'Literal Fascism': MAGA Rally Crowd Goes Wild as Trump Airs Migrant Arrest Propaganda

U.S. President Donald Trump used a campaign-style rally in Michigan late Tuesday to display a propaganda video glorifying the deportation and offshore imprisonment of migrants without due process, a presentation that drew enthusiastic cheers and "USA" chants from the president's supporters.

The video shows handcuffed migrants being forced off a bus at a notorious El Salvador mega-prison and having their heads shaved by masked guards. The prison, the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, was where unlawfully deported Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia was initially held.

"We are delivering mass deportation, and it's happening very fast, and the worst of the worst are being sent to a no-nonsense prison in El Salvador," Trump declared, despite the lack of evidence that the hundreds of migrants his administration deported to El Salvador have criminal records or gang ties.

"Watch this. Take a look,” Trump said before the video began playing on a big screen, eliciting loud cheers from the audience.

Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College, called the display at Trump's rally "literal fascism."

The rally video was part of an aggressive White House public relations campaign to tout its lawless mass arrest and deportation effort amid survey data showing that a majority of Americans believe Trump has "gone too far" with his attacks on undocumented immigrants.

But according to a CNN poll released Wednesday, just 10% of Trump supporters think the president has overstepped with his mass deportation campaign and 27% believe he "has not gone far enough," indicating broad support from Trump's base for the White House's assault on fundamental constitutional rights.

"We cannot allow a handful of communist, radical-left judges to obstruct the enforcement of our laws and assume the duties that belong solely to the president of the United States," Trump declared during Tuesday's rally. "Nothing will stop me in the mission to keep America safe again."

In an ABC interview that aired Tuesday, Trump acknowledged that he has the power to facilitate Abrego Garcia's return from El Salvador, as he's been ordered to do by the U.S. Supreme Court.

"If he were the gentleman that you say he is, I would do that. But he's not," Trump said, falsely claiming that Abrego Garcia has MS-13 tattooed on his knuckles.

The president appears to believe that an image with the characters "M-S-1-3" superimposed over Abrego Garcia's actual tattoos is real. When ABC's Terry Moran tried to explain that the image was photoshopped, Trump expressed disbelief and complained, "You're not being very nice."

In a letter to Trump on Tuesday, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.)—who met with Abrego Garcia in El Salvador earlier this month and has worked to secure his release—wrote that it is "shameful" that the White House continues to claim without evidence that the wrongly deported man is a gang member.

"It is also dangerous for you to suggest that we cannot fight gang violence without trampling over constitutional rights," Van Hollen wrote. "You are engaged in gross violations of the Constitution and due process rights."

A previous version of this article misstated the percentage of Trump supporters who believe the president has not gone far enough with his mass deportation campaign, according to CNN polling. The correct number is 27%, not 63%.