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The Donald Trump administration’s unlawful removal of hundreds of migrants to a gulag in El Salvador — and their subsequent legal battle to keep them there — have showcased the president’s clear disregard for human rights and the United States court system. They are planning to do it again.
Most of the Venezuelan and Salvadoran migrants that were dumped by the Trump administration in El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), a notorious mega-prison accused of grave abuse against inmates, had no criminal record. Notable cases like that of Kilmar Abrego Garcia — who the Trump administration admitted was deported due to an “administrative error” — have become flashpoints for the White House’s attempts to skirt immigration law through the reinterpretation of archaic legislation like the Alien Enemies Act.
Earlier this week, two Venezuelan men filed a habeas petition challenging a renewed attempt by the Trump administration to invoke the Alien Enemies Act in order to transfer them into custody of the Salvadoran prison system. One of Trump’s first acts as president was to declare Central American gangs such as Tren de Aragua and MS-13 as foreign terrorist organizations. In the government’s view, anyone they accuse of membership to one of those gangs is liable to be detained and deported as an enemy combatant without due process.
As battle over the first wave of deportees continues to move through the court system, a contingent of migrants who have been accused of gang membership have submitted a class action lawsuit challenging the government’s claims against them, and demanding they be given a chance to contest the accusations in court.
One individual in the lawsuit is a teenager, referred to in court documents as “Y.S.M.” According to filings from the ACLU, Y.S.M. was born in 2006 in Venezuela — making him 18 or 19 years old. The court record claims that the teenager was detained by immigration agents who accused him of being a member of Tren de Aragua after seeing a Facebook photo of him featuring what they alleged to be a pistol — but was actually a water gun.
“The agents stated that the photograph, found on Facebook, proved the Y.S.M. was a member of Tren de Aragua and that one of the persons in the photograph had a gun. Y.S.M. pointed out to the agents that the gun in question was in fact a water pistol. I have seen and reviewed the Facebook photograph in question and have confirmed that the gun in question is a water pistol,” says a filing from Y.S.M.’s lawyer.
The same filing adds: “On April 11, Y.S.M. was told by staff at the detention facility that he needed to attend a medical checkup. Once Y.S.M. arrived to the checkup, he was met by agents who began interrogating him about his ties to Tren de Aragua and pressured him to admit that he was a member of Tren de Aragua.” The sworn statement adds that the tenager was asked to sign a document attesting that he was a member of the gang, and that he refused.
Y.S.M. was detained along with his father and other members of his family. In a horrific twist, his lawyers wrote that they received notice from Y.S.M.’s father on Thursday that his son had been taken away. “As he passed by, Y.S.M.’s father could see through a window that Y.S.M. was crying. As Y.S.M. and the agents were passing, Y.S.M. held up a paper to the window. Another detainee who spoke English was able to read that the paper said ‘deportation.’ The country of removal was not visible. Because he has no final immigration order, the government could only be seeking to remove him under the AEA, not the immigration laws,” attorneys wrote.
Y.S.M. is not the only teenager sent abroad with little due process and even less recourse for their families to contact them. Nineteen-year-old Merwil Gutiérrez was one of the hundreds of detainees sent to CECOT last month. The teenager has no criminal record. ““I feel like my son was kidnapped,” his father told Documented earlier this week. “I’ve spent countless hours searching for him, going from one precinct to another, speaking with numerous people who kept referring me elsewhere. Yet, after all this, no one has given me any information or provided a single document about his case.”
Trump has long insisted that countries like Venezuela are intentionally sending criminals and gang members into the United States in order to purge themselves of criminal elements while harming the United States. On Friday, a U.S. intelligence report contradicted the assertion. The assessment, conducted in secret, determined that while contact with gang members and low-level officials was not uncommon, there was no evidence of a central, organized government push by the Venezuelan government to move gang members into the United States.
