\n<\/p>\n
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. This story was originally published in our Dispatches newsletter; sign up to receive notes from our journalists.<\/p>\n
In the early days of President Donald Trump\u2019s second term, I spent a few weeks observing Chicago\u2019s immigration court to get a sense of how things were changing. One afternoon in March, the case of a 27-year-old Venezuelan asylum-seeker caught my attention.<\/p>\n
Albert Jes\u00fas Rodr\u00edguez Parra stared into the camera at his virtual bond hearing. He wore the orange shirt given to inmates at a jail in Laredo, Texas, and headphones to listen to the proceedings through an interpreter.<\/p>\n
More than a year earlier, Rodr\u00edguez had been convicted of shoplifting in the Chicago suburbs. But since then he had seemed to get his life on track. He found a job at Wrigley Field, sent money home to his mom in Venezuela and went to the gym and church with his girlfriend. Then, in November, federal authorities detained him at his apartment on Chicago\u2019s South Side and accused him of belonging to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre any of your tattoos gang related?\u201d his attorney asked at the hearing, going through the evidence laid out against him in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement report. \u201cNo,\u201d said Rodr\u00edguez, whose tattoos include an angel holding a gun, a wolf and a rose. At one point, he lifted his shirt to show his parents\u2019 names inked across his chest.<\/p>\n
He was asked about a TikTok video that shows him dancing to an audio clip of someone shouting, \u201cTe va agarrar el Tren de Aragua,\u201d which means, \u201cThe Tren de Aragua is going to get you,\u201d followed by a dance beat. That audio clip has been shared some 60,000 times on TikTok \u2014 it\u2019s popular among Venezuelans ridiculing the stereotype that everyone from their country is a gangster. Rodr\u00edguez looked incredulous at the thought that this<\/em> was the evidence against him.<\/p>\n That day, the judge didn\u2019t address the gang allegations. But she denied Rodr\u00edguez bond, citing the misdemeanor shoplifting conviction. She reminded him that his final hearing was on March 20, just 10 days away. If she granted him asylum, he\u2019d be a free man and could continue his life in the U.S.<\/p>\n I told my editors and colleagues about what I\u2019d heard and made plans to attend the next hearing. I saw the potential for the kind of complicated narrative story that I like: Here was a young immigrant who, yes, had come into the country illegally, but he had turned himself in to border authorities to seek asylum. Yes, he had a criminal record, but it was for a nonviolent offense. And, yes, he had tattoos, but so do the nice, white American moms in my book club. I was certain there are members of Tren de Aragua in the U.S., but if this was the kind of evidence the government had, I found it hard to believe it was an \u201cinvasion\u201d as Trump claimed. I asked Rodr\u00edguez\u2019s attorney for an interview and began requesting police and court records.<\/p>\n Five days later, on March 15, the Trump administration expelled more than 230 Venezuelan men to a maximum security prison in El Salvador, a country many of them had never even set foot in. Trump called them all terrorists and gang members. It would be a few days before the men\u2019s names would be made public. Perhaps naively, it didn\u2019t occur to me that Rodr\u00edguez might be in that group. Then I logged into his final hearing and heard his attorney say he didn\u2019t know where the government had taken him. The lawyer sounded tired and defeated. Later, he would tell me he had barely slept, afraid that Rodr\u00edguez might turn up dead. At the hearing, he begged a government lawyer for information: \u201cFor his family\u2019s sake, would you happen to know what country he was sent to?\u201d She told him she didn\u2019t know, either.<\/p>\n Rodr\u00edguez lifts his shirt to display some of his tattoos. The Trump administration has relied, in part, on tattoos to brand Venezuelan immigrants as possible members of the Tren de Aragua gang. Experts have told us tattoos are not an indicator of membership in the gang.<\/span><\/p>\n I was astonished. I am familiar with the history of authoritarian leaders disappearing people they don\u2019t like in Latin America, the part of the world that my family comes from. I wanted to think that doesn\u2019t happen in this country. But what I had just witnessed felt uncomfortably similar.<\/p>\n As soon as the hearing ended, I got on a call with my colleagues Mica Rosenberg and Perla Trevizo, both of whom cover immigration and had recently written about how the U.S. government had sent other Venezuelan men to Guantanamo. We talked about what we should do with what I\u2019d just heard. Mica contacted a source in the federal government who confirmed, almost immediately, that Rodr\u00edguez was among the men that our country had sent to El Salvador.