MSNBC host Symone Sanders ignited controversy Saturday with a sweeping claim that the Trump administration’s deportation of Kilmar Abrego-Garcia—a Salvadoran national with alleged MS-13 ties—represents not the end, but the beginning, of a broader assault on American democracy.
According to Sanders, this deportation isn't merely about immigration enforcement. It's the first brick dislodged in what she, and likeminded commentators, frame as a deliberate dismantling of democratic norms with people of color as the inevitable targets.
Sanders cited an op-ed in The Nation by Janai Nelson of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which offered a dire analysis: democracies, Nelson argued, don’t fall with dramatic coups or battlefield defeats.
They erode silently, incrementally, through bureaucratic decay and legal maneuvering. Sanders seized on that metaphor—democracy dying “brick by brick”—and used it to tie deportation policy directly to what she called creeping authoritarianism.
The fulcrum of her argument rested on a provocative premise: that if undocumented immigrants and foreign nationals can be deported without widespread legal resistance, it sets a dangerous precedent—one that, in her view, could soon include American citizens, particularly from vulnerable communities.
MSNBC’s @SymoneDSanders on Kilmar Garcia’s deportation: Black people “are next in line” pic.twitter.com/e6EFVZrSJG
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) April 19, 2025
She invoked not only Abrego-Garcia’s case, but also others detained under controversial conditions, pointing to reports that many of the men deported to El Salvador’s high-security prison, CECOT, had no criminal records. “If they can do it to them... they will do it to any of us,” she said, warning that Black Americans and other marginalized groups are the next in line.
Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-MD) echoed Sanders' warning, suggesting that the case has resonated deeply within the Black community and contributed to growing calls for Abrego-Garcia’s return.
Sanders’ comments come at a moment when the political divide over immigration has taken on broader ideological dimensions. What used to be a policy debate over border control and national security is increasingly being framed as an existential fight over democracy itself. Sanders and others on the left are positioning immigration enforcement—particularly the Trump-era revival of wartime deportation powers—as not only legally dubious but morally alarming.