An overwhelming majority of Venezuelans sent to Salvadoran prison were not convicted of US crimes. Trump admin was fully aware.

Boston Globe

2 days ago

Get Starting Point
A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday.
Enter Email
Sign Up
The data indicates that the government knew that only six of the immigrants were convicted of violent crimes: four for assault, one for kidnapping and one for a weapons offense. And it shows that officials were aware that more than half, or 130, of the deportees were not labeled as having any criminal convictions or pending charges; they were labeled as only having violated immigration laws.
Advertisement
As for foreign offenses, our own review of court and police records from around the United States and in Latin American countries where the deportees had lived found evidence of arrests or convictions for 20 of the 238 men. Of those, 11 involved violent crimes such as armed robbery, assault or murder, including one man who the Chilean government had asked the U.S. to extradite to face kidnapping and drug charges there. Another four had been accused of illegal gun possession.
Advertisement
We conducted a case-by-case review of all the Venezuelan deportees. It's possible there are crimes and other information in the deportees' backgrounds that did not show up in our reporting or the internal government data, which includes only minimal details for nine of the men. There's no single publicly available database for all crimes committed in the U.S., much less abroad. But everything we did find in public records contradicted the Trump administration's assertions as well.
ProPublica and the Tribune, along with Venezuelan media outlets Cazadores de Fake News (Fake News Hunters) and Alianza Rebelde Investiga (Rebel Alliance Investigates), also obtained lists of alleged gang members that are kept by Venezuelan law enforcement officials and the international law enforcement agency Interpol. Those lists include some 1,400 names. None of the names of the 238 Venezuelan deportees matched those on the lists.
The hasty removal of the Venezuelans and their incarceration in a third country has made this one of the most consequential deportations in recent history. The court battles over whether Trump has the authority to expel immigrants without judicial review have the potential to upend how this country handles all immigrants living in the U.S., whether legally or illegally. Officials have suggested publicly that, to achieve the president's goals of deporting millions of immigrants, the administration was considering suspending habeas corpus, the longstanding constitutional right allowing people to challenge their detention.
Advertisement
Hours before the immigrants were loaded onto airplanes in Texas for deportation, the Trump administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, declaring that the Tren de Aragua prison gang had invaded the United States, aided by the Venezuelan government. It branded the gang a foreign terrorist organization and said that declaration gave the president the authority to expel its members and send them indefinitely to a foreign prison, where they have remained for more than two months with no ability to communicate with their families or lawyers.
Lee Gelernt, the lead attorney in the American Civil Liberties Union's legal fight against the deportations, said the removals amounted to a 'blatant violation of the most fundamental due process principles.' He said that under the law, an immigrant who has committed a crime can be prosecuted and removed, but 'it does not mean they can be subjected to a potentially lifetime sentence in a foreign gulag.'
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in response to our findings that 'ProPublica should be embarrassed that they are doing the bidding of criminal illegal aliens who are a threat,' adding that 'the American people strongly support' the president's immigration agenda.
When asked about the differences between the administration's public statements about the deportees and the way they are labeled in government data, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin largely repeated
Advertisement
As for the administration's allegations that Tren de Aragua has attempted an invasion, an analysis by
Our investigation focused on the 238 Venezuelan men who were deported on March 15 to CECOT, the prison in El Salvador, and whose names were on a list first published by
We interviewed about 100 of the deportees' relatives and their attorneys. Many of them had heard from their loved ones on the morning of March 15, when the men believed they were being sent back to Venezuela. They were happy because they would be back home with their families, who were eager to prepare their favorite meals and plan parties. Some of the relatives shared video messages with us and on social media that were recorded inside U.S. detention facilities. In those videos, the detainees said they were afraid that they might be sent to
Advertisement
They had no idea they were being sent to El Salvador.
Among them was 31-year-old Leonardo José Colmenares Solórzano, who left Venezuela and his job as a youth soccer coach last July. His sister, Leidys Trejo Solórzano, said he had a hard time supporting himself and his mother and that Venezuela's crumbling economy made it hard for him to find a better paying job. Colmenares was detained at an appointment to approach the U.S.-Mexico border in October because of his many tattoos, his sister said. Those tattoos include the names of relatives, a clock, an owl and a crown she said was inspired by the Real Madrid soccer club's logo.
Colmenares was not flagged as having a criminal history in the DHS data we obtained. Nor did we find any U.S. or foreign convictions or charges in our review. Trejo said her brother stayed out of trouble and has no criminal record in Venezuela either. She described his expulsion as a U.S.-government-sponsored kidnapping.
'It's been so difficult. Even talking about what happened is hard for me,' said Trejo, who has scoured the internet for videos and photos of her brother in the Salvadoran prison. 'Many nights I can't sleep because I'm so anxious.'
The internal government data shows that officials had labeled all but a handful of the men as members of Tren de Aragua but offered little information about how they came to that conclusion.
Advertisement
McLaughlin, the DHS spokesperson, said the agency is confident in its assessments of gang affiliation but would not provide additional information to support them.
John Sandweg, a former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said, 'for political reasons, I think the administration wants to characterize this as a grand effort that's promoting public safety of the United States.' But 'even some of the government's own data demonstrates there is a gap between the rhetoric and the reality,' he said, referring to the internal data we obtained.
The government data shows 67 men who were deported had been flagged as having pending charges, though it provides no details about their alleged crimes. We found police, court and other records for 38 of those deportees. We found several people whose criminal history differed from what was tagged in the government data. In some cases that the government listed as pending criminal charges, the men had been convicted and in one case the charge had been dropped before the man was deported.
Our reporting found that, like the criminal convictions, the majority of the pending charges involved nonviolent crimes, including retail theft, drug possession and traffic offenses.
Six of the men had pending charges for attempted murder, assault, armed robbery, gun possession or domestic battery. Immigrant advocates have said removing people to a prison in El Salvador before the cases against them were resolved means that Trump, asserting his executive authority, short-circuited the criminal justice system.
Take the case of Wilker Miguel Gutiérrez Sierra, 23, who was arrested in February 2024 in Chicago on charges of attempted murder, robbery and aggravated battery after he and three other Venezuelan men allegedly assaulted a stranger on a train and stole his phone and $400. He pleaded not guilty. Gutiérrez was on electronic monitoring as he awaited trial when he was arrested by ICE agents who'd pulled up to him on the street in five black trucks, court records show. Three days later he was shipped to El Salvador.
But the majority of men labeled as having pending cases were facing less serious charges, according to the records we found. Maikol Gabriel López Lizano, 23, was arrested in Chicago in August 2023 on misdemeanor charges for riding his bike on the sidewalk while drinking a can of Budweiser. His partner, Cherry Flores, described his deportation as a gross injustice. 'They shouldn't have sent him there,' she said. 'Why did they have to take him over a beer?'
of ProPublica contributed data analysis. Adriana Núñez and Carlos Centeno contributed reporting.