The Salvadoran capital of El Salvador from El Boquerón Volcano in 2023. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)
An immigrant rights group that represents an LGBTQ+ asylum seeker from Venezuela says the Trump-Vance administration on March 15 “forcibly removed” him from the U.S. and sent him to El Salvador.
Immigrant Defenders Law Center Litigation and Advocacy Director Alvaro M. Huerta during a telephone interview with the Washington Blade March 18 said officials with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection alleged his organization’s client was a member of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuela-based gang, because of his tattoos and no other information.
“It’s very flimsy,” said Huerta. “These are the types of tattoos that any artist in New York City or Los Angeles would have. It’s nothing that makes him a gang member.”
The White House on Feb. 20 designated Tren de Aragua an “international terrorist organization.”
President Donald Trump on March 15 invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which the Associated Press notes allows the U.S. to deport “noncitizens without any legal recourse.”
“I proclaim that all Venezuelan citizens 14 years of age or older who are members of TdA (Tren de Aragua), are within the United States, and are not actually naturalized or lawful permanent residents of the United States are liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as alien enemies,” said Trump in a proclamation that announced his invocation of the 18th century law.
The asylum seeker — who the Immigrant Defenders Law Center has not identified by name because he is “in danger” — is among the hundreds of Venezuelans who the U.S. sent to El Salvador on March 15.
Chief Judge James E. Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia temporarily blocked the deportations. The AP notes the flights were already in the air when Boasberg issued his ruling.
Huerta said U.S. officials confirmed March 17 the asylum seeker is “indeed in El Salvador.” He told the Blade it remains unclear whether the asylum seeker is in the country’s Terrorism Confinement Center, a maximum-security prison known by the Spanish acronym CECOT.
‘We couldn’t find him’
Huerta said the Immigrant Defenders Law Center client fled Venezuela and asked for asylum in the U.S.
The asylum seeker, according to Huerta, passed a “credible fear interview” that determines whether an asylum claim is valid. Huerta said U.S. officials detained the asylum seeker last year when he returned to the country from the Mexican border city of Tijuana.
Huerta told the Blade the asylum seeker was supposed to appear before an immigration judge on March 13.
“We couldn’t find him,” said Huerta.
He noted speculation over whether Trump was about to invoke the Alien Enemies Act, and the Immigrant Defenders Law Center “started getting concerned that maybe he was caught up in this situation.”
“He’s an LGBT individual who is an artist in Venezuela,” said Huerta.
Neither ICE nor CBP have responded to the Blade’s request for comment.
Huerta said it is “hard to say” whether the asylum seeker has any legal recourse.
“He still has an ongoing case in immigration court here,” said Huerta, noting the asylum seeker’s attorney was in court on Monday, and has another hearing in two weeks. “Presumably they should have to allow him to appear, at least virtually, for court because he still has these cases.”
Huerta noted the U.S. since Trump took office has deported hundreds of migrants to Panama; officials in the Central American country have released dozens of them from detention. Migrants sent to the Guantánamo Bay naval base in Cuba have returned to detention facilities in the U.S.
“Something where the government, kind of unliterally, can just say that someone is a gang member based on tattoos, without any offer of proof, without having to go to court to say that and then take them externally to what effectively a prison state (El Salvador), it certainly is completely just different than what we’ve seen,” Huerta told the Blade.
Huerta also spoke about the Trump-Vance administration’s overall immigration policy.
“The Trump administration knows exactly what they’re doing when it comes to scapegoating immigrants, scapegoating asylees,” he said. “They have a population that, in many ways, is politically powerless, but in many other ways, is politically powerful because they have other folks standing behind them as well, but they’re an easy punching bag.”
“They can use this specter of we’re just deporting criminals, even though they’re the ones who are saying that they’re criminal, they’re not necessarily proving that,” added Huerta. “They feel like they can really take that fight and run with it, and they’re testing the bounds of what they can get away with inside and outside of the courtroom.”
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