Politics and views in the United States.

El Salvador's President rejects returning a Maryland man who was mistakenly deported. The US stock market improves, but confusion lingers around tariffs. And universities try to comply with President Trump's DEI orders.

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to 2025 Talks, where we're following our democracy in historic times.

And using this registration act, asking that immigrants register, we are repeating a grave national error.

We will see massive violations of human rights.

Angelica Salas with the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights is one of many condemning President Donald Trump's use of the Alien Registration Act.

As of April 11th, all undocumented immigrants have to register with the federal government within 30 days.

The order is being challenged in court, though a federal judge is allowing it to go forward.

Salas says it's asking people to sign up for mass deportations.

This comes as the administration seems to be defying federal courts when sending migrants they claim are gang members to prison in El Salvador.

A 60-minute investigation found three-quarters of those deported don't have criminal records.

This includes Quilmar Abrego Garcia of Maryland, sent to El Salvador's notorious terrorism confinement center by mistake.

The Supreme Court ruled the administration has to facilitate bringing him home, but Trump and the president of El Salvador say they won't bring him back.

The migrants are being sent to El Salvador under an 18th century wartime law, which courts have said does not apply.

States could face economic and fiscal problems from mass deportations.

A new report from the Immigration Research Initiative and Connecticut Voices for Children found Connecticut could lose more than $400 million in tax revenue.

Author David Disigard-Kalick says entire industries could grind to a halt.

It's not just for the people who are working in the jobs where people who are undocumented tend to be concentrated in the lowest of jobs, but you can't do the whole job unless you have those people there to do that.

And so that would also mean job loss for the electrician, for the carpenters, for the architect, and for the construction company.

Meanwhile, Trump has signed a presidential memo aimed at preventing illegal aliens from receiving Social Security.

Migrants without legal status virtually never collect Social Security, despite contributing more than $25 billion to the system each year.

White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt says the new order will prevent waste and corruption.

It will expand the Social Security Administration's fraud prosecutor program to at least 50 U.S. attorney offices and establishes a Medicare and Medicaid fraud prosecution program in 15 U.S. attorney offices.

This comes after the Trump administration falsely listed 6,000 living immigrants as dead, saying that will enable the canceling of their Social Security numbers and could push them to "self-deport."

Leavitt says anyone who disagrees with the common-sense policies of this administration can find a new job.

Now that the U.S. House has passed the SAVE Act, civil rights groups say the effort to stop non-citizens from getting the ballot will stop legitimate voting.

Lauren Grewargo with Fair Fight Action says making people prove their citizenship could stop more than 20 million qualified Americans from voting.

"There's other documents that you can provide, like your original birth certificate.

But if your birth certificate changed because your name is no longer what you were born under — if you are a married woman, for example, and took your husband's name — that's not going to cut it."

The current federal law already requires voters to attest their citizenship under penalty of perjury, and illegal non-citizen voting almost never happens.

I'm Edwin J. Vieira for Pacifica Network and Public News Service.

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