President Trump's lightning campaign to deport immigrants

At a Texas detention facility on the morning of March 15, many Venezuelan immigrants knew they were about to be deported from the United States, but they thought they would be sent home. Some even told relatives they were glad their difficult lives after crossing the border into the United States were coming to an end.

“He was relieved because he was ready to leave,” Eirisneb Rodriguez recalled of a March 14 call with her husband, a barber named Obed Navas who lives in Sherman, Texas.

However, when the plane landed, the group of Venezuelan migrants found themselves in El Salvador, where the government of President Nayib Bukele deployed hundreds of soldiers and police in riot gear to receive the migrants and take them to the Center for Detention for Terrorism (CECOT), the world's largest "super prison" built to house dangerous and violent gang members in El Salvador and now serving as a place to receive deportees from the United States.

On the morning of March 16, families of Venezuelan immigrants recognized their relatives through videos shared online. The videos showed them being taken to prison, stripped naked and kneeling while guards shaved their heads. One young Venezuelan man cried and begged to see his mother.

The deportation notice posted on the White House website at nearly 4 p.m. on March 15 (3 a.m. on March 16, Hanoi time) stated that President Donald Trump had invoked wartime authority to immediately deport people considered to be members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua (TdA) from the United States.

US federal judge James Boasberg held an emergency hearing to block the deportation, ordering the Trump administration to turn back the plane until he determines whether wartime authority was used properly.

President Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which was famously used to deport Japanese Americans to internment camps during World War II. When asked about his authority to invoke the law, which was used during wartime, Trump said “this is wartime,” describing illegal immigrants as criminals “invading” the United States.

Less than four hours after the White House announcement, three planes carrying 261 immigrants were in mid-air. Justice Department officials said two of the planes had already left U.S. airspace when Judge Boasberg’s order was sent to the administration on the evening of March 15. They added that the other plane was deporting immigrants under a different law and was not affected by the judge’s order.

"Sorry. Too late," Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who agreed to house about 300 migrants a year in his country's prisons and receive $6 million from the United States, wrote in a social media post after Judge Boasberg's ruling.

The Trump administration "recommends that illegal immigrants self-deport, so they can avoid ending up in the same situation as those in the video," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.

Immigration officials say they see potential risks when TdA members are present in the United States. President Trump has designated TdA a foreign terrorist organization.

“It is critical that TdA be removed quickly,” Robert Cerna, acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), said in a federal court filing this week.

Many families say accusations that migrants belong to criminal gangs are untrue. Their lawyers say some Venezuelan migrants are sent to prison in El Salvador based on inconclusive evidence such as tattoos.

About half of the 261 immigrants were deported under Trump’s wartime authority, according to the White House. Another 101 were deported under regular immigration rules, and 23 were members of El Salvador’s MS-13 gang.

ICE officials said they vetted each Venezuelan, reviewed court records, interviewed suspects, and reviewed other evidence. “ICE doesn’t just rely on social media posts, photos of foreigners, or gang-related tattoos,” Cerna said.

One of those deported was Cesar Frencisco Tovar, 23, who came to the United States with his family in October 2023 to seek asylum. He was later granted a temporary work permit and worked in a barbershop.

Tovar’s wife, Yulainy Herrera, said police in San Antonio, where they live, stopped them on Jan. 27 and asked to see their driver’s license. The officers then told her husband to take off his jacket and examined the tattoos of roses, clocks, eyes and crosses on his left arm. They took a photo of the tattoos, handcuffed Tovar and told her he was under arrest for not having a license.

The next day, in a call from ICE’s South Texas headquarters, Tovar told his wife that he had been arrested not for his driver’s license but for his tattoos. Immigration officials had accused him of being affiliated with the TdA gang.

“They identify gang members by their tattoos and say they are associated with TdA. But a lot of people in Venezuela have those tattoos because they like them. That doesn’t mean you’re a gang member,” Herrera said.

Herrera said she then lost contact with her husband. In El Salvador, Tovar had no access to a lawyer and no way to return home to Venezuela. Their dream of building a new life in the United States collapsed.

“We want to come here to earn a living and save money, then go back to Venezuela to buy a house and do business,” she said.

Venezuelan officials said they had planned to pick up the deportees in the United States on March 14, but bad weather prevented the plane from landing. Meanwhile, the migrants were designated as the first group to be expelled from the United States under President Trump’s wartime authority.

In Venezuela, many people have begun to wonder what happens when they lose contact with loved ones. Francisco Javier Garcia, a 24-year-old Venezuelan immigrant who came to the United States to work as a barber, usually called his mother every day but suddenly lost contact on March 16.

Garcia's mother, Mirelys Casique, later saw a video of people being deported to El Salvador and immediately recognized her son. "It was my son. I knew by the ears, the head, the body because I was his mother. My heart was crushed," she said.