Mirelis Casique last spoke to her 24-year-old son on Saturday morning while he was being held in a detention center in Laredo, Texas. He told her he was going to be deported with a group of Venezuelans, she said, but he didn’t know where they were headed.
Shortly after, his name disappeared from the website of U.S. immigration authorities. She has not heard from him since.
“Now he’s in an abyss with no one to rescue him,” Ms. Casique said on Sunday in an interview from her home in Venezuela.
The deportation of 238 Venezuelans to El Salvador this weekend has created panic among families who fear that their relatives are among those handed over by the Trump administration to Salvadoran authorities, apparently without due process.
The men were described by a spokeswoman for the White House, Karoline Leavitt, as “terrorists” belonging to the Tren de Aragua gang and “heinous monsters” who, she said, had recently been arrested, “saving countless American lives.” But several relatives of men suspected to be in the group say their loved ones do not have gang ties.
On Sunday, the Salvadoran government released images of the men being marched into a notorious mega-prison in handcuffs overnight, with their heads newly shaven.