The horrors are not aberrations. This is the Trump administration's plan.

This is their plan. But the plan is just that — a plan. It can and must be stopped.

It’s important to understand that this is the Trump administration’s plan.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, Judge Hannah Dugan, two-year-old V.L.M.

They are not outliers, exceptions, or aberrations.

This is their plan.

The plan includes chaos. It includes shifting justifications. It includes secrecy.

The plan also includes propaganda. It includes threats. It includes targeting individuals to send messages to everyone else.

Abrego Garcia was an “alternate” for the third plane that eventually went to El Salvador on March 15, we were told, despite an order barring his removal. The “administrative error” that led to his being sent to the CECOT prison in El Salvador was then not reversed. Reversing an error is, as multiple judges have noted since, what the government — what anyone — should do when they notice or are informed of such an error.

As Nick Miroff reported this week at The Atlantic, that is exactly what some in the government thought would happen — and began implementing. “But as criticism of the administration over its mishandling of the case spread, White House officials took over the response and began striking a far more strident tone in their public statements,“ Miroff wrote. And, as President Donald Trump told us, he wants to send U.S. citizens there as well.

This is the White House’s plan.

Dugan’s arrest on Friday included FBI Director Kash Patel posting, deleting, and reposting a tweet about the arrest and Attorney General Pam Bondi going on Fox News to make broad threats in the midst of the pending prosecution. Later in the day, the Justice Department put out a news release announcing “two separate cases involving the alleged obstruction of federal law enforcement operations and unlawful concealment of individuals residing illegally in the United States.”

In the release, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche — Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer — made clear that this was a part of his effort to target sanctuary jurisdictions. Saying that the Justice Department “will not stand by as local officials put politics over public safety,“ Blanche asserted that sanctuary policies “create a sanctuary for one class—criminals. Those days are over.“

Law Dork previously reported that on March 6, Blanche’s first full day in office, he stated in a memo to all Justice Department employees that “unlawful impediments to President Trump's immigration policy will not be tolerated“ and announced that “AUSAs must also charge cases involving efforts to obstruct removals and other immigration enforcement efforts in sanctuary city jurisdictions and elsewhere.“

This is the Justice Department’s plan.

When news broke Friday evening that a two-year-old child who is a U.S. citizen had been deported with her mother to Honduras over the frantic efforts of the child’s father, a guardian, and lawyers for both of them to stop it, the horror had hardly set in when news of multiple other cases of U.S. citizen children being deported were being shared.

According to the ACLU, in addition to the two-year-old V.L.M., two other U.S. citizen children — in another family — were deported on Friday, including “a U.S. citizen child suffering from a rare form of metastatic cancer [who] was deported without medication or the ability to consult with their treating physicians—despite ICE being notified in advance of the child’s urgent medical needs.“ Others pointed toan even earlier deportation of another family that included a different U.S. citizen with cancer.

This is the Department of Homeland Security’s plan.

From Trump’s executive orders and memos to Stephen Miller’s Oval Office rants to Bondi’s March 14 memo implementing the Alien Enemies Act proclamation — reported on Friday by USA Today’s Nick Penzenstadler and Will Carless — to Blanche’s memos to declarations submitted in court cases by Trump administration officials, what we are witnessing is the Trump administration’s immigration plan in motion.

Because of that, it is important to investigate their claims to see how they advance the plan.

A perfect example of that came earlier this week, when an ICE official suggested in a declaration submitted in court that there actually are standards and a process provided for those the administration wants to deport under Trump’s Alien Enemies Act proclamation.

“Although there may be fact-specific exceptional cases, in a general case, ICE will not remove under the AEA an alien who has filed a habeas petition while that petition is pending,” Carlos D. Cisneros, an assistant field office director for ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations, stated. “However, ICE may reconsider that position in cases where a TRO has been denied and the habeas proceedings have not concluded within a reasonable time.”

As Law Dork reported, the two sentences create multiple exceptions, which are vague and broad enough to render the claimed protections meaningless for any individual.

This is the plan.

This brazen plan is lawless and unconstitutional in many respects. Similar plans are playing out throughout the government — affecting other areas of public life — as well. This is their plan across government.

The plan only works, though, if it remains unchallenged. It only works if the chaos, shifting justifications, secrecy, propaganda, threats, and targeting lead people to stop pushing back.

That does not make standing up easy. To the contrary, it will be hard. It is, however, necessary. Continuing to hold out the unexceptional expectation that the administration must follow court orders — and will be challenged on all fronts when they don’t — is a key part of that. Investigating and reporting on those questions is another essential piece of that.

As I have written previously, all of that — standing up and pushing back — works.

They are weaker than they realize, and we are stronger than we know.

On Friday morning, in the midst of their new attacks, we got another example of that: The Trump administration backed down.

The Justice Department “announced in court [that the administration] will return thousands of foreign students to active status after terminating their records in a federal system earlier this month,” as WUSA9’s Jordan Fischer reported. And while this isn’t the end on this front, Politico’s Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein later detailed how “after 20 days of court losses,” in more than 100 cases, “the Trump administration capitulated.“

The plan is just that — a plan. It can and must be stopped.