Andrew Schulz Endorses Trump’s Concentration Camps

In an episode of Brilliant Idiots released today, Andrew Schulz repeated various Trump Administration lies about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man illegally deported to El Salvador and imprisoned in dictator Nayib Bukele’s CECOT prison. Over the objections of his cohost Charlamagne Tha God and his co-producers, he falsely claimed that criminals have no right to due process, then enthusiastically endorsed Trump’s plan to deport not only immigrants but alleged “homegrown” criminals to foreign prisons. 

To wit:

Charlamagne: I want to know if this guy is illegal or not. That's what I want to know.

Schulz: Yes, he's illegal. The question—

Charlamagne: Is he though? I don't know. I really don't know.

Chris Morrow [producer]: No. He was given his green—

Schulz: He's illegal, and he's a gang member. And there was no evidence offered to refute that he wasn't a gang member. Do you want me to read the fucking article?

Morrow: The gang member thing, there's another version of it, where his family owned a business that was targeted by gangs, didn't say he was part of the gangs, that he had to leave.

Charlamagne: I really don't know.

Alexx Media [producer]: I just think this is-

Schulz: "Although"—sorry, Al—"although the court is reluctant to give evidentiary weight to the respondent's clothing as an indication of a gang affiliation, the fact that a past proven and reliable source of information verified the respondent's gang membership rank and gang name is sufficient to support that the respondent is a gang member, and the respondent has failed to present evidence to rebut that assertion."

Charlamagne: I will say—

Schulz: That is the court document.

[...]

Media: But I think this is just a really dumb case for the Dems to put so much weight on because now there's some Democrats that are going to El Salvador to try to get him back, and I'm like, "This isn't the one you fight."

Charlamagne: It's a dumb case if he is actually a citizen of America. I don't know. That's what I'm saying.

Schulz: No, no, he's 100% not a citizen.

Morrow: Yeah, definitely not a citizen.

Charlamagne: He's definitely not a citizen.

Schulz: Definitely. And he's going to claim asylum, and they're going to find out that he is a gang member, and he has been a gang member. It's going to be bullshit, and the Democrats are going to look retarded. I think Alex's point, this is playing right into the Republican handbook. It's like you're playing right into... Literally, the fucking president of El Salvador was like, "Yo, you got it wrong." Once the president of the country says you got it wrong, this is where you back off. And then you lock into certain things that make a lot more sense.

Charlamagne: Because the original story was they were rounding people up, and they rounded up somebody who—

Schulz: Of course.

Charlamagne: —was not a gang member, and they sent him over. But now they're saying otherwise. I don't know what the real story is all I'm simply saying.

Schulz: Look, listen, it sucks. Actually, I don't know. If he's a gang member, it doesn't suck. We don't need more gang members to come over here. Also, if you're a gang member here, and then you come over to seek asylum because the rival gang wanted to get after you, it's like, "Yo, you chose up." Imagine Bloods are like, "Yo, the Crips are coming after me. I need you to give me protection." It's like, "Well, that's not how it works."

A few quick points that you likely know already if you’ve been following the story. Abrego Garcia was lawfully in the US, having received a “withholding of removal” status in 2019, when Trump was president. The allegation of gang affiliation is “based on a 2019 accusation from Maryland police he was an MS-13 gang member,” according to the AP, but he was never charged, and both his wife and attorneys deny the allegation. More importantly, the Trump administration itself has admitted that his deportation was in error.

Nonetheless it sent him to the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, effectively a concentration camp designed to incarcerate people with no possibility of release. Built under the government of El Salvador’s self-described dictator Nayib Bukele, CECOT subjects its prisoners to various human rights abuses. Here’s a declaration by Human Rights Watch last month: 

People held in CECOT, as well as in other prisons in El Salvador, are denied communication with their relatives and lawyers, and only appear before courts in online hearings, often in groups of several hundred detainees at the same time. The Salvadoran government has described people held in CECOT as “terrorists,” and has said that they “will never leave.” Human Rights Watch is not aware of any detainees who have been released from that prison. The government of El Salvador denies human rights groups access to its prisons and has only allowed journalists and social media influencers to visit CECOT under highly controlled circumstances. In videos produced during these visits, Salvadoran authorities are seen saying that prisoners only “leave the cell for 30 minutes a day” and that some are held in solitary confinement cells, which are completely dark.

