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      Venezuela Says It Will Resume Accepting U.S. Deportation Flights

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      Venezuela announced Saturday that it had reached an agreement with the Trump administration to resume accepting deportation flights carrying migrants who were in the United States illegally, with the first one landing as soon as Sunday.Part of Venezuela’s willingness to accept the flights appeared related to the plight of Venezuelan migrants whom the Trump administration recently sent to notorious prisons in El Salvador with little to no due process. In a statement on Saturday, a representative for the Venezuelan government said: “Migration isn’t a crime, and we will not rest until we achieve the return of all of those in need and rescue our brothers kidnapped in El Salvador.”The White House did not respond to a request for comment Saturday, though one of the president’s close allies, Richard Grenell, said earlier this month that the Venezuelans had agreed to accept the flights.Venezuela’s autocratic leader, Nicolás Maduro, suspended the deportation cooperation after the Trump administration revoked a Biden-era policy that allowed more oil to be produced in Venezuela and exported.Since the suspension of the flights, Mr. Maduro has come under intense pressure from the Trump administration, which has been pressing various Latin American nations to take in more deportees. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on social media that Venezuela would face new “severe and escalating” sanctions if it refused to accept its repatriated citizens.Venezuelans have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in record numbers in recent years, in response to the economic and social crisis consuming the nation, which Mr. Maduro blames on U.S. sanctions against his regime.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Trump administration moved to end a program for migrants from 4 Caribbean and Latin American nations.

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      The Trump administration said Friday that it was ending a Biden-era program that allowed hundreds of thousands of people from four troubled countries to enter the United States lawfully and work for up to two years.The program offered applicants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela the opportunity to fly to the United States and quickly secure work authorization, provided they passed security checks and had a financial sponsor. They were allowed to stay for up to two years, which could be renewed.Billed “legal pathways” by the Biden administration, the program was first introduced for Venezuelans in 2022, and was expanded to nationals of the other three countries the following year.By the end of 2024, more than 500,000 migrants had entered the United States through the initiative, known as the C.H.N.V. program, an abbreviation of the countries covered by it.The work permits and protection from deportation conferred under the program’s authority, called parole, would expire on April 24.The program’s termination had been expected. On President Trump’s first day back in office, he ordered the Homeland Security Department to take steps to end it.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump revokes legal status of 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans

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      Donald Trump’s administration will revoke the temporary legal status of 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans in the United States, according to a Federal Register notice on Friday, in the latest expansion of his crackdown on immigration.It will be effective 24 April.The move cuts short a two-year “parole” granted to the immigrants under former president Joe Biden that allowed them to enter the country by air if they had US sponsors.Trump, a Republican, took steps to ramp up immigration enforcement after taking office, including a push to deport record numbers of immigrants in the US illegally. He has argued that the legal entry parole programs launched under his Democratic predecessor overstepped the boundaries of federal law and called for their termination in a 20 January executive order.Trump said on 6 March that he would decide “very soon” whether to strip the parole status from some 240,000 Ukrainians who fled to the US during the conflict with Russia. Trump’s remarks came in response to a Reuters report that said his administration planned to revoke the status for Ukrainians as soon as April.Biden launched a parole entry program for Venezuelans in 2022 and expanded it to Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans in 2023 as his administration grappled with high levels of illegal immigration from those nationalities. Diplomatic and political relations between the four countries and the United States have been strained.The new legal pathways came as Biden tried to clamp down on illegal crossings at the US-Mexico border.The Trump administration’s decision to strip the legal status from half a million migrants could make many vulnerable to deportation if they choose to remain in the US. It remains unclear how many who entered the US on parole now have another form of protection or legal status. More

