigrants who were working through the system and complying with everything asked of them. The latest case is two young musicians who were recently honored on the floor of Congress.
The New York Times reports:
Last June, two teenage brothers from South Texas and their high school mariachi bandmates traveled to Capitol Hill. They had been invited there by their congresswoman, Monica De La Cruz. She was going to recognize the band on the House floor for winning a state mariachi competition.
“Your community is so so proud of your hard work, your talent, and your dedication,” Ms. De La Cruz, a Republican, told the students.
Nine months later, the brothers, Antonio Yesayahu Gámez-Cuéllar, 18, and Caleb Gámez-Cuéllar, 14, along with their parents and younger brother, are in ICE detention and facing deportation. …
The family entered the United States in 2023 at the border crossing in Brownsville, Texas, on an asylum claim and settled in nearby McAllen, according to Luis Antonio Martínez, the father.
In an interview last week, Mr. Martínez said that he and his wife and children were fleeing threats in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, where he had been kidnapped by cartel members.
The family had been attending its required court dates and last had a check-in with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement in January, where they were told to return in June, Mr. Martínez said.
Then he received a call from ICE saying that the family needed to check in on Feb. 25. They were detained at that check-in.
The most chilling line in the report is actually this one: “They hope to be released by asking for habeas corpus, a last-resort legal procedure that many detained migrants have come to rely on.” A last resort? Habeas corpus—showing actual cause for imprisoning someone—is the very first requirement the government should be expected to meet, but which this administration systematically refuses to do.
March 8, 2026
Trump’s Killing Spree Off the Coast of South America Continues Apace
Category: Policy Illegality
With everything else going on, and the U.S. now waging a whole new war against Iran without congressional authorization, it’s important to note that the Trump administration is still randomly and arbitrarily murdering boaters off the coast of South America.
NBC News reported on one strike a few weeks ago, and now The New York Times reports on a new one:
The Defense Department said on Sunday that it had blown up a boat in the eastern Pacific Ocean earlier in the day, killing six people. The strike raised the death toll in the campaign by the United States against people it accuses of smuggling drugs at sea to at least 156.
The U.S. Southern Command announced the strike on social media with an 11-second video clip that showed a stationary boat, with two or three outboard engines, floating in the water and then suddenly exploding.
Legal specialists on the use of lethal force have said the strikes are illegal, extrajudicial killings because the military cannot deliberately target civilians who do not pose an imminent threat of violence, even if suspected of engaging in criminal acts. The Trump administration has not provided evidence of drug smuggling.
The administration has had months to offer evidence to justify these killings, but it never does. This reinforces the sense that this murder spree is just for the theater of making Trump look tough by blowing things up, and to satisfy the bloodlust of Trump’s sycophants—”for fun,” as Trump himself put it.
March 7, 2026
DHS Targets Hundreds of US Citizens With Bogus Prosecutions for Protesting ICE
Category: Presidential Retribution
Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign is supposed to target illegal immigrants. But the Department of Homeland Security is also becoming Donald Trump’s enforcement squad against protesters, turning its power inward in a campaign of intimidation, arrests, and malicious prosecutions against U.S. citizens.
The Wall Street Journal investigates:
Of the 279 people accused by [DHS] officials on X of attacking federal officers in the past year, 181 were U.S. citizens, the Journal found. Close to half of those Americans were never charged with assault. None have been convicted at trial.
Yet names, mug shots and other identifying details posted by the government put a bull’s-eye on them. They had to explain the accusations to family, friends and employers. In a few cases, their home and workplace addresses were leaked online, drawing death threats. …
Federal prosecutors in cities with high-profile immigration operations said they have been pressured by Justice Department leaders to aggressively pursue assault charges, even in cases undermined by contradictory evidence or ones that fail to appear worthy of prosecution. Some have quit in response. Others say the time spent on flimsy cases takes them away from prosecuting drug cases, public corruption and gun-related crimes.
Federal agents have acted as if civilians have no right to observe or record them, said David Bier of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington. “Once you adopt those positions then everyone’s a viable target,” he said. The consequences—physical intimidation, tackling, arrests and hours in custody without access to a lawyer—“amounts to going after the political opposition,” Bier said.
Constitutional experts say aggressive policing tactics can deter people from exercising their First Amendment rights, which include the freedom to witness or protest government activities in public places.
There is an old lesson that we have to re-learn: When we give our government unchecked powers to go after a foreign bogeyman, those powers often end up being turned back against ourselves.
March 7, 2026
DHS Tried to Bury the Murder of Another US Citizen by Blaming Him for His Death
Category: Policy Illegality
The most famous killings of U.S. citizens by Department of Homeland Security officers happened earlier this year in Minneapolis. But it turns out the first such killing during Trump’s second term happened almost a year earlier—but DHS refused to acknowledge it. Newly released evidence indicates that they lied to cover up the case.