While CECOT is likely to have more modern technology and infrastructure than other prisons in El Salvador, I understand the mistreatment of detainees there to be in large part similar to what Human Rights Watch has documented in other prisons in El Salvador, including Izalco, La Esperanza (Mariona) and Santa Ana prisons. This includes cases of torture, ill-treatment, incommunicado detention, severe violations of due process and inhumane conditions, such as lack of access to adequate healthcare and food.

With that context, here’s Schulz’s case for sending more people there, including US citizens:

Media: The case was still open. The case of proving whether or not he was a gang member. That's still open, so that's why the Court said deporting him was illegal because he still has due process.

Charlamagne: Oh, okay. That makes sense.

Schulz: But he's here illegally, so you actually don't get due process. You're here illegally. You broke the law by being here. And if he is connected to a gang unit, the gang has been deemed a terrorist unit, and you're not allowed to be here if you're part of a terrorist organization.

Charlamagne: That makes sense too.

Schulz: Why are we even spending time on this?

Morrow: I just told you why.

Charlamagne: Because of what could happen.

Schulz: But you're worried about the slippery slope thing, and you're like, "Trump is seeing if he can get away..." You think Trump even knows this motherfucker's name, bro? He doesn't even know his motherfucking name.

Morrow: No, that's my fucking point. That's my whole point.

Media: He actually was here legally. He came here at 16, got legal protection in 2019 to stay because of the dangerous situation in El Salvador. So he was technically here, legally.

Schulz: I don't know if—

Charlamagne: So he was here illegally?

Morrow: Legally.

Charlamagne: I think the conversation should be, I would—

Schulz: But you can't be here legally if you're part of a gang.

Charlamagne: I would focus on these words from Donald Trump. "Homegrowns are next." Trump hopes to deport and jail US citizens abroad. That to me is more something that everybody should be debating and asking why the hell would he say that as opposed to this-

Schulz: Yo, you break the law, man. Hey, man, sometimes you got to go to San Quentin, sometimes you got to go to El Salvador.

Charlamagne: No.

Media: Stop.

Charlamagne: No.

Media: No.

Schulz: Send them to Greenland, send them to Greenland.

Charlamagne: No. No, and I thought about this when I heard him say it. Would that deter people from committing crimes when you know the consequences and penalties are up here? But also too, why are we wiping our ass with the Constitution?

Schulz: You got to look into El Salvador. El Salvador was the most murderous and dangerous place in the western hemisphere. It is now the safest place in the western hemisphere because they started locking up these fucking criminals that are terrorizing normal, hard-working people's lives. And if you ask the people over there if they appreciate that effort, they are incredibly grateful because they were held hostage by those criminal organizations.

Charlamagne: Sure, but what's that got to do with sending American citizens over there to go to prison?

Schulz: They seem to know what to do with them. Yo, if you—

Media: I hope you're being hyperbolic.

Schulz: I like people who obey the law.

Charlamagne: But we have prisons here.

Schulz: We need more. Lock them up. Lock them up. 

Let’s pause again for a few more pieces of context. One, obviously Schulz is wrong on the most basic facts: everyone on US soil is entitled to due process. Two, the reduction in crime he’s describing in El Salvador is very literally the result of backdoor negotiations between Bukele’s government and the people he describes as “fucking criminals that are terrorizing normal, hard-working people’s lives.” Here’s a summary from lawyer and pundit Asha Rangappa:

Bukele was elected in 2019, winning on a platform that promised to (once again) “crack down” on gang violence. But his party, Nuevas Ideas, began secretly working to gain the support of a critical group: Yep, MS-13. Bukele and his party negotiated with the gang to bring back the “truce,” which would include (according to the federal indictment) “financial benefits, control of territory, the ability to run the gang from prison, and the early release of gang members.” MS-13 also wanted assurance that they wouldn’t be extradited to the U.S., where they would face more punitive measures. (Having studied the drug cartels in Colombia, this was reminiscent of Pablo Escobar’s mantra, “Mejor una tumba en Colombia, que una carcel in los Estados Unidos” – which means, “Better a grave in Colombia than a jail cell in the United States.”) The same day Bukele’s party received a legislative majority in 2021, it removed the Attorney General and five members of the Supreme Court who had been working with the U.S. to take real action against MS-13. Buekele also released a major MS-13 leader whom the U.S. was seeking for extradition from prison.