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      in Elections

      Judge to Consider Block on Trump’s Use of Wartime Law to Deport Venezuelans

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      A hearing has been set for Friday afternoon to debate whether a federal judge in Washington acted correctly when he temporarily stopped the Trump administration last weekend from summarily deporting scores of Venezuelan immigrants under a powerful but rarely invoked wartime statute.The hearing, scheduled for 2:30 p.m. in Federal District Court in Washington, could also include some discussion about the Justice Department’s repeated recalcitrance in responding to the judge’s demands. He has been requesting information about two deportation flights in particular, which officials say carried members of a Venezuelan street gang, Tren de Aragua, to El Salvador.The judge, James E. Boasberg, scolded the department in a stern order on Thursday for having “evaded its obligations” to provide him with data about the flights. He wants that information as he seeks to determine whether the Trump administration violated his initial instructions to turn the planes around after they left the United States on Saturday evening.Most of the courtroom conversation, however, is likely to concern Judge Boasberg’s underlying decision to stop the White House for now from using the wartime law, known as the Alien Enemies Act, to pursue its immigration agenda. The statute, passed in 1798, gives the government expansive powers during an invasion or a declared war to round up and summarily remove any subjects of a “hostile nation” over the age of 14 as “alien enemies.”Almost from the moment Judge Boasberg entered his provisional decision barring President Trump from using the law, the White House and the Justice Department have accused him of overstepping his authority by improperly inserting himself into the president’s ability to conduct foreign affairs.But Judge Boasberg imposed the order in the first place to give himself time to figure out whether Mr. Trump himself overstepped by stretching or even ignoring several of the statute’s provisions, which place checks on how and when it can be used.The administration has repeatedly claimed, for instance, that members of Tren de Aragua should be considered subjects of a hostile nation because they are closely aligned with the Venezuelan government. The White House, echoing a position that Mr. Trump pushed during his campaign, has also insisted that the arrival to the United States of dozens of members of the gang constitutes an invasion.But lawyers for some of the deported Venezuelans dispute those claims, saying that their clients are not gang members and should have the opportunity to prove it. The lawyers also say that while Tren de Aragua may be a dangerous criminal organization, which was recently designated as a terrorist organization, it is not a nation state.Moreover, they have argued that even if the members of the group have come to the United States en masse, that does not fit the traditional definition of an invasion. More

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      in US Politics

      Judge demands answers from White House on deportation flights to El Salvador

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      A federal judge instructed the Trump administration on Thursday to explain why its failure to turn around flights carrying deportees to El Salvador did not violate his court order in a growing showdown between the judicial and executive branches.James Boasberg, the US district judge, demanded answers after flights carrying Venezuelan immigrants alleged by the Trump administration to be gang members landed in El Salvador after the judge temporarily blocked deportations conducted under an 18th-century wartime law. Boasberg had directed the administration to return planes that were already in the air to the US when he ordered the halt.Boasberg had given the administration until noon Thursday to either provide more details about the flights or make a claim that they must be withheld because they would harm “state secrets”. The administration resisted the judge’s request, calling it an “unnecessary judicial fishing” expedition.In a written order, Boasberg called Trump officials’ latest response “woefully insufficient”. The judge said the administration “again evaded its obligations” by merely repeating “the same general information about the flights”. He ordered the administration to “show cause” as to why it didn’t follow his court order to turn around the planes, increasing the prospect that he may consider holding administration officials in contempt of court.The justice department has said the judge’s verbal directions did not count, that only his written order needed to be followed and that it couldn’t apply to flights that had already left the US. A DoJ spokesperson said Thursday that it “continues to believe that the court’s superfluous questioning of sensitive national security information is inappropriate judicial overreach”.A US Immigration and Customs Enforcement official told the judge Thursday the administration needed more time to decide whether it would invoke the state secrets privilege in an effort to block the information’s release.Boasberg then ordered Trump officials to submit a sworn declaration by Friday by a person “with direct involvement in the Cabinet-level discussions” about the state secrets privilege and to tell the court by next Tuesday whether the administration will invoke it.In a deepening conflict between the judicial and executive branches, the US president and many of his allies have called for impeaching Boasberg, who was nominated to the federal bench by Barack Obama. In a rare statement earlier this week, John Roberts, the supreme court chief justice, rejected such calls, saying “impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump on Thursday urged the supreme court to limit federal judges’ ability to issue orders blocking the actions of his administration nationwide, writing on social media: “STOP NATIONWIDE INJUNCTIONS NOW, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.” More

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      in US Politics

      ‘Deported because of his tattoos’: has the US targeted Venezuelans for their body art?

