Tesla protest organizer says DOGE’s data grab enables Trump admin’s deportations

The firehose of punitive actions the current presidential administration and its private sector supporters have taken since January — against immigrants, universities, federal employees, other countries and more targets — would be impossible without technical systems. 

Last Monday, less than a week before US Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) overcame two governments’ obstinance to finally meet Kilmar Ábrego García in El Salvador, an attendee of a Baltimore protest against the immigrant’s illegal deportation made that connection clear.

Self-identifying as Alex Jones while donning a bandana and sunglasses over their face, the activist said they organize the hundreds-strong Tesla Takedown protests at a Tesla dealership in Owings Mills, MD — one of the many grassroots actions across the world to protest Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s outsized influence on the Trump administration. While surrounded by about 100 people at Monday’s protest downtown, organized by grassroots entities like Free State Coalition and Baltimore Rapid Response Network, the activist highlighted how data acquired by Musk and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) makes the hundreds of forced removals like Ábrego García’s possible.

“The theft of our federal government by billionaires like Elon Musk is intimately connected with what we see here today,” said Jones. “That DOGE is facilitating the theft of our personal data and our taxpayer data, to be able to put that together with people’s statuses in this country so that they can more effectively persecute people who are here, regardless of what their status is, I find this incredibly dangerous.” 

They added: “That’s why I’m out here today. Because these are linked issues.” 

See Jones’ full remarks in the following video at the 1:11 mark, between comments from others who attended the demonstration. 

Recent reports from various media outlets link DOGE’s collection of personal data from federal agencies like the Social Security Administration (SSA) to the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) aggressive deportations. 

Three anonymous Trump administration employees told Politico that DOGE operated a task force with operatives throughout the SSA, DHS and other agencies that combs through these agencies’ databases and turn over information to help identify non-citizens for expulsion, cancellation of benefits and other targeted persecution.

Ábrego García is perhaps the most prominent Salvadoran caught in these deportations, which many critics deem “disappearances” because of their often violent and summary nature. He was one of over 200 Salvadorans and Venezuelans last month deported to El Salvador, whose authoritarian president Nayib Bukele met with Trump the day of the protest, over alleged ties to multinational gangs. He’s been held in the country’s infamous CECOT prison alongside other deportees whose living conditions Bukele’s government and US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem have proudly showcased to the world. 

Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorneys attributed the expulsion to “an administrative error,” and both an appeals court and the Supreme Court upheld a federal judge’s order to “facilitate” Ábrego García’s return. Despite that, the Trump administration has denied its ability to return him while demonizing him as having gang ties — a contested allegation traced to a Prince George’s County police officer whose misconduct rendered the officer unable to testify in Maryland state courts — and citing a domestic violence-restraining order his wife Jennifer Vasquez Sura took out against him in 2021.

Vasquez Sura, an outspoken supporter of her husband’s return, has since said that she and Ábrego García went to counseling and worked through their issues. 

Maryland’s Sen. Van Hollen traveled to El Salvador last week to find Ábrego García. After saying he was denied entry to CECOT, he eventually met with Ábrego García but released no details about where he was held. The visit prompted backlash from Republican leaders and Bukele, a cryptocurrency champion who last month met with the venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz’s founders (one of whom is a high-profile Trump supporter). 

“Now that he’s been confirmed healthy,” Bukele said about Ábrego García on X, “he gets the honor of staying in El Salvador’s custody.”

This story, and all of Technical.ly's immigration reporting, is made possible by the WES Mariam Assefa Fund.

The WES Mariam Assefa Fund supports catalytic efforts to create more inclusive economies for immigrants and refugees in the US and Canada. It works closely with organizations and leaders focused on ensuring more equitable access to opportunity and wealth.