Mistaken ID: Did a gang database error help send the wrong man to a Salvadoran prison?
Mistaken ID: Did a gang database error help send the wrong man to a Salvadoran prison?
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Venezuelans in El Salvador prison plead for freedom in video
Venezuelans held in a high-security prison in El Salvador shouted 'freedom' and used a hand signal for help in a video published by the far-right One America News Network, a rare glimpse of the detainees since they were sent there by the U.S. in March. This report produced by Jillian Kitchener.
The mugshot photo from the Texas Gang Database shows a shirtless, bearded man, a star tattoo emblazoned just under each shoulder, next to the name, 'GARCIA-CASIQUE, FRANCISCO.' Along with the photo is a date of birth, TxGANG ID number and a few lines accusing Garcia Casique of being a member of Tren de Aragua, the violent Venezuelan street gang.
Only, the person in the photo is not Garcia Casique.
His family and advocates insist Garcia Casique is a clean-shaven 24-year-old Venezuelan barber who was living in Longview, Texas – with no gang affiliations – when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents swept him up earlier this year and removed him to a prison in El Salvador, along with more than 200 other, mostly-Venezuelan migrants.
Law enforcement officials admit that the photo was of another suspect and the entry was removed last month from the Texas database, known as TxGANG, when authorities realized the mix-up.
More: DOJ memo offers blueprint to Tren de Aragua deportation plan
Still, Garcia Casique remains in the Terrorism Confinement Center, the maximum-security prison in El Salvador known by its Spanish acronym CECOT, cut off from the rest of the world. Federal officials maintain that he is connected to Tren de Aragua.
'¡Dios mío santo!' Mirelys Casique, Garcia Casique's mom, exclaimed to USA TODAY from her home in Maracay, Venezuela after seeing the entry. 'That's not Francisco and those are not his tattoos.'
The database entry was part of a slide presentation by Texas law enforcement officials obtained through records requests by American Oversight, a nonpartisan watchdog group, and shared exclusively with USA TODAY. Besides Garcia Casique, two other migrants deported to CECOT appear in the Texas database.
Federal authorities said the faulty gang database played no role in removing Garcia Casique. And they insist that they got the right man.
"Francisco Javier Garcia Casique removal was not erroneous," Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement. "The mistaken photo uploaded to the state database [TxGANG], which the federal government does not maintain, has no bearing on Francisco Garcia Casique's immigration proceedings."
Neither the United States nor the Salvadoran government has offered evidence that the migrants flown to the prison are connected to Tren de Aragua, a gang that began in Venezuela's prisons but now operates throughout Latin America. President Donald Trump has designated the group a terrorist organization and invoked the Alien Enemies Act, which he claims gives him the right to quickly deport its members without judicial review.
More: What is Tren de Aragua? What to know about Venezuelan gang targeted by Donald Trump
The issue has ascended to the U.S. Supreme Court, as opponents of the policy attempt to derail the president's use of the law, calling it unconstitutional. On Friday, the court continued blocking the administration's use of the 1798 wartime law and directed a lower court to determine what process the government should use to allow migrants time and information to protect their rights.
In her statement, McLaughlin reaffirmed Garcia Casique's ties to Tren de Aragua and defended the agency's decision to send him to CECOT, saying he entered the country illegally in 2023 and was ordered deported by a judge last year.
'U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested [Garcia Casique] on Feb. 6, in Longview, Texas. He was removed to El Salvador March 15.'
But the confusion over the wrong photo raises more questions about the speed with which the Trump administration deported individuals to the prison in El Salvador and the lack of judicial review of their cases.
'The lack of information and lack of due process is really evident here,' said Michelle Brané, executive director of Together and Free, a nonprofit immigrant advocacy group helping Garcia Casique's family obtain legal help, who worked in the Biden administration overseeing family reunification efforts after Trump's first term.
She added: 'These people were sent to a black hole where we don't know whether they'll ever come out.'
Confusion over gang suspects
Garcia Casique, the oldest of four siblings, left Venezuela in 2019 when he was 18 to escape the country's spiraling economy and violence. He worked as a barber in Peru for a few years then set off for the United States, where several of his barber friends had relocated.
He arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border in late 2023 near Eagle Pass, Texas, turning himself over to border agents. He was processed and released until his immigration court date. Initially, he was bused from the border to Denver but eventually made his way back to Longview.
According to DHS, federal agents at the ICE Dallas office detained him on Feb. 29, 2024, 'after being deemed a public safety threat as a confirmed member of the Tren de Aragua gang.' His family, however, said Garcia Casique missed an interview with ICE and visited the agency to try to reenter the system when he was detained.
As the real Garcia Casique was locked up at an ICE detention facility in Alvarado, Texas, another man, also in federal custody, was interviewed by Dallas Police detectives.
It's unclear what the man told detectives, but a gang profile was uploaded into the database with Garcia-Casique's name and the bearded man's photo tying him to Tren de Aragua since he "admitted to strong knowledge" of the gang.
But that person, according to Dallas Police, was not Garcia Casique.
The identity of the man in the photo remained a mystery to the outside world until USA TODAY sought clarification from federal officials. After repeated requests, McLaughlin, at DHS, identified the bearded man as Juan Jose Calvillo-Castaneda, a Mexican national questioned for potential ties to a Mexican gang. He was removed last year to Mexico, she said.