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      Like many Venezuelans of his generation, Franco José Caraballo Tiapa is a man of many tattoos.There is one of a rose, one of a lion, and another – on the left side of the 26-year-old’s neck – of a razor blade that represents his work as a barber.Two other tattoos pay tribute to Caraballo’s eldest daughter, Shalome: a pocket watch featuring the time of her birth and some black lettering on his chest that spells out the four-year-old’s name.“He’s just a normal kid … he likes tattoos – that’s it,” said Martin Rosenow, a Florida-based attorney who represents the Venezuelan asylum seeker – one of scores shipped to El Salvador by the Trump administration last weekend as part of his hard-line immigration crackdown.View image in fullscreenCaraballo’s fondness for body art may have been his undoing. For when the father of two was detained by US immigration officials in Dallas last month, they appear to have taken those tattoos as proof that he was a member of Venezuela’s most notorious gang, Tren de Aragua.An official Department of Homeland Security document issued in early February and reviewed by the Guardian states: “[The] subject [Caraballo] has been identified as a Member/Active of Tren de Aragua” although it does not explain how agents reached that conclusion. The same document notes that Caraballo – who it calls a “Deportable/Excludable Alien” – has several tattoos and no known criminal history “at this time”.Rosenow rejected the idea that the images inked on to his client’s skin indicated gang membership. “It’s specious – there’s no basis [for this conclusion],” he said. “Experts in Venezuela who study the gang have all stated that there are no tattoos that associate gang members. It’s not like the Central American MS-13 gang where tattoos are relevant in their organization.”“Tren de Agua has no [specific] tattoos,” Rosenow continued. “If you see pictures [of actual Tren de Aragua members arrested in the US], they’re shirtless and many of them don’t even have tattoos.“I’m nauseated by it all. I’m distressed for these individuals. I’m sad for what this means. As an American, for me it’s disgraceful that we would violate human rights so flagrantly on an international level.”Caraballo, who hails from the Venezuelan state of Bolívar and entered the US over its southern border in October 2023, is one of several Venezuelans whom immigration officials appear to have identified as gang members based on little more than their nationality and their tattoos.Daniel Alberto Lozano CamargoDaniel Alberto Lozano Camargo, a 20-year-old asylum seeker from Maracaibo in western Venezuela, lived in Houston, Texas where he washed cars for a living, advertising his services on Facebook.His partner, a US citizen called Leslie Aranda, said he was arrested last November after being contacted by a supposed client. She has not heard from him since last Friday, when Donald Trump invoked sweeping wartime powers called the Alien Enemies Act to deport people considered a threat, such as members of Tren de Aragua, which was last month designated a foreign terrorist organization.Like other Venezuelans now detained and at risk of deportation, Lozano has several tattoos, said Aranda, 25. He has the name of his partner’s daughter, Danessy, on one arm. A rose. The name of his niece, Eurimar, with a crown over the letter E. Praying hands on his neck. His father’s name, Adalberto, and his initials. Lozano also has the date of his anniversary with Aranda: 19 January 2023. Another tattoo reads “King of Myself.”“I know his father’s name is significant to him because he died when Daniel was young. And I also know he didn’t really like the rose tattoo because a friend who was practising did it. Daniel loves art and tattoos – that’s why he has them,” Aranda said.Lozano’s mother, Daniela, who is also in the US, said: “They violated his human rights – it’s an injustice. He doesn’t belong to any gang.”Neri José Alvarado BorgesThe sister of Neri José Alvarado Borges, another Venezuelan deported to El Salvador, said the 24-year-old also had tattoos that relatives suspect may have led to him being ​wrongly identified as a criminal.​One says “Family”, another says “Brothers” and a third, on his left thigh, features the name of his younger brother, Neryelson, who is autistic, and the rainbow-colored​ infinity symbol of the autism acceptance movement.“None of these tattoos has anything at all to do with the Tren de Aragua,” said his sister, Lisbengerth Montilla, 20. “But for them [immigration authorities] anyone with a tattoo is connected to Tren de Aragua.”Montilla said her brother was no gangster. In fact, he was a psychology​ student who had been forced to abandon his studies and migrate to the US nine months ago because of Venezuela’s economic collapse.After trekking through the perilous Darién Gap jungle and entering the US, Alvarado, who has no criminal history, built a life in Dallas where he worked in a bakery.“Many of us have come here because of the situation back in our country,” said Montilla, who also lives in the US. “There were times when we didn’t even have food to eat or have the money to buy anything. Many people fled because of the dictatorship in Venezuela, seeking a better future.