In late January, Ricardo Prada Vásquez, a Venezuelan immigrant working in a delivery job in Detroit, picked up an order at a McDonald’s. He was heading to the address when he erroneously turned onto the Ambassador Bridge, which leads to Canada. It is a common mistake even for those who live in the Michigan border city. But for Mr. Prada, 32, it proved fateful.
The U.S. authorities took Mr. Prada into custody when he attempted to re-enter the country; he was put in detention and ordered deported. On March 15, he told a friend in Chicago that he was among a number of detainees housed in Texas who expected to be repatriated to Venezuela.
That evening, the Trump administration flew three planes carrying Venezuelan migrants from the Texas facility to El Salvador, where they have been ever since, locked up in a maximum-security prison and denied contact with the outside world.
But Mr. Prada has not been heard from or seen. He is not on the list of 238 people who were deported to El Salvador that day. He does not appear in the photos and videos released by the authorities of shackled men with shaved heads.
“He has simply disappeared,” said Javier, a friend in Chicago, the last person with whom Mr. Prada had contact. The friend spoke about Mr. Prada on condition that he be identified only by his middle name, out of fear that he too could be targeted by the immigration authorities.
Mr. Prada’s brother, Hugo Prada, who is living in Venezuela, has also been trying to learn what happened. “We know nothing, nothing,” he said.
Mr. Prada’s disappearance has created concerns that more immigrants have been deported to El Salvador than previously known. It also raises the question of whether some deportees may have been sent to other countries with no record of it. The U.S. authorities have confirmed that he was removed from the United States. But to where?
“Ricardo’s story by itself is incredibly tragic — and we don’t know how many Ricardos there are,” said Ben Levey, a staff attorney with the National Immigrant Justice Center who tried to locate Mr. Prada. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials ultimately confirmed that he had been deported but did not divulge his destination.
