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Within the early days of President Donald Trump’s second time period, I spent just a few weeks observing Chicago’s immigration court docket to get a way of how issues had been altering. One afternoon in March, the case of a 27-year-old Venezuelan asylum-seeker caught my consideration.
Albert Jesús Rodríguez Parra stared into the digicam at his digital bond listening to. He wore the orange shirt given to inmates at a jail in Laredo, Texas, and headphones to take heed to the proceedings via an interpreter.
Greater than a 12 months earlier, Rodríguez had been convicted of shoplifting within the Chicago suburbs. However since then he had appeared to get his life on monitor. He discovered a job at Wrigley Area, despatched cash dwelling to his mother in Venezuela and went to the fitness center and church together with his girlfriend. Then, in November, federal authorities detained him at his condominium on Chicago’s South Aspect and accused him of belonging to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
“Are any of your tattoos gang associated?” his lawyer requested on the listening to, going via the proof laid out towards him in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement report. “No,” mentioned Rodríguez, whose tattoos embody an angel holding a gun, a wolf and a rose. At one level, he lifted his shirt to point out his dad and mom’ names inked throughout his chest.
He was requested a few TikTok video that reveals him dancing to an audio clip of somebody shouting, “Te va agarrar el Tren de Aragua,” which implies, “The Tren de Aragua goes to get you,” adopted by a dance beat. That audio clip has been shared some 60,000 instances on TikTok — it’s in style amongst Venezuelans ridiculing the stereotype that everybody from their nation is a gangster. Rodríguez regarded incredulous on the thought that this was the proof towards him.
That day, the decide didn’t handle the gang allegations. However she denied Rodríguez bond, citing the misdemeanor shoplifting conviction. She reminded him that his last listening to was on March 20, simply 10 days away. If she granted him asylum, he’d be a free man and will proceed his life within the U.S.
I informed my editors and colleagues about what I’d heard and made plans to attend the following listening to. I noticed the potential for the type of difficult narrative story that I like: Right here was a younger immigrant who, sure, had come into the nation illegally, however he had turned himself in to frame authorities to hunt asylum. Sure, he had a legal file, however it was for a nonviolent offense. And, sure, he had tattoos, however so do the good, white American mothers in my ebook membership. I used to be sure there are members of Tren de Aragua within the U.S., but when this was the type of proof the federal government had, I discovered it onerous to imagine it was an “invasion” as Trump claimed. I requested Rodríguez’s lawyer for an interview and started requesting police and court docket information.
5 days later, on March 15, the Trump administration expelled greater than 230 Venezuelan males to a most safety jail in El Salvador, a rustic lots of them had by no means even set foot in. Trump referred to as all of them terrorists and gang members. It might be just a few days earlier than the boys’s names could be made public. Maybe naively, it didn’t happen to me that Rodríguez is likely to be in that group. Then I logged into his last listening to and heard his lawyer say he didn’t know the place the federal government had taken him. The lawyer sounded drained and defeated. Later, he would inform me he had barely slept, afraid that Rodríguez would possibly flip up useless. On the listening to, he begged a authorities lawyer for data: “For his household’s sake, would you occur to know what nation he was despatched to?” She informed him she didn’t know, both.
Rodríguez lifts his shirt to show a few of his tattoos. The Trump administration has relied, partially, on tattoos to model Venezuelan immigrants as attainable members of the Tren de Aragua gang. Consultants have informed us tattoos usually are not an indicator of membership within the gang.
Credit score:
Andrea Hernández Briceño for ProPublica
I used to be astonished. I’m conversant in the historical past of authoritarian leaders disappearing individuals they don’t like in Latin America, the a part of the world that my household comes from. I wished to assume that doesn’t occur on this nation. However what I had simply witnessed felt uncomfortably related.
As quickly because the listening to ended, I bought on a name with my colleagues Mica Rosenberg and Perla Trevizo, each of whom cowl immigration and had just lately written about how the U.S. authorities had despatched different Venezuelan males to Guantanamo. We talked about what we should always do with what I’d simply heard. Mica contacted a supply within the federal authorities who confirmed, virtually instantly, that Rodríguez was among the many males that our nation had despatched to El Salvador.