​“Not all of those people [deported to El Salvador] are criminals – and not all Venezuelans are bad people. We are from a decent, hard-working and upstanding family. We’ve never had problems with anybody.”Luis Carlos José Marcano SilvaView image in fullscreenLuis Carlos José Marcano Silva, a 26-year-old barber from the Venezuelan island of Margarita, was detained at an immigration hearing in Miami last month. His tattoos also seemingly played a role in his detention and deportation to El Salvador.One, on Marcano’s belly, shows the face of Jesus of Nazareth. Another, on his arm, shows an infinity symbol while a third features the name of his daughter, Adelys. His chest is emblazoned with the image of a crown.“[At the hearing] all they kept telling him was that he belonged to the Tren de Aragua gang. When his wife contacted the lawyer, they said it was probably because of his tattoos,” said Marcano’s mother, Adelys del Valle Silva Ortega, denying that her son has any links to the crime group or even a criminal record.“I feel frustrated, desperate. I imagine they are not treating him well. I’ve already seen videos of that prison,” Silva said of the notorious Salvadoran “anti-terrorism” jail where her son is now thought to be incarcerated. “I think of him every moment, praying to the Virgin of the Valley [a Venezuelan patron saint] to protect him.”Jerce Reyes BarriosThe lawyer for a fifth Venezuelan man deported to El Salvador, a former professional footballer called Jerce Reyes Barrios, 36, has also claimed his tattoos played a role in sealing his fate.Reyes’s tattoos include one of a crown sitting atop a soccer ball with a rosary and the word “Dios” (God). In a sworn declaration, his California-based attorney, Linette Tobin, said the Department of Homeland Security had alleged this tattoo was proof of gang membership.“In reality, he chose this tattoo because it is similar to the logo for his favourite soccer team, Real Madrid,” Tobin said in her statement on Wednesday.Tobin rejected the idea that her client was a gang member and said he had fled Venezuela in early 2024 after being detained at an anti-government demonstration by security forces. Reyes was subsequently “taken to a clandestine building where he was tortured” with electric shocks and suffocation.Tobin said US immigration officials had reviewed her client’s social media posts and found one in which he made “a hand gesture that they allege is proof of gang membership”.“In fact, the gesture is a common one that means I Love You in sign language and is commonly used as a rock’n’roll symbol,” Tobin said.Francisco Javier García CasiqueSebastián García Casique, the brother of a sixth Venezuelan deported to El Salvador, said his sibling, Francisco Javier García Casique, also had tattoos, including of a rose, a compass and a phrase reading: “God chooses his toughest battles for his best warriors.”A fourth tattoo says: “Vivir el momento” (Live in the Moment). A fifth says in English: “Family”.In September 2021 García posted an Instagram video of a tattoo of a timepiece being inked on to his right arm by an artist in Peru, where he then lived. “My tattoo in tribute to my two grandmas who I love and miss a lot,” García wrote.Anyelo Sarabia GonzálezIn a sworn declaration, the sister of Anyelo Sarabia González, Solanyer Michell Sarabia González, said her 19-year-old brother had been detained by immigration agents at the start of this year in Dallas and that those agents had asked “about a tattoo that is visible on his hand” showing a rose with money as its petals.“He had that tattoo done … because he thought it looked cool,” González’s sister said, adding that she believed her brother had been sent to El Salvador “under the false pretence that he was a member of Tren de Aragua”.“The tattoo has no meaning or connection to any gang,” said González, 25. Two other tattoos on her brother’s body – of the phrases “strength and courage” and “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” – were also not gang-related, she said.Franco José Caraballo TiapaRosenow also saw no indication that his client – who he said had sought asylum on the basis of political persecution after taking part in opposition protests – was involved in the Venezuelan gang. He said Caraballo’s “cheesy” and romantic Instagram posts indicated he was not “a vicious gang member”.A Venezuelan criminal background check issued earlier this month indicates Caraballo has no criminal record there. Francisco Javier García Casique’s family has also published evidence that he had no criminal record back home.The White House has described the Venezuelans deported to El Salvador as “heinous monsters” and terrorists but has yet to release detailed information about their identities, let alone their alleged crimes.On Thursday afternoon CBS News published an internal government list of the 238 Venezuelan deportees, which included the names of all of the men in this story.On Monday, a senior official from immigration and customs enforcement, Robert Serna, admitted that “many” of those removed from the US under the Alien Enemy Act did not have criminal records in the US, but he nevertheless said they were Tren de Aragua members.The fact that those people did not have a criminal record “is because they have only been in the country for a short period of time”, Serna said. More

