Franco Caraballo’s wife got a call from him on Friday night; he seemed scared and was crying, because he was one of the ‘immigrants.’ Hours before that, the 26-year-old barber and many other Venezuelan migrants were dressed in white clothes, handcuffed, and taken on a plane at a federal detention facility in Texas. He had no clue where he was going.
After twenty-four hours, Franco’s name vanished from the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s online detainee locator. It was on Monday that Johanny Snchez, his wife, got to know that Franco was among the 200 or more Venezuelan immigrants flown over this weekend to El Salvador. They were kept in a mega-prison after being accused by the Donald Trump administration of belonging to the Tren de Aragua Venezuelan gang.
Snchez believes her husband is not a gang member and struggles to even find a logic behind the accusation.
Immigrants disappear from US detainee tracking system after deportation flights https://t.co/5fLQwN7odF pic.twitter.com/bqmT8Sqbj1
— Dánica Coto (@danicacoto) March 19, 2025
The weekend flights
After some of the detainees’ names vanished from the online locator, the families of the individuals started panicking. The detainees showed up at the massive El Salvador prison, where recreation, family visitors and education are not allowed. The El Salvador government is being paid $6 million by the US to hold immigrants, most of them being Venezuelan. The Venezuelan government rarely accepts deportees from the US.
However, most of the families have no idea where to find their loved ones. El Salvador does not have any online database to look up for inmates. Their families often struggle to find information on them. “I don’t know anything about my son,” said Xiomara Vizcaya, a 46-year-old Venezuelan.
Her son, Ali David Navas Vizcaya has been in the US detention centre since early 2024. He was stopped at the US-Mexico border where he talked to immigration officers. His mother then received a call that “he thought he was being deported to Venezuela or Mexico.”
He said, “Finally, we’re going to be together, and this nightmare is going to be over,” Vizcaya said in a telephone interview from her home in the northern Venezuela city of Barquisimeto. Ali’s name is no longer in ICE’s system.
His mother said that “has no criminal record and suspects he may have been mistakenly identified as a Tren de Aragua member because of several tattoos.” He left to achieve the American dream, and help her financially, but never got a chance to come out of the prison. Since 2013 about 8 million Venezuelans have left their homeland ever since its oil-dependent economy collapsed. Many of them went to other Latin American countries, and most of them went to the US post-COVID-19 during the Biden administration, as reported by Business Standard.
“They were apparently deported without a hearing in an immigration court, much less a criminal conviction. The Administration didn’t release their names or their offenses.”
This is chilling. We have due process for a reason. Without it, we’re barrelling toward authoritarianism. https://t.co/zrvjllnG7J
— Joel Delgado (@JoelMDelgado) March 18, 2025
An 18th-century law
This Saturday, President Donald Trump claimed that he had invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. The Act will allow the ‘US to deport immigrants with any legal recourse, including rights to appear before an immigration or federal court judge.’
The Venezuela government, on the other hand, has called these flights ‘kidnappings.’ The government requested its citizens living in America to return home and promised to get back others from El Salvador. Unfortunately, the prisoners have few advocates due to broken diplomatic ties between Venezuela and El Salvador.
“The US deportations exacerbate Venezuela’s immigration crisis by turning migrants into geopolitical pawns,” said Oscar Murillo, head of the Venezuelan human rights group Provea. “There is a lack of transparency on the part of the US and El Salvador regarding the status of deported individuals and the crimes for which they are being prosecuted,” added Oscar.