<\/p>\n The news suddenly felt more real and intimate to me. One of the men sent to a brutal prison in El Salvador now had a name and a face and a story that I had heard from his own mouth. I couldn\u2019t stop thinking about him.<\/p>\n As a news organization, we decided to put significant resources into investigating who these men really are and what happened to them, bringing in many talented ProPublica journalists to help pull records, sift through social media accounts, analyze court data and find the men\u2019s families. We teamed up with a group of Venezuelan journalists from the outlets Alianza Rebelde Investiga and Cazadores de Fake News who were also starting to track down information about the men.<\/p>\n We spoke to the relatives and attorneys of more than 100 of the men and obtained internal government records that undercut the Trump administration\u2019s claims that all the men are \u201cmonsters,\u201d \u201csick criminals\u201d and the \u201cworst of the worst.\u201d We also published a story about how, by and large, the men were not hiding from federal immigration authorities. They were in the system; many had open asylum cases like Rodr\u00edguez and were waiting for their day in court before they were taken away and imprisoned in Central America.<\/p>\n On July 18 \u2014 after I\u2019d written the first draft of this note to you \u2014 we began to hear some chatter about a potential prisoner exchange between the U.S. and Venezuela. Later that same day, the men had been released. We\u2019d been in the middle of working on a case-by-case accounting of the Venezuelan men who\u2019d been held in El Salvador. Though they\u2019d been released, documenting who they are and how they got caught up in this dragnet was still important, essential even, as was the impact of their incarceration.<\/p>\n The result is a database we published last week including profiles of 238 of the men Trump deported to a Salvadoran prison.<\/p>\n From the moment I heard about the men\u2019s return to Venezuela, I thought about Rodr\u00edguez. He\u2019d been on my mind since embarking on this project. I messaged with his mother for days as we waited for the men to be processed by the government of Nicol\u00e1s Maduro and released to their families.<\/p>\n Rodr\u00edguez, surrounded by his mother, right, aunt, above, and grandmother, left, is back in Venezuela.<\/span><\/p>\n Finally, one morning last week, he went home. We spoke later that afternoon. He said he was relieved to be home with his family but felt traumatized. He told me he wants the world to know what happened to him in the Salvadoran prison \u2014 daily beatings, humiliation, psychological abuse. \u201cThere is no reason for what I went through,\u201d he said. \u201cI didn\u2019t deserve that.\u201d<\/p>\n The Salvadoran government has denied mistreating the Venezuelan prisoners.<\/p>\n We asked the Trump administration about its evidence against Rodr\u00edguez. This is the entirety of its statement: \u201cAlbert Jes\u00fas Rodriguez Parra is an illegal alien from Venezuela and Tren de Aragua gang member. He illegally crossed the border on April 22, 2023, under the Biden Administration.\u201d<\/p>\n While Rodr\u00edguez was incarcerated in El Salvador and no one knew what would happen to him, the court kept delaying hearings for his asylum case. But after months of continuances, on Monday, Rodr\u00edguez logged into a virtual hearing from Venezuela. \u201cOh my gosh, I am so happy to see that,\u201d said Judge Samia Naseem, clearly remembering what had happened in his case.<\/p>\n Rodr\u00edguez\u2019s attorney said that his client had been tortured and abused in El Salvador. \u201cI can\u2019t even describe to this court what he went through,\u201d he said. \u201cHe\u2019s getting psychological help, and that’s my priority.\u201d<\/p>\n It was a brief hearing, perhaps five minutes. Rodr\u00edguez\u2019s lawyer mentioned his involvement in an ongoing lawsuit against the Trump administration over its use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans. The government lawyer said little, except to question whether Rodr\u00edguez was even allowed to appear virtually due to \u201csecurity issues\u201d in Venezuela.<\/p>\n Finally, the judge said she would administratively close the case while the litigation plays out. \u201cIf he should hopefully be able to come back to the U.S., we\u2019ll calendar the case,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Naseem turned to Rodr\u00edguez, who was muted and looked serious. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to worry about reappearing until this gets sorted out,\u201d she told him. He nodded and soon logged off.<\/p>\n We plan to keep reporting on what happened and have another story coming soon about Rodr\u00edguez and the other men\u2019s experiences inside the prison. Please reach out if you have information to share.<\/p>\n \n The Men Trump Deported to a Salvadoran Prison<\/strong>\n <\/p>\n
\n Credit: <\/span>
\n Andrea Hern\u00e1ndez Brice\u00f1o for ProPublica
\n <\/span><\/p>\n
\n Credit: <\/span>
\n Andrea Hern\u00e1ndez Brice\u00f1o for ProPublica
\n <\/span><\/p>\n