Jailed migrants create striking distress signal in bid to stop Trump sending them to El Salvador mega-prison

Daily Mail​

30-04-2025

Migrants holed up in a Texas immigration detention center have used their bodies to send a distress signal to the outside world.
The group of 31 men in the yard spotted a drone in the sky being operated by Reuters and worked together to form a message with their bodies: SOS.
Detainees at the Bluebonnet immigrant detention center in the small city of Anson, Texas, were seen in the dirt yard at the facility.
Some wore red jumpsuits designating them as 'high risk', while others play games of soccer in the dirt or walk laps in small groups.
Relatives of detainees claim the men say they're not being given much food and are taking 'shifts' to sleep in order to protect themselves.
It comes less than two weeks after dozens of Venezuelan detainees at the center were handed notices which accused them of being members of feared gang Tren de Aragua.
As such, they were subject to deportation under a wartime law which the Trump administration invoked earlier this year to justify sending 238 suspected gang members to the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador.
El Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele has suggested prisoners 'never leave' and categorizes inmates as terrorists.
The families of at least seven of the detainees maintain they were not gang members and that they refused to sign the document.
In spite of their protests, these men were rounded up and loaded onto a bus on Good Friday bound for nearby Abilene Regional Airport, according to the American Civil Liberties Union and family members.
Extraordinary footage captured a convoy en route to the airport before the bus was turned around and sent back to the detention center amid an intense court battle about the legality of deportations.
That night, the Supreme Court temporarily blocked their deportations. Dissenting Justice Samuel Alito cited a government lawyer in another case in which the lawyer explicitly stated no deportations were taking place on Good Friday or Easter Saturday.
Several courts are weighing the legality of Trump's use of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, which had only been invoked three times in history prior to this.
But the group of Venezuelans at Bluebonnet detention center are still at risk of being sent to CECOT, and live in fear that they'll be deported with a moment's notice.
The wife of one of the detainees, 24-year-old Diover Millan, said the men in Millan's dorm take shifts staying awake while the others sleep.
This will give them an extra moment if immigration officers do arrive to deport them to get word out to their families.
One day last week, Millan told her the men in the dorm refused to go out into the yard because they were worried they would be put on another bus and sent to El Salvador.
'He is desperate,' Millan's wife said. 'He told me that when he walked out onto the field, he sat down and looked at the sky and asked God to get him out of there soon.'
Millan was among the men in the yard captured by Reuters' drone. He arrived in Bluebonnet in mid-April from a separate detention facility in Georgia, where he'd been since he was picked up on March 12.
According to Reuters, he does not have a criminal record, and had been working a steady job in construction.
The Department of Homeland Security claim he is a 'documented' member of Tren de Aragua, which he and his loved ones dispute.
Another Venezuelan, Jeferson Escalona, 19, was photographed playing soccer in the yard at the facility. The DHS also allege he is a 'self-admitted' member of the feared gang.
Escalona said he had no ties to Tren de Aragua or any gang. He was a police officer in Venezuela, he said.
When they detained him, US authorities took his phone and he suspects they saw photos of him making hand gestures that he said were common in Venezuela.
Escalona said that he has asked to return voluntarily to Venezuela but was denied.
'They're making false accusations about me,' he said. 'I don't belong to any gang. I fear for my life here. I want to go to Venezuela.'
After his arrest in January 2025 for evading arrest in a vehicle, he was sent to Guantanamo Bay, but he returned to the US and was sent to Bluebonnet in February.
Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have come to the United States over the past few years, fleeing economic collapse and what critics call an authoritarian crackdown under President Nicolas Maduro.
Under the administration of former President Joe Biden, many were given temporary humanitarian protections that the Trump administration is trying to revoke.
On April 26, an immigration official visited some of the men in their dorms to answer questions they had about the process.
An audio of the meeting was shared with Reuters and captured the men frantically asking what would happen to them and why the government wanted to send them to El Salvador - a place most have never even visited.
They also asked what would happen to their scheduled immigration hearings and pending court dates if they were successfully removed from the country.
Many, like Millan, have pending asylum cases. He was due in court for a hearing on May 1.
The official explained that the US had tried to remove them under the Alien Enemies Act, which was a separate process from their scheduled immigration court hearings.
'If he gets removed under the Alien Enemies Act, then that court date doesn't exist, he'll never have that court date,' the official said in English to someone who was translating.
Several of the men wanted to know how it was possible for them to be classified as 'alien enemies' when they were not gang members and had committed no crime.
'If I don't have a criminal record in the three countries in which I have lived in, how are they going to send me to El Salvador?' one of the men in the recording asked.
The official said he was not involved in the intelligence gathering.