MIAMI — Franco Caraballo, a Venezuelan barber, was in tears as he called his wife on Friday night in a state of shock and confusion. Caraballo, along with several other Venezuelan migrants, was taken from a federal detention center in Texas, clad in white clothing, handcuffed, and placed on a plane without any explanation of their destination.
By the following day, Caraballo’s information had vanished from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) online detainee locator.
On Monday, his wife, Johanny Sánchez, discovered that Caraballo was one of over 200 Venezuelan immigrants transported over the weekend to El Salvador. Here, they were confined in a high-security prison after being accused by the Trump administration of affiliation with the Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua. Sánchez strongly denies her husband’s involvement in any gang activities and is bewildered by the assertion.
The weekend deportations caused chaos and despair among families, with many individuals suddenly disappearing from ICE’s online resources. Some of these detainees emerged at the heavily fortified El Salvador prison, where there is neither visitation nor recreational amenities. The U.S. reportedly paid El Salvador’s government $6 million for the custody of these immigrants, predominantly Venezuelans, as the Venezuelan government rarely accepts deportees from the U.S. Yet, countless families remain clueless about their relatives’ whereabouts, struggling for information due to the lack of an online database in El Salvador.
Xiomara Vizcaya, a 46-year-old Venezuelan, expressed distress about her son, Ali David Navas Vizcaya, who had been detained since early 2024 after being stopped at a U.S.-Mexico border crossing. He had an appointment to confer with immigration officers and had called her optimistically thinking he was finally being returned to either Venezuela or Mexico. He was hopeful that their separation would soon end, “Finally, we’re going to be together, and this nightmare is going to be over,” he told her. Following this call, her son’s name no longer appeared in ICE’s records. Vizcaya noted her son had no criminal past but feared his tattoos led to a wrongful identification as a Tren de Aragua member.
Since 2013, nearly 8 million Venezuelans have fled due to the country’s economic decline. While most initially relocated to neighboring Latin American nations, a substantial number migrated toward the U.S. following the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions under President Biden’s administration.
On Saturday, President Donald Trump announced the activation of the Alien Enemies Act, initially established in 1798, permitting the deportation of noncitizens devoid of legal proceedings, including bypassing appearances in immigration or federal courts. This decision was applauded by numerous conservatives, celebrating the administration’s firm stance on immigration policy. The administration cited the wartime Alien Enemies Act as justification to deport alleged members of the Tren de Aragua gang, accusing them of intruding upon the U.S., although it did not substantiate these allegations with evidence.
U.S. officials admitted in recent court documents that many deported to El Salvador lack a criminal record, albeit they claim all individuals are suspected gang members. The U.S government maintained that the absence of a criminal history does not preclude these individuals from posing significant threats, highlighting the dangerous nature of suspected gang membership and lack of precise data on each individual as evidence of potential risk.
ICE regional supervisor Robert Cerna clarified in an affidavit that their assessments were not solely reliant on “tattoos alone” to determine potential gang affiliations.
Caraballo’s ordeal began on February 3rd when he visited an ICE facility in Dallas for his obligatory check-in associated with his asylum application. Initially apprehended and released after an unlawful border crossing in October 2023, Department of Homeland Security documents, shared by his wife, indicated an assumed affiliation with Tren de Aragua without presenting any evidence. Sánchez questioned why a gang member under Trump’s stringent immigration policies would willingly report to a federal agency. “We followed the law like we were told to. We never missed any” meetings, she stressed.
Sánchez shared that her husband, whom she wed in Texas in 2024, has a spotless legal record in America. She exhibited a document from Venezuela illustrating a clean criminal record for her husband, arguing that the clock-shaped tattoo signifying their daughter’s birth date was misinterpreted.
Recalling their ordeal fleeing Venezuela, Sánchez narrated traveling with meager savings and surviving on scraps and community support, striving for a better life in the U.S., with Caraballo, a barber since 13, seeking to escape poverty and strict governance under Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela.
The Venezuelan government criticized these deportation flights as abductions, urging their citizens in the U.S. to return home and pledging to assist in reinstating others from El Salvador. However, with formal diplomatic relations severed between Venezuela and El Salvador, prisoners face limited support. Critics like Oscar Murillo of the Venezuelan human rights group, Provea, denounced this action, highlighting the political use of migrants in diplomatic tussles, further aggravated by the opaque handling of deportations by U.S and El Salvadoran authorities.
Sánchez’s belief that the American dream has become a nightmare solidified her desire to reunite with her husband and leave the U.S. ultimately. “We fled Venezuela for a better future. We never imagined things would be worse.”