ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of energy. This story was initially printed in our Dispatches publication; join to obtain notes from our journalists.
Within the early days of President Donald Trump’s second time period, I spent a couple of weeks observing Chicago’s immigration court docket to get a way of how issues have 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 digital camera 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 by 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 observe. He discovered a job at Wrigley Area, despatched cash dwelling to his mother in Venezuela and went to the gymnasium and church along with his girlfriend. Then, in November, federal authorities detained him at his condo on Chicago’s South Facet 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 by the proof laid out in opposition to him in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement report. “No,” stated Rodríguez, whose tattoos embrace an angel holding a gun, a wolf and a rose. At one level, he lifted his shirt to point out his mother and father’ 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 occasions on TikTok — it’s fashionable amongst Venezuelans ridiculing the stereotype that everybody from their nation is a gangster. Rodríguez appeared incredulous on the thought that this was the proof in opposition to him.
That day, the choose didn’t handle the gang allegations. However she denied Rodríguez bond, citing the misdemeanor shoplifting conviction. She reminded him that his remaining 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 instructed my editors and colleagues about what I’d heard and made plans to attend the following listening to. I noticed the potential for the sort of sophisticated 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 prison file, but it surely 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 sort of proof the federal government had, I discovered it arduous 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 a lot of them had by no means even set foot in. Trump referred to as all of them terrorists and gang members. It could be a couple of days earlier than the lads’s names can 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 remaining 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 may flip up lifeless. On the listening to, he begged a authorities lawyer for info: “For his household’s sake, would you occur to know what nation he was despatched to?” She instructed him she didn’t know, both.
Credit score:
Andrea Hernández Briceño for ProPublica
I used to be astonished. I’m aware of the historical past of authoritarian leaders disappearing folks 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 received 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, nearly instantly, that Rodríguez was among the many males that our nation had despatched to El Salvador.
The information immediately 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 eager about 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 by social media accounts, analyze court docket knowledge and discover the lads’s households. We teamed up with a bunch of Venezuelan journalists from the retailers Alianza Rebelde Investiga and Cazadores de Faux Information who have been additionally beginning to observe down details about the lads.
We spoke to the family and attorneys of greater than 100 of the lads and obtained inside authorities information that undercut the Trump administration’s claims that every one the lads are “monsters,” “sick criminals” and the “worst of the worst.” We additionally printed a narrative about how, by and enormous, the lads weren’t hiding from federal immigration authorities. They have been within the system; many had open asylum circumstances like Rodríguez and have been ready for his or her day in court docket earlier than they have been taken away and imprisoned in Central America.
On July 18 — after I’d written the primary draft of this notice to you — we started to listen to some chatter a few potential prisoner trade between the U.S. and Venezuela. Later that very same day, the lads had been launched. We’d been in the course 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 received caught up on this dragnet was nonetheless vital, important even, as was the affect of their incarceration.
The result’s a database we printed final week together with profiles of 238 of the lads 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 mission. I messaged along with his mom for days as we waited for the lads to be processed by the federal government of Nicolás Maduro and launched to their households.
Credit score:
Andrea Hernández Briceño for ProPublica
Lastly, one morning final week, he went dwelling. We spoke later that afternoon. He stated he was relieved to be dwelling along with his household however felt traumatized. He instructed me he needs the world to know what occurred to him within the Salvadoran jail — every day beatings, humiliation, psychological abuse. “There is no such thing as a motive for what I went by,” he stated. “I didn’t deserve that.”
The Salvadoran authorities has denied mistreating the Venezuelan prisoners.
We requested the Trump administration about its proof in opposition to Rodríguez. That is the whole lot 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, beneath the Biden Administration.”
Whereas Rodríguez was incarcerated in El Salvador and nobody knew what would occur to him, the court docket stored 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 completely happy to see that,” stated Decide Samia Naseem, clearly remembering what had occurred in his case.
Rodríguez’s lawyer stated that his consumer had been tortured and abused in El Salvador. “I can’t even describe to this court docket what he went by,” he stated. “He’s getting psychological assist, and that is my precedence.”
It was a quick listening to, maybe 5 minutes. Rodríguez’s lawyer talked about his involvement in an ongoing lawsuit in opposition to the Trump administration over its use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans. The federal government lawyer stated little, besides to query whether or not Rodríguez was even allowed to seem nearly attributable to “safety points” in Venezuela.
Lastly, the choose stated she would administratively shut the case whereas the litigation performs out. “If he ought to hopefully have the ability to come again to the U.S., we’ll calendar the case,” she stated.
Naseem turned to Rodríguez, who was muted and appeared severe. “You don’t have to fret about reappearing till this will get sorted out,” she instructed 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 you probably have info to share.
