Hundreds of Venezuelans who were deported to El Salvador from the United States in recent days could face long or indefinite detention in a prison system rife with human rights abuses, according to attorneys and experts on the region.
Their families and lawyers fear there will be no recourse for them to return to the United States for scheduled immigration hearings or even return to their native Venezuela — all while those who spoke to NBC News continue to insist their loved ones and clients have no criminal histories or gang ties.
The Trump administration has said those who were sent to El Salvador had ties to the Venezuelan gang known as Tren de Aragua.
“We have no idea if there is any legal process by which we can challenge this, either in El Salvador or the United States,” said Lindsay Toczylowski, an attorney who represents a Venezuelan man in his early 30s who was seeking asylum from persecution for being gay and for his political activism against Nicolás Maduro’s government. “This is the grossest human rights violation I have seen.”
She and other attorneys said they have been completely unable to reach their clients and fear they have disappeared into a prison system notorious for mass detentions, abuse and a lack of due process.
Toczylowski said that her client is not a gang member and that he was deported without her knowledge, adding that days later, she was told he had been sent to El Salvador. She now fears he faces indefinite detention in “a potentially extremely dangerous situation.”
Toczylowski, who is the CEO of Immigrant Defenders Law Center, a law firm that works with immigrants, asked that her client not be named out of concern for his safety. He is scheduled to have a hearing next month in his ongoing immigration case to remain in the United States and has no criminal history, she said.
The Trump administration over the weekend invoked the rarely used Alien Enemies Act from 1798, which allows the president to deport noncitizens during wartime. It announced that it had removed hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants it alleged were members of a gang, flying them from the United States to El Salvador, where they were taken to a notorious megaprison.