The Washington Post reports:
The investigative material released Friday by the Texas Department of Public Safety shows that Ruben Ray Martinez, 23, was given conflicting instructions as he encountered law enforcement officers from multiple agencies near the scene of a previous vehicle accident in South Padre Island, Texas, in the early-morning hours of March 15.
His car moved forward very slowly in the moments before Homeland Security Investigations Agent Jack C. Stevens fired three shots into Martinez’s blue Ford sedan. The footage does not show Martinez speeding up rapidly or appearing to target a second Homeland Security Investigations agent, Hector Sosa. …
Sosa told investigators that Martinez’s car struck his legs, causing him to fall over the hood before Stevens opened fire. …
More than a dozen people have been shot by DHS personnel over the past 14 months, including two other fatal shootings of U.S. citizens during immigration enforcement operations. In January, immigration personnel in Minneapolis shot Renée Good and Alex Pretti in separate incidents days apart. Three months earlier, a Border Patrol agent shot and injured Marimar Martinez in Chicago. In each of those three cases, administration officials accused the victims of endangering the officers before they were killed, and some of their characterizations were proved false once more information about the shootings became public.
This is the consistent character of the mass deportation system Donald Trump has established. DHS officers feel emboldened to use deadly force on the slightest provocation or with no provocation at all, and then to lie about it—while they are assured by their superiors, all the way up to the president, that they can do so with total impunity.
March 3, 2026
The Labor Secretary Is Mired in Scandal and Corruption, Just Like Her Boss
Category: Personal Grift
Donald Trump has set the precedent that public office is a perk to be used for personal gain, and this permeates his entire administration. Accusations of corruption and sex scandals are coming particularly thick at the moment from the Department of Labor.
The Daily Beast provides an overview:
Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer is under investigation over allegations of misconduct, fraud and an “alcohol stash” found in her office, while her husband, Dr. Shawn DeRemer, has been banned from the department’s headquarters following allegations that he sexually harassed at least one female employee. (Dr. DeRemer has called the allegations “false.”)
Chavez-DeRemer is, specifically, facing claims that she engaged in an improper relationship with a member of her security detail. Additionally, The New York Timesreported that formal complaints were filed with the department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) alleging that her top aides “pressur[ed] staff to direct the awarding of department grants to benefit the secretary’s political career and elevate her standing with donors and consultants.” According to NBC News, the secretary’s chief of staff and his deputy allegedly engaged in “travel fraud” by setting up professional events as an excuse for personal travel. …
Now, wait for it: The man responsible for investigating whether Chavez-DeRemer used taxpayer dollars to further an inappropriate relationship was himself accused of using taxpayer dollars to further an inappropriate relationship. That man is Anthony D’Esposito, the Labor Department’s Inspector General—a partisan actor who is deeply compromised and lacks the credibility required for such a role.
It wasn’t just Trump’s personal example that gave the green light to this kind of corruption. It was also his decision, shortly after returning to office, to fire independent, nonpartisan inspectors general, replacing them with political hacks. This has led a lot of the people he appointed to think they can get away with anything.
Feb. 16, 2026
The Trump Administration Is Illegally Asserting Presidential Power to Rewrite the History of Slavery
Category: Power Consolidation
In addition to trying to roll back the achievements of the Civil Rights Movement, the Trump administration is trying to erase the very history of slavery and segregation in America. This is part of a wider effort to remove signs and monuments that the administration regards as “disparaging” America. But the real point is highlighted in a judge’s ruling in Philadelphia.
The Philadelphia Inquirer has the story:
A federal judge ordered President Donald Trump’s administration to restore the slavery exhibits that the National Park Service removed from the President’s House last month. …
Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s administration filed a federal lawsuit against Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and acting National Park Service Director Jessica Bowron, and their respective agencies, the day the exhibits were dismantled. The complaint argued dismantling the exhibits was an “arbitrary and capricious” act that violated a 2006 cooperative agreement between the city and the federal government. …
During a hearing last month, Rufe called the federal government’s argument that a president could unilaterally change the exhibits displayed in national parks “horrifying” and “dangerous.” She ordered the federal government to ensure the panels’ safekeeping after an inspection and a visit to the President’s House earlier this month.
This is the real issue: Does the president have the sole right to decide what America’s history is? As with everything else in this administration, it comes down to the authoritarian notion that one person gets to dictate everything, not just about government policy, but about the nature of the truth itself, from the names of bodies of water to what is included in our history.
© The UnPopulist, 2026
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I had concluded that that is precisely the purpose of his vicious deportation agenda.
It’s standard dictator practice: use the law to attack a group that few people in the majority care about all that much and, once that is accepted as legitimate, use it to attack the majority as well. (I freely and fully admit that Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it much better than I ever could.)