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      in US Politics

      What to know about the El Salvador mega-prison where Trump sent deported Venezuelans

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      The US has sent hundreds of mostly Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador to be held without trial in a controversial mega-prison known for its harsh conditions. The facility has drawn praise from hardline law-and-order politicians at home and abroad and ire from human rights organizations.Here’s what we know about the mega-prison called Cecot, an acronym for Terrorism Confinement Centre in Spanish.What is the Cecot prison?In February 2023, El Salvador opened what it claims is Latin America’s biggest prison with capacity for 40,000 inmates. The 23-hectare prison is isolated in a rural region 70 km east of capital San Salvador.Bukele in November said the prison cost $115m to develop and equip.This prison is part of Bukele’s highly popular hardline security policy which has resulted in a sharp drop in homicides.Calling himself the world’s “coolest dictator,” Bukele, 43, declared a state of emergency in March 2022 that remains in effect and has entailed the arrest of more than 84,000 people.This includes alleged members of El Salvador’s Mara Salvatrucha gan, also known as MS-13, and its rival, Barrio 18.Government reports put the prison population at 14,500 inmates in August 2024, but a government spokesperson said in March 2025 that the statistic was outdated. A current figure was not disclosed security reasons, the spokesperson said.View image in fullscreenWhy are migrants held at the prison?During a visit from the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, in February, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele offered to incarcerate criminals deported from the US in the mega-prison.The Trump administration deported 261 people to El Salvador on 15 March. For 137 of them, the US government justified the move under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, saying the men were members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua but providing few details about their cases.A US official said in a court filing that “many” of those 137 has no US convictions but still posed a serious threat.Those people along with 101 additional Venezuelans were sent to Cecot for a one-year term that can be renewed, Bukele said. The US government paid El Salvador about $6m to receive the deportees, the White House said.The remaining 23 deportees were Salvadoran gang members, the White House said.What is it like in the prison?Images taken inside the facility often show prisoners packed tightly together with their heads shaved and wearing only shorts.The prison has no outdoor recreational space and no family visits are allowed.View image in fullscreenA report from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in September 2024 expressed concerns about overcrowding in the Cecot, citing a study that found inmates had an average 0.60 square metres (6.45 square feet) of space, below international standards.Civil society organisations and advocates have reported over 6,000alleged human rights violations in the country since the state of emergency was declared in 2022, including arbitrary detentions, torture and 366 deaths in state custody. The government denies the allegations.Why is the prison controversial?Cecot has attracted global attention, both positive and negative. Argentine security minister Patricia Bullrich praised the facility in a June 2024 social media post that said: “This is the way. Tough on criminals.”A US Republican party delegation from the House of Representatives, led by then-Representative Matt Gaetz, visited the prison a month later.YouTube personalities have had millions of views for their prison visit videos that highlighted harsh conditions in the prison.Many human rights organisations have criticised El Salvador’s prisons and especially Cecot. Groups have reported alleged human rights violations like torture, inmate deaths and mass trials.Bukele said in August that “gang members will spend their entire lives in prison.” Justice minister Gustavo Villatoro vowed in 2023 that officials “will make sure none of those who enter the Cecot ever leave on foot.”View image in fullscreen More

