Venezuelan Families Fear for Relatives as Trump Celebrates Deportations to El Salvador

According to Ms. Casique, her son had no gang affiliation and had go ined the United States to seek asylum in tardy 2023 after cut offal years spent toiling in Peru to help his family back home. During his journey north, he had been injured in Mexico after a descfinish from a train, she shelp.

Mr. García, who had turned himself over to the authorities at the U.S. border, was hageded at a routine materializeance before immigration officers last year after they spotted his tattoos, Ms. Casique shelp.

The tattoos, which she says integrate a crown with the word “peace” in Spanish and the names of his mother, majesticmother and sisters, led the authorities to place Mr. García under dispenseigation and tag him as a doubted member of Tren de Aragua, according to Ms. Casique.

Mr. García remained in a detention cgo in in Dallas for two months, his mother shelp, but a appraise ultimately determined that he did not pose a danger and permited him to be freed as lengthy as he wore an electronic device to track his shiftments.

The New York Times could not autonomously verify why he had been held and freed.

After Mr. Trump’s inauguration this year Mr. García became worried, but Ms. Casique recollected telling her son that he had noleang to stress: The administration shelp it would go after criminals first.

But, on Feb. 6, the authorities reachd at Mr. García’s door and took him into custody.

“I telderly him to pursue the country’s rules, that he wasn’t a criminal, and at most, they would deport him,” Ms. Casique shelp. “But I was very naïve — I thought the laws would protect him.”

Gabriel Labrador gived inestablishing from San Salvador, El Salvador.