Mom Bereft After Spotting Son Among Alleged Venezuelan Gang Members

A Venezuelan mother desperately looking for her son after U.S. immigration officers detained him says she seen him shackled on TV amongst a complete bunch of migrants the Trump administration has accused of being violent gang members and despatched to a Salvadoran jail.

“It’s him. It’s him,” an emotional Mirelis Casique told the BBC of getting seen her 24-year-old son, Francisco Javier Garcia Casique, in photos of restrained males in all-white garments and newly shaved heads. “I recognize his features.”

Casique said her son entered the U.S. in late 2023 to hunt asylum. He launched himself to authorities on the border and was launched, nonetheless was then briefly detained in Texas ultimate 12 months following a routine look with immigration officers after they seen his tattoos, she instructed The New York Times.

Those tattoos included the phrase “peace” in Spanish, some family names, and a crown. They prompted U.S. authorities to label Garcia Casique a suspected gang member and take him into custody for two months sooner than releasing him with an digital monitor.

On Feb. 6, laws enforcement authorities obtained right here to Garcia Casique’s door and took him once more into custody, his mother said.

“He doesn’t belong to any criminal gang, either in the U.S. or in Venezuela… he’s not a criminal,” she instructed The BBC. “What he’s been is a barber.”

An individual determining himself as Garcia Casique’s brother moreover shared photos of him chopping hair on social media whereas insisting that his brother is innocent and wrongfully incarcerated.

“What injustice is this? For having tattoos? Why didn’t they investigate him? Why didn’t they send him to his country of origin?” his brother wrote with the images. “Respect the human rights of innocent people.”

The U.S. and Salvadoran governments haven’t supplied any proof exhibiting that the deported migrants are associated to the Tren de Aragua gang, which has been designated as a terrorist group by President Donald Trump.

In a court filing, officers acknowledged that a lot of the people despatched to El Salvador mustn’t have felony data, though they claimed this “does not indicate they pose a limited threat.”

“The lack of specific information about each individual actually highlights the risk they pose,” the administration said in a sworn declaration.

Despite the plain lack of due course of and proof that the migrants are gang members, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said they’ll be imprisoned for as a minimum a 12 months and compelled to hold out labor beneath a program often called “Zero Idleness.” This program is designed to make the nation’s jail system, which costs $200 million a 12 months to run, self-sustaining, Bukele said.

“As always, we continue advancing in the fight against organized crime. But this time, we are also helping our allies, making our prison system self-sustainable, and obtaining vital intelligence to make our country an even safer place,” he said in a statement posted on social media.

Other family members of the imprisoned migrants have made comparable pleas for help, insisting that their relations have been mistakenly acknowledged as gang members and despatched to the maximum-security Salvadoran jail.

“He has lots of tattoos, but that’s not a reason to discriminate against him,” Johanny Sánchez instructed The Washington Post of her Venezuelan husband, Franco Caraballo, whom she said was amongst these deported from Texas to El Salvador.

Another Venezuelan mother instructed the Post that her son, Ali David Navas Vizcaya, vanished after being instructed ultimate week that he was going to be deported to Venezuela or Mexico. He was detained in early 2024 after displaying for an appointment with immigration officers on the U.S.-Mexico border, she said.

“He told me, ‘Finally, we’re going to be together, and this nightmare is going to be over,’” his mother, Xiomara Vizcaya, who lives throughout the northern Venezuelan metropolis of Barquisimeto, said of her son’s ultimate cellphone identify to her on Friday.

A relative of migrant Mervin Yamarte, 29, moreover told NBC News that Yamarte’s family “fainted. They started screaming,” as soon as they seen him in a social media video with a shaved head and ripped shirt among the many many of us deported to El Salvador.

His brother, like many others, said Yamarte was misidentified as a gang member solely on account of his tattoos.

The sister of migrant Fritzgeralth De Jesus said the equivalent about her brother.

“From the beginning, they asked constantly about his tattoos. They would ask him if he was a member of the criminal gang, Tren de Aragua, and he always said no,” she moreover instructed NBC News.

On Wednesday, an authorized skilled for detained Venezuelan soccer participant Jerce Reyes Barrios accused U.S. authorities of deporting him to El Salvador on account of his tattoos and {a photograph} of him making hand gestures, which the lawyer said suggest “rock and roll” or “I love you.”

His tattoos embody a crown on prime of a soccer ball with a rosary and the phrase “Dios,” which suggests “God” in Spanish, the authorized skilled said in a courtroom docket submitting.

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