On Apr. 16, 2024, an immigration judge ordered Garcia Casique deported, according to DHS. But he was released under his own supervision with an ankle monitor, since the U.S. at the time didn't have a removal agreement with Venezuela. In his 'Order of Supervision' checklist, agents checked the box for 'NCIC Check,' meaning a national criminal background check on Garcia Casique had not found anything concerning to keep him detained.
Meanwhile, Garcia Casique's identifying info with the faulty photo flowed from ICE into the TxGANG database. It would take federal agents thirteen months to realize that the biographical details did not match the true identity of the bearded man.
How exactly Garcia Casique's info got juxtaposed with Calvillo-Castaneda's photo remains muddled – and hinges on two divergent storylines. Dallas Police said they interviewed Calvillo-Castaneda while he was in ICE custody and were provided incorrect information. But McLaughlin claimed that a Dallas Police detective inadvertently attached the wrong photo to the entry.
Either way, someone like Garcia Casique, with no criminal record and who was checking in with ICE, should have never been targeted in the recent raids, said Jason Houser, former ICE chief of staff in the Biden administration, who has been critical of Trump's border policies.
The fact that federal authorities last year released him with an ankle monitor shows that Garcia Casique wasn't a public safety or national security threat, Houser said.
Garcia Casique was one of dozens of Venezuelans who were easy to locate and swept up by federal agents more focused on a public show of force rather than getting actual criminals off the street, he said.
"He literally lost the immigration Russian roulette," Houser said of Garcia Casique.
An ICE spokesman declined to say if or how the agency utilizes the Texas gang database but said: 'ICE is leveraging all available law enforcement resources to aggressively pursue these aliens to restore law and order in our communities and integrity to our nation's immigration laws.'
When Garcia Casique was detained by ICE last year, he was questioned about his tattoos, which may have played a role in his detention, Mirelys Casique said.
The tattoos, which include several roses, the names of both his grandmothers next to clocks, and a small crown with his mother's name, roused the suspicion of federal agents, she said. Agents may also have questioned Garcia Casique about his home region of Aragua – where Tren de Aragua originated.
But neither his tattoos nor home region connected Garcia Casique in any way to Tren de Aragua, his mother said, adding that her son has no criminal record in either the U.S. or Venezuela.
'What really determines if someone's a criminal?' Mirelys Casique said.
Texas database struggles to validate gang entries
The TxGANG database is a repository for thousands of alleged gang members and suspected criminals. But it's also been criticized for not consistently validating the allegations.
A state audit conducted on the database in November found that of the 65,832 names in the system, 7,199 – or nearly 11 percent – had not been validated within five years as required by federal law. Of those, more than 1,200 had not been validated within the last 10 years.
The Texas Department of Public Safety runs the database but local law enforcement agencies are responsible for entering the names. A person can be entered into the database without committing a crime and individual agencies are responsible for validating entries.
Since an earlier audit in 2022, DPS had improved its system of validating entries, according to the audit. 'However, as of November 2024, TxGANG still contained records that were not validated within the federally required timeframes,' auditors wrote.
Jerry Robinette, former head of the San Antonio office of Homeland Security Investigations under presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, said HSI agents commonly used the TxGANG database for intel on suspected criminal migrants.
They also used the database to try to determine which migrants belonged to which gang in order to keep them in separate holding facilities, for their safety, he said. The database was one of several tools used by federal investigators to try to determine gang affiliation, Robinette said.
Even if a name appeared in the database, he said, investigators would have to corroborate the information with several other sources.
'You want to make sure the information is accurate,' Robinette said. 'You're talking about deporting someone. There are consequences behind that.'
'He had nothing to fear because he wasn't a criminal'
After being released by ICE last year, Garcia Casique went back to work cutting hair in Longview. He saved money, moved out of a cramped home he shared with other migrants and into a roomier apartment. Each time he moved, he notified authorities of his new address, his mother said.
'He had a normal life, he was working,' she said. 'He kept saying he had nothing to fear because he wasn't a criminal.'
Unbeknownst to Garcia Casique, his name and details, next to a stranger's face, were bouncing around the TxGANG database – and drawing the attention of state law enforcement officials.
In an email dated Sept. 9, 2024, Freeman Martin, who would later become head of DPS, forwarded a slide presentation titled 'Tren de Aragua (TdA) Presentation,' to a number of state officials. The 38-page presentation contained photos of at-large Tren de Aragua kingpins and some of the clock, train and star tattoos authorities believed reveal TdA allegiance. Page 18 displayed the entry with Garcia Casique's info along with the bearded suspect's photo.
Expelled to Salvadoran prison
On Feb. 6, ICE agents stormed Garcia Casique's apartment and whisked him away. He was transferred to a federal detention center near Laredo, Texas, not far from the U.S.-Mexico border.
Initially, his mother said she wasn't alarmed – she just assumed the agents planned to fulfill his deportation order and return him to his native Venezuela. Garcia Casique even signed an order consenting to be deported to his home country, she said.
On the morning of Mar. 15, Garcia Casique called his mom from inside the detention facility to tell her he was told he'd be boarding a flight later that day and would soon rejoin her in Venezuela. He never showed up. The family later discovered an online image of him, head shaven, being paraded into CECOT.
Mirelys Casique hasn't spoken to her son since.
A few weeks after Garcia Casique's final phone call to his mom, agents with Homeland Security Investigations called the Dallas Police Department to notify officials there that the picture in the TxGANG entry on Garcia Casique did not match ICE photographs taken of him when he was initially detained nor anything in ICE's record on him.
The entry was promptly purged from the database.
Follow Jervis and Penzenstadler on X: @MrRJervis, @npenzenstadler.
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