In exchange, MS-13 “agreed to reduce the number of public murders in El Salvador, which politically benefitted the government, by creating the perception that the government was reducing the murder rate.” Indeed, Bukele’s popularity is the result of his so-called “Territorial Control Plan,” which involved building his supermax prison and his plan of mass incarceration – a plan which he credits for the drop in violence since he took office. Of course, the citizens of El Salvador aren’t privy to the secret negotiations Bukele made with MS-13 – details that were going to be made public when the U.S. government’s case against the MS-13 defendants went to trial. Which may explain why the Trump administration quietly dropped these charges last week and put the charged MS-13 members on the third plane bound for El Slavador (and which included Abrego Garcia). Among the defendants was one of the highest-ranking leaders of MS-13, Cesar Humberto Lopez-Larios, who was arrested last June and added to the earlier indictment (and who almost certainly will not face real punishment in El Salvador). A former FBI agent who spent years working on this and other gang cases called it “a historical loss,” especially in terms of getting critical intelligence about MS-13’s operations and members in the United States.

In short, both Trump and Bukele appear to be complicit in a plan to allow MS-13 to operate in El Salvador on its own terms, in exchange for making it look like both are “cracking down” on the gang in their respective countries. Of course, the fact that MS-13 will continue to operate in cahoots with the El Salvadoran government means that citizens of that country who are victims of the gang will continue fleeing to the United States, undercutting the Trump administration’s claim that it is trying to end the “invasion” of asylum seekers. Then again, Trump needs a steady influx of people to continue trying to cross the border in order to keep claiming the “national emergency” he is using to expand his authority. So it’s a win-win propaganda operation.

Okay, now that you have that context, look at how eagerly Schulz advocates Trump’s 100% illegal plan to incarcerate people in foreign prisons: 

Charlamagne: I think we need taxpayers to pay their fair share of taxes. We need these corporations to pay their fair share of taxes so we have more resources to put in our communities to try to keep people from being criminals.

Schulz: Yo, why do criminals get to see their families when they killed somebody, and that person never gets to see their family again? 

Charlamagne: I'm with you.

Schulz: If you kill somebody—

Charlamagne: But there's a difference between criminals and murderers, man.

Schulz: Yeah, that's true. But if you're deemed a murderer, and you murder somebody, they don't get to see their family for the rest of their life, but you get visitations every fucking week. Fuck you. You locked up in El Salvador. I don't give a fuck. Why are we not worried about the people's family?

Charlamagne: But why El Salvador?

Schulz: That shit sounds good.

Charlamagne: Bro, Staten Island is right there.

Schulz: I don't want to put that in those nice people with Staten Island. [sic]

Charlamagne: There's places in America you can send them. [...] I don't know why El Salvador. I wonder why—as many prisons as in America. Why does he feel like they got to go to El Salvador?

Schulz: Because El Salvador, because of the rampant crime and the terroristic activity of the cartels out there, they had a stranglehold over the people of the country. In order to rebuke that, they created these massive jail facilities. So they're housing all these people there, and they've become incredibly proficient at it. So they're basically, it's almost like outsourcing manufacturing. Instead of making iPhones, we're going to send our criminals over there.

To sum up, Schulz’s argument is that that there are entire categories of people who don’t deserve fundamental human rights, and that the proper way to deal with them is to ship them off to concentration camps. Let’s call this what it is: Nazi logic.

Schulz isn’t even the only comedian going Nazi today. Tim Dillon also discussed the Abrego Garcia case on his podcast, equivocating over the flimsiness of the government’s allegations and dwelling on the civil restraining order his wife filed in 2021. (In a statement last week, she said she sought the order “out of caution” after a disagreement, that the couple worked out their issues, and that Abrego Garcia was “a loving partner and father.” In his commentary, Dillon suggested she’s deluded: "If it is a legitimate case of abuse, a lot of women do not follow through with it, they're in love with a guy who is a bad dude.”) Then he concluded that he’s comfortable with the deportation of gang members and the deportation of lawful immigrants who simply haven’t been here very long: 

Dillon: Yeah, again, I understand people being uncomfortable with this and I would say, just like I criticized some of the deportations that are happening because of the campus protests. I think—I have no problem with gang members being deported. I even think some people that came here that are lawful or good people, but came here in the last four years—Biden let in 10 million people. Not all of them are going to be able to stay. We probably just can't assimilate all of them into this country at this point. That's something that's pretty well known. Most Americans want illegal immigration to stop, and they also want people that maybe that have not lived here for many, many years, lawfully, but people that are newly here to go.

Get rid of the criminals, get rid of the foreigners—gosh, where have we heard this before?

You can find both these comedians’ specials on Netflix.