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      in US Politics

      ‘He is innocent’: family of deported Venezuelan rebukes Trump claims

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      Donald Trump’s White House has described the Venezuelan migrants deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador as “heinous monsters” and terrorists who “rape, maim and murder for sport”.But relatives of Francisco Javier García Casique, a 24-year-old from the city of Maracay, say he was a hairdresser, not a crook.“He has never been in prison, he is innocent, and he has always supported us with his work as a barber,” his younger brother, Sebastián García Casique, said from their family home in Venezuela.Less than a week ago, the García brothers were preparing to be reunited, with Francisco telling relatives he expected to be deported from a US immigration detention facility to his South American homeland after being arrested by immigration officials on 2 March.The flight was scheduled for last Friday. A family gathering was planned in Maracay. On Sunday those plans were shattered when El Salvador’s authoritarian president, Nayib Bukele, published a cinematographic propaganda video on social media showing scores of Venezuelan prisoners being frog-marched off planes and into custody in his country’s “terrorism confinement centre”.“It’s him,” a shell-shocked Sebastián told their mother after spotting his sibling among those shackled men.“I never in my life thought I would see my brother like that – handcuffed, his head shaved, in a prison for murderers, where they put rapists and kidnappers. It is very painful because he is innocent,” he said of his brother, who travelled to the US in late 2023 chasing a better future.Lindsay Toczylowski, a California-based immigration lawyer, was another person who found herself scouring Bukele’s sensationalist video for any sign of her client, another Venezuelan migrant she feared had also been unjustly dispatched to El Salvador after seeking shelter from political persecution in the US.“I felt sick … absolute shock,” Toczylowski said of the moment she saw those pictures in which detainees are shown being forced to their knees to have their heads shaved by masked security forces with batons and guns.“It really is such an escalation … and to see it paraded and celebrated by the White House and by Bukele was just an absolutely shocking escalation of human rights abuses against migrants,” said the lawyer who works for the Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef) group.García and Toczylowski’s client – an LGBTQ+ asylum seeker she declined to name out of fears for his safety – appear not to be the only Venezuelans deported to El Salvador despite having no criminal history in their home country or the US. More than 260 people were deported to the Central American country last weekend, 137 of them under 227-year-old wartime powers invoked by the US president called the Alien Enemies Act.In recent days, a succession of Venezuelan families have gone public to demand the release of their loved-ones: young working men whose main “crimes” appear to have been their nationality and having tattoos that US immigration authorities deemed a sign of affiliation to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. Experts in South American organized crime reject the idea that tattoos are a meaningful indicator of gang membership in Venezuela.García’s tattoos include one – inspired by a verse from the Book of Isaiah and inked onto his skin during a stint living in Peru – that reads: “God gives His toughest battles to his strongest warriors”. His brother, Sebastián, has the same tattoo.In a video plea posted on social media, Mercedes Yamarte, the mother of another migrant sent to El Salvador, Mervin Yamarte, described her 29-year-old son as “a good, hardworking boy” who had never been involved in crime. But Yamarte, who entered the US in 2023 and had lived in Dallas, also has tattoos – one with the name of his daughter, another paying tribute to his mum – which were seemingly interpreted as an indication of gang membership by US authorities.“Everyone close to him knows he has a big heart and NOTHING TO DO WITH TREN DE ARAGUA,” his brother, Francis Varela, wrote on social media. “My brother went in search of the American dream,” Varela added. “A dream that has now become a nightmare for us all.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionToczylowski’s client also has tattoos which she said immigration enforcement officials used to allege he was a Tren de Aragua member. “[But] they are not gang tattoos and he has no gang membership affiliation at all,” the lawyer insisted.García’s shock incarceration in El Salvador ended a six-year quest to build a better life for himself and his family, which the Venezuelan Zoomer documented on Instagram.After leaving his economically shattered country, in 2019, García migrated to Callao, a seaside city near Peru’s capital Lima, hoping to make enough money to help his family survive back home. “I miss you Venezuela,” he posted the following year, between photos and videos that highlighted his love for hairdressing, football and his numerous tattoos.In late 2023 García, like many Venezuelan migrants, decided to relocate to the US to escape the post-pandemic economic crisis in Peru. An Instagram photo shows him posing outside a train station in the Mexican state of Jalisco as he heads to the southern border. The post is accompanied by a song by the Mexican singer Peso Pluma called Nueva Vida” (New Life) which captured his aspirations.Two months later, another image shows him cutting hair at a Marvel-themed salon in Longview, Texas named after the Incredible Hulk. “May it be everything we dreamed of,” García wrote of his fresh start beside an emoji of the Stars and Stripes flag. Last weekend that dream came to an abrupt and unexpected end in Bukele’s mega prison near San Salvador.Immigration advocates have voiced outrage at the plight of men such as García and the lack of due process in their cases.“It’s enraging because they clearly don’t have any affiliation with Tren de Aragua at all,” said Adam Isacson, a migration expert from the Washington Office on Latin America thinktank.Isacson said that in the past such migrants tended to face detention in a “miserable [detention] centre here in the United States” or were “shipped back” home. “It did not mean that you were sent to some medieval jail of an authoritarian leader in another country. So we’re in brand new ground here,” Isacson warned, adding that while it was possible some of those deported to El Salvador were hardened criminals, many appeared to be innocent.Sebastián García Casique insisted that was the case of his older brother who their mother had raised to be an “honest and good” person. He urged Trump to review his brother’s case and free him.“I believe this is an injustice,” said García, 21. “Maybe one or two [of the prisoners] have criminal records, and if they did something, punish them for it … But the innocent should be sent to Venezuela … What is he doing in El Salvador if he committed no crime there? … Why don’t they say what crimes they are accused of?” More