Immigrants disappear from the US detainees monitoring system. After deportation flights

Miami (AP) – Franco Caraballo called his wife on Friday night, crying and panic. Hours before, the 26 -year -old barber and dozens of other Venezuelan migrants in a federal detention center in Texas were dressed in white clothes, handcuffed and taken to a plane. I had no idea where I was going.

Twenty -four hours later, the name of Caraballo disappeared from the detainee online of immigration and customs of the United States.

On Monday, his wife, Johanny Sánchez, knew that Caraballo was between More than 200 Venezuelan immigrants flew During the weekend to El Salvador, where they are in a prison of maximum security after being accused by the Trump administration to belong to the Venezuelan Gang Train of Aragua.

Sanchez insists that her husband is not a member of a gang. She fights even to find logic in the accusation.

Weekend flights

In this 2024 photo provided by Xiomara Vizcaya., Ali David Navas Vizcaya poses in front of his grandmother’s house in Barquisimeto, Venezuela. (Xiomara Vizcaya through AP)

Photo: Associated Press

Flights from American immigration authorities He started a frantic struggle among terrified families after hundreds of immigrants disappeared from the ICE online locator.

Some appeared in That great prison of El Salvador, Where visitors, recreation and education are not allowed. The United States has paid the Government of El Salvador $ 6 million to celebrate immigrants, many of them Venezuelans, whose government rarely accepts deportees from the United States.

But many families have no idea where to find their loved ones. El Salvador does not have an online database to search inmates, and families often fight to obtain information.

“I don’t know anything about my son,” said Xiomara Vizcaya, a 46 -year -old Venezuelan.

Ali David Navas Vizcaya had been in detention of the United States since the beginning of 2024, when he was arrested at an American-Mexico border crossing where he had an appointment to talk to immigration officers. He called her Friday night and said she thought she was being deported to Venezuela or Mexico.

“He told me: ‘Finally, we will be together, and this nightmare will end,'” said Vizcaya in the telephone interview from his home in the city of Barquisimeto in Venezuela in northern Venezuela.

His name is no longer in the ice system. She said she has no criminal record and suspects that she may have been identified by error as a member of the Aragua train due to several tattoos.

“He went to the American dream, to be able to help me financially, but he never had the opportunity to leave,” he said.

Almost 8 million Venezuelans have left their homeland since 2013, when their economy dependent on oil collapsed. The majority initially went to other Latin American countries, but more addressed the US.

A law of the 18th century

On Saturday, President Donald Trump announced that he had invoked The Alien Enemies Law of 1798that allows the USA. UU. Deporting non -citizens without any legal appeal, including the rights to appear before an immigration judge or federal court.

Many conservatives have encouraged deportations and the Trump administration for adopting a hard position on immigration.

The Administration says that the Law of Alien Enemies is using in times of war to have allegation to the members of Aragua’s train, saying that the gang was invading the United States, although it has not provided any evidence to support the claims of the gang membership.

American officials recognized in a judicial presentation on Monday that many people sent to El Salvador have no criminal record, although they insisted that all are alleged gang members.

“The lack of criminal record does not indicate that they represent a limited threat,” said an affidavit in the presentation, adding that together with his suspicion of gang membership “the lack of specific information about each individual really highlights the risk they represent.”

ICE regional supervisor Robert Cerna said in a sworn statement that agents did not trust “tattoos only” to identify potential members.

“We continue the law”

On February 3, Caraballo went to an ICE office in the Dallas office for one of its regular mandatory records with agents who handle their asylum application.

He was “arrested and released” after illegally crossing the southern border of the United States in October 2023, according to documents of the National Security Department provided by his wife. The documents said it was a “member/active” of Aragua train, but offered no evidence to support that.

What member of the gang, asked his wife, would enter a federal office for the application of the law during a repression of the Trump administration that has left immigrants throughout the country terrified?

“We followed the law as they told us. We never lost any” meetings with the authorities, said Sánchez, who remains in the United States trying to ensure the release of her husband. Sanchez said that her husband, with whom she married in 2024 in Texas, has not had failures with the law in the United States, also showed the Associated press a Venezuelan document that shows that she has a clean criminal record there.

Sánchez believes that he was erroneously accused of belonging to Train de Aragua due to a clock -shaped tattoo that marks his daughter’s birthday.

“He has many tattoos, but that is not a reason to discriminate against him,” he said.

Sanchez said that she and her husband left Venezuela with just $ 200 and spent three months sleeping in the squares, eating with garbage cans and trusting the goodwill of migrants’ companions while traveling north.

She thought the sacrifice would be worth it. Her husband had been working as a barber since the age of 13 and was hoping to find a new beginning in the United States, escaping from the wages of poverty and the Ironfistered government of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela.

Venezuela responds

The Venezuelan government has called “kidnapping” flights. He urged his citizens to live in the US to return home and promised to recover others from El Salvador. But with diplomatic ties broken for a long time between Venezuela and El Salvador, the prisoners have few defenders.

The deportations of the United States exacerbate Venezuela’s immigration crisis by converting “migrants into geopolitical pawns,” said Oscar Murillo, head of the Venezuelan Human Rights Group. “There is a lack of transparency by the United States and El Salvador with respect to the state of deported persons and the crimes for which they are being prosecuted.”

Sanchez is among those who believe that the American dream has become ugly. She wants to leave the United States once she finds her husband.

“We fled from Venezuela in the better future. We never imagine that things would be worse.”

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Associated Press Regina García Cano journalists in Caracas, Venezuela and Tim Sullivan in Minneapolis contributed to this report.

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