The information out of the blue felt extra actual and intimate to me. One of many males despatched to a brutal jail in El Salvador now had a reputation and a face and a narrative that I had heard from his personal mouth. I couldn’t cease fascinated by him.
As a information group, we determined to place important assets into investigating who these males actually are and what occurred to them, bringing in lots of gifted ProPublica journalists to assist pull information, sift via social media accounts, analyze court docket knowledge and discover the boys’s households. We teamed up with a gaggle of Venezuelan journalists from the retailers Insurgent Alianza investigates and Pretend Information Cazetors who had been additionally beginning to monitor down details about the boys.
We spoke to the kinfolk and attorneys of greater than 100 of the boys and obtained inside authorities information that undercut the Trump administration’s claims that every one the boys are “monsters,” “sick criminals” and the “worst of the worst.” We additionally revealed a narrative about how, by and enormous, the boys weren’t hiding from federal immigration authorities. They had been within the system; many had open asylum instances like Rodríguez and had been ready for his or her day in court docket earlier than they had been taken away and imprisoned in Central America.
On July 18 — after I’d written the primary draft of this observe to you — we started to listen to some chatter a few potential prisoner alternate between the U.S. and Venezuela. Later that very same day, the boys had been launched. We’d been in the midst of engaged on a case-by-case accounting of the Venezuelan males who’d been held in El Salvador. Although they’d been launched, documenting who they’re and the way they bought caught up on this dragnet was nonetheless necessary, important even, as was the affect of their incarceration.
The result’s a database we revealed final week together with profiles of 238 of the boys Trump deported to a Salvadoran jail.
From the second I heard concerning the males’s return to Venezuela, I considered Rodríguez. He’d been on my thoughts since embarking on this undertaking. I messaged together with his mom for days as we waited for the boys to be processed by the federal government of Nicolás Maduro and launched to their households.
Rodríguez, surrounded by his mom, proper, aunt, above, and grandmother, left, is again in Venezuela.
Credit score:
Andrea Hernández Briceño for ProPublica
Lastly, one morning final week, he went dwelling. We spoke later that afternoon. He mentioned he was relieved to be dwelling together with his household however felt traumatized. He informed me he needs the world to know what occurred to him within the Salvadoran jail — each day beatings, humiliation, psychological abuse. “There isn’t any purpose for what I went via,” he mentioned. “I didn’t deserve that.”
The Salvadoran authorities has denied mistreating the Venezuelan prisoners.
We requested the Trump administration about its proof towards Rodríguez. That is everything of its assertion: “Albert Jesús Rodriguez Parra is an unlawful alien from Venezuela and Tren de Aragua gang member. He illegally crossed the border on April 22, 2023, underneath the Biden Administration.”
Whereas Rodríguez was incarcerated in El Salvador and nobody knew what would occur to him, the court docket saved delaying hearings for his asylum case. However after months of continuances, on Monday, Rodríguez logged right into a digital listening to from Venezuela. “Oh my gosh, I’m so pleased to see that,” mentioned Choose Samia Naseem, clearly remembering what had occurred in his case.
Rodríguez’s lawyer mentioned that his shopper had been tortured and abused in El Salvador. “I can’t even describe to this court docket what he went via,” he mentioned. “He’s getting psychological assist, and that is my precedence.”
It was a short listening to, maybe 5 minutes. Rodríguez’s lawyer talked about his involvement in an ongoing lawsuit towards the Trump administration over its use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans. The federal government lawyer mentioned little, besides to query whether or not Rodríguez was even allowed to look nearly resulting from “safety points” in Venezuela.
Lastly, the decide mentioned she would administratively shut the case whereas the litigation performs out. “If he ought to hopefully be capable to come again to the U.S., we’ll calendar the case,” she mentioned.
Naseem turned to Rodríguez, who was muted and regarded critical. “You don’t have to fret about reappearing till this will get sorted out,” she informed him. He nodded and shortly logged off.
We plan to maintain reporting on what occurred and have one other story coming quickly about Rodríguez and the opposite males’s experiences contained in the jail. Please attain out in case you have data to share.
The Males Trump Deported to a Salvadoran Jail
