Mirelys Casique was able to be reunited together with her son, 24-year-old Francisco Garcia Casique. In March, Francisco known as Mirelys from an ICE facility to say that he was being deported again house to Venezuela the next day. After 6 years aside, they’d lastly see one another once more.
However Francisco would by no means arrive on Venezuelan soil.
As a substitute, he was deported to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT jail together with greater than 230 others.
“I used to be so hopeful, ready for him on the sofa, ready for the information that the planes had been arriving in Venezuela,” Mirelys advised Each day Kos.
However when pictures started to flow into on social media of the shaved and shackled males compelled to kneel on CECOT’s concrete flooring, Mirelys knew that Francisco wouldn’t be coming house.
“I wished to bang my head towards the wall, refusing to imagine my son belonged in that place,” she mentioned.
Francisco, like most of the individuals who President Donald Trump deported with out simply trigger by way of use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, had no prior prison convictions. Reasonably, he was focused due to his tattoos and the truth that he’s from Aragua, the Venezuelan city house to the Tren de Aragua gang.
And whereas the Trump administration has labeled Francisco a harmful prison to justify holding him in El Salvador, his mom says in any other case.
“He was at all times a barber, a employee, accountable,” she advised Each day Kos.
Earlier than arriving in the US in 2023, Francisco was residing in Peru working as a barber. In the end, Francisco would cross the border illegally into the US and later flip himself in, starting a prolonged technique of obligatory court docket hearings as he tried to develop into a authorized resident. Within the meantime, he lived and labored in Texas.
“He left Venezuela to assist his household because the eldest son, to not find yourself abused and locked in a jail as if he had been a terrorist,” Mirelys mentioned.
And whereas the Division of Homeland Safety insists that Francisco is a member of Tren de Aragua, the younger barber was a part of an administrative mixup up to now.
An internet Texas database listed suspected gang members, together with Francisco. However the photograph was incorrectly recognized and was truly of an older, bearded man fully unaffiliated with Francisco. Regardless of being listed within the database, Francisco was launched from ICE custody, given an ankle monitor, and labeled nonthreatening as he awaited trial.
However after Trump took workplace, Mirelys advised Each day Kos, every part modified. On Feb. 6, ICE brokers broke down Francisco’s door and violently kidnapped him in the course of the night time.
“It was a kidnapping,” she mentioned.
Mirelys, like many different kinfolk of the Venezuelan males being held in CECOT, has not heard from her son since he boarded the deportation flight.
“Francisco is a humble younger man. We’re low-income folks, however that doesn’t imply we needs to be labeled criminals or unhealthy folks,” she mentioned.
On June 16, Mirelys—together with 4 different kinfolk of detained males—traveled to Geneva, Switzerland, to plead for the United Nations to step in. Many have additionally tried touring on to El Salvador to see their family members. However even with legal professionals at their aspect, the journeys have been unsuccessful.
And whereas Mirelys’ story of a heartbroken mom could resonate with the residents of Geneva, she has returned to Venezuela with out the outcomes she hoped for.
“Many have spoken out in help, however we would like motion,” she advised Each day Kos. “We would like this to finish quickly. We don’t know the extent of their bodily and psychological deterioration.”
As stories have surfaced concerning the torture inside CECOT, the wellbeing of the deported Venezuelan males is a prime concern.
It’s unclear what the subsequent authorized steps can be as folks like Mirelys await their kinfolk’ hopeful launch. Whereas the Trump administration beforehand mentioned that the accountability to launch anybody was within the palms of El Salvador, President Nayib Bukele has now insisted that El Salvador is solely holding them as a favor for the US.
For Mirelys, all she will do is proceed to inform her son’s story and maintain onto hope.
“I would like the world to know that despite the fact that we’re going by way of this nice ache and we’re destroyed as a result of that is an injustice—as a result of evil needs to stalk us and harm our households—we nonetheless imagine in God, and God is simply and good,” she mentioned. “He’ll return our youngsters to us.”
