MSNBC anchor Symone Sanders claimed on Saturday that the deportation of Salvadoran citizen and suspected MS-13 gang member Kilmar Abrego-Garcia was just one step on the road toward President Donald Trump’s administration deporting black American citizens.
Sanders began with an article written for The Nation earlier in the week — in which the author had suggested the deportation of criminal aliens, designated terrorists, and gang members effectively heralded the fall of democracy in the United States — and argued that “people of color and vulnerable communities … are next in line.”
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MSNBC’s @SymoneDSanders on Kilmar Garcia’s deportation: Black people “are next in line” pic.twitter.com/e6EFVZrSJG
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) April 19, 2025
“We’ve been talking about this all week, but Janai Nelson of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, she penned an op-ed in The Nation this week,” Sanders began. “And her op-ed talked about that we think democracies are — the way they die is dramatically, through these wars, and blood is shed, and it’s cinematic in a sense. But really, the realistic way in which democracies die, is it is dismantled brick by brick, piece by piece.”
“And she says that what we are seeing now with the lawlessness from this administration are really the canaries in the coal mine gasping for air,” Sanders continued. “I’m paraphrasing here. But to me, that is why Kilmar Abrego-Garcia’s specific case, the case of the gentleman who’s a make-up artist out of California who was also sent to that prison, that’s what the more — the 75% of the folks who have been sent, the men who have been sent there that don’t have criminal records — that is why this is so important.”
Sanders then pivoted to suggest that if illegal immigrants could be deported, it would not be long before citizens could also be deported.
“If they can do it to them, if they can snatch students off the street without any pushback or recourse, they will do it to any of us,” she declared. “To be very clear, it’s going to be the people of color, and vulnerable communities that are next in line.”
Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-MD) agreed with Sanders’ assessment, saying that was why the black community appeared largely supportive of bringing Abrego-Garcia back to the United States.
