What we know about the Venezuelan nationals detained and transported to an El Salvador prison

Immigration officials transported 238 Venezuelan men from the United States to a notorious maximum security prison in El Salvador over the weekend, despite a court order from a federal judge prohibiting the government from carrying out the expulsions.

On Friday, President Trump issued an executive order that invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, an obscure statute that grants him the authority to deport without due process noncitizens during wartime, to target individuals his administration alleges belong to Tren de Aragua, a transnational criminal organization founded inside a Venezuelan prison more than a decade ago.

The executive order wasn’t publicly announced until Saturday. Later that day, James E. Boasberg, chief judge of the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia, ruled that the Trump administration did not have grounds to invoke the law, and ordered the expulsions to be halted. Boasberg also ordered that the two planes carrying detainees en route to El Salvador had to come back. Not only did that not happen, but a third plane took off from Harlingen, Texas, after the judge gave his ruling.

The New York Times published a comprehensive timeline on Monday of what went down.

The government’s actions have been shrouded in secrecy and obfuscation. The names of 238 individuals were not known until CBS News published a list on Thursday based on an internal government document it obtained. Later that day, the Miami Herald published a callout asking readers to connect with its journalists if one of their loved ones appeared on that list. Per the Pew Research Center, nearly half of the Venezuelan population living in the U.S. is concentrated in Florida.

According to various media reports, several family members of those detained learned of their loved one’s fate only after identifying them in a video posted on social media by Nayib Bukele, president of El Salvador. The U.S. is paying the Central American country $6 million to imprison the Venezuelan nationals in its Center for Terrorism Confinement, a prison that human rights advocates have described as inhumane.

“I never in my life thought I would see my brother like that — handcuffed, his head shaved, in a prison for murderers, where they put rapists and kidnappers,” Sebastián García Casique told the Guardian of Francisco Javier, a 24-year-old hairdresser originally from the city of Maracay. “It is very painful because he is innocent.”

“I felt sick … absolute shock,” said immigration attorney Lindsay Toczylowski, who represents one of the men currently detained in El Salvador. She chose to not disclose her client’s name to the Guardian out of fear for their safety. “It really is such an escalation … and to see it paraded and celebrated by the White House and by Bukele was just an absolutely shocking escalation of human rights abuses against migrants.”

Despite claims that every single individual deported was thoroughly vetted, immigration officials have provided scant evidence. As Slate noted, some people were accused of belonging to Tren de Aragua for simply having tattoos. Government officials have also stonewalled Boasberg, who demanded that the Trump administration provide more information about the flights under seal.

So, what’s next? Likely more of the same.

“The district judges are not going to stop us from making this country safe again. We are going to keep moving forward,” Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, said on Thursday.

If that’s the case, as my colleague Jackie Calmes recently wrote, the U.S. will continue careening into a constitutional crisis.

Are you a poet? Come read your work at the 2025 edition of the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books

Last year, the De Los and L.A. Times En Español team oversaw the curation of the Latinidad Stage at the L.A. Times Festival of Books, the nation’s largest gathering for book lovers. In addition to two full days of panels, the stage featured poets like Yesika Salgado.

This year, we are looking to do the same. We are in search of a poet, writer, storyteller or spoken-word artist to perform at the newly renamed De Los Stage in Association with L.A. Times en Español. The selected poet will get the opportunity to perform their work for 15 minutes in front of festival-goers at the event, held at the University of Southern California campus on Saturday, April 26 or Sunday, April 27. If you are interested, fill out this form.

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