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“… The use of tattoos by Tren de Aragua, a group that began to be noticed in the U.S. about two years ago, isn’t as central to its membership as is the case with, say, El Salvador’s MS-13, said Steven Dudley, co-director of InSight Crime, which tracks organized-crime groups in Latin America.“… At an immigration detention facility in Texas that morning, many of the men knew they were about to be deported but thought they were headed home to Venezuela. Some told family members they were even happy that their ordeal in America appeared to be over.
“He was relieved because he was ready to leave the hole where he had been,” Eirisneb Rodríguez said, recounting a call last Friday from her husband, Obed Navas, a barber who lived in Sherman, Texas.
The next night, the Venezuelans stepped off planes to learn they had landed in El Salvador. There, President Nayib Bukele’s government met them with hundreds of soldiers and police officers in riot gear to film their handover and lock them up in the Terrorism Confinement Center, or Cecot, known as the world’s largest prison and home to the country’s most violent gang members.
… The White House signaled that the use of wartime powers to send deportees to a Salvadoran prison and broadcasting their treatment were meant to serve as a deterrent. The Trump administration is “encouraging illegal immigrants to actively self-deport, to maybe save themselves from being in one of these fun videos,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. She described the deportees as “heinous monsters” and gang members who had invaded the U.S. from Venezuela intent on committing violent crimes.
… The Wall Street Journal spoke with the families of seven of the deported Venezuelan migrants who had all left their homes between late 2023 and last year for the U.S., where they applied for political asylum.
Many of the men, who worked as barbers and at other jobs, are married with small children. They were detained in the days after Trump took office in January, accused of being affiliated with TdA and sent to detention centers in Texas.
… Roughly half the 261 deportees were removed under Trump’s wartime authority, according to the White House. Another 101 were removed under Title 8, or regular immigration proceedings, and 23 were members of El Salvador’s MS-13 gang.
… Among those detained was César Francisco Tovar, 23 years old, who had come to the U.S. with his family in October 2023, claimed political asylum and started work in a barbershop. His wife, Yulainy Herrera, said police on Jan. 27 pulled him over in San Antonio, where they had been living, and asked to see his driver’s license.
Herrera said she had now lost all contact with her husband in El Salvador. He has no access to a lawyer and no way to get home to Venezuela, she said.

… At the time the order was issued on Saturday evening, one plane was still on the ground in Texas and two others were hours from reaching El Salvador. All three landed at Soto Cano Air Base in Honduras—an airport where last month deportees had been transferred to Venezuelan aircraft to go home.
This time, the planes were routed to El Salvador. In Venezuela, families began wondering what happened when they lost contact with their detained relatives. Francisco Javier Garcia, a 24-year-old Venezuelan who migrated to the U.S. to work as a barber, called his mother every day—and then suddenly stopped on Sunday.
Then his mother, Mirelys Casique, saw the video of migrants in El Salvador. She immediately recognized her son.
“It’s my son, I can tell by his ears, his head, his body—I’m his mother,” said Casique. “I felt my heart sink.” …”