Pedro Escobar Blanco, one of Two hundred and thirty The Venezuelan who were deported by the Trump administration to the Aqsa Security Prison in El Salvador on March 15, never met the lawyer he represented in the US Migration Court. They did not talk on the phone, text messages, or communication via an intermediary. He certainly does not realize that he is an actor at all. However, a month after he entered the Salvadori nursery, the immigration judge in southern California held a hearing on the case of asylum. Escobar Blanco was not present – no one has seen or heard from him since he was sent to El Salvador – the judge, indicating his absence, to remove him from the country.
Referees are issued regularly deportation orders in absentia For people who are called the non -listed menu. These individuals have already been released from detention, provided that they were later appeared in the Immigration Court. However, if the person is being held to enforce immigration and customs, as Escobar Blanco has been since October 2024, he will not be able to appear at a date for the court unless the government allows him to do so. The logic of the judge – who weakens him because he is not there – has no meaning. This also means that he will be prevented from entering the United States during the next ten years. “I objected to,” said Andraiana Sarkis, lawyer of Escobar Blanco, in a later advertisement. “His failure to appear” was not a mistake on its own, but rather through IceHe failed to produce it. “
The government had deported Escobar Blanco on the basis of a declaration that Donald Trump had secretly signed, on March 14. Escobar Blanco was accused of belonging to the Venezuelan gang, Terin de Aragoa. According to the foreign enemies law in 1798, the government claimed, in fact, that it did not need to provide actual evidence against it. Sarkis could only think that these allegations were linked to tattoos, which included a sea star on each shoulder, and the names of his parents and two children, who are ten and thirteen.
He sent the majority of Venezuelans to El Salvador He had suspended cases In the American immigration courts. In the weeks that followed their disappearance, lawyers all over the country represented the largest possible number of them. The work consists mainly from attendance to listening sessions in their place and an explanation of the judges where their customers are. So far, the Trump administration has refused to share the names of the men he sent to El Salvador. The current list, which is the result of reporting CBS News and which is still the government that is still incomplete.
“Ghosts” is how one of the lawyers participating in the invitation effort described its customers. According to these criteria, Escobar Blanco is lucky: the lawyer was at least available to happen on his behalf in the Immigration Court (many men lack this), and the judge issued something that could be theoretically challenged (other results may be more difficult to blame). Sarkis, who was not represented by Sarkis, who was not represented by a client who could not talk to him, in the Escobar Blanco case two days before the session. When Escobar Blanco entered the country, in July 2024, he did so just as the US government issued instructions and set an appointment with the border authorities. In his case, this led him to wait in Mexico for ten months before a recent interview, and he was shown, and he was finally allowed. He appears to have been arrested at a raid at work near San Diego last October; It is not quite clear why he did not have worksheets at that time. “What is shocking to me is that I do not see a criminal history, and it does not belong to any criminal organization,” Sarkis said. “He did everything that was supposed to be.”
At the Center for the Legal Representation Initiative for Venezuelan, there is Michelle Bran, a lawyer and a defend Families are separated on the border During the first Trump administration. When Joe Biden entered the White House and promised to collect them, Bran joined the Ministry of Internal Security, as the executive director of the work team to reunite the family. It is now working together and free, and it is a non -profit institution that describes its mission as “the emergency and continuous support of resort looking for families affected by federal immigration policies.”
In February, before the law of foreign enemies entered into force, his two colleagues were trying to determine a group of nearly two hundred Venezuelane who had the Trump administration. sender To Guantenamo Bay, Cuba. The White House described men, without evidence, as criminals and threats of public security, and many of them were carried in the same units designated for alleged terrorists in Al Qaeda. Brané, who began to hear from the family of the detainees, linked them to the litigants in the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a lawsuit.
A lawsuit against the US Civil Liberties Union for the Trump Administration again on March 15, hours after the president summoned the law of foreign enemies. The federal judge immediately ordered the government to stop the first deportations and transport any plane that has already left Texas, where the detainees were detained. The administration ignored the matter, and three planes full of men in San Salvador landed in the hours that followed. Early the next morning, Nayb BokilThe President of El Salvador, published videos of a march in Salvaduri prison brutally known called the terrorist detention center. “The calls came immediately,” Bran told me. “The first few cases were primarily people who watched a video and said:” My brother or son was there. “Then we started hearing from people who did not see one of their family members in a video clip, but the pattern is appropriate.”
Escobar Blanco’s wife, her children and sister fell in the last camp: none of them discovered him in any shots. His sister Mariella, who lives in Venezuela, told me that she and Escobar Blanco have spoken almost every day since his departure from the United States, it was the only time she lost a touch when he was traveling across Daryn GapAn extension left from the forest between Colombia and Panama. One night in early March, she received a call from him. He said: “I do not understand anything, Mary.” It was just transferred from California to Texas, and told her that the government is planning to deport it and a group of other men to Venezuela because they were “associated with the Trin de Aragoa gang.” He and his sister are from the state of only, on the northern coast of Venezuela. “We had no idea really about the identity of these people,” she told me about the gang. After a few days, she stopped hearing her brother completely.
On the night of March 14, he was a friend of Escobar Blanco he made while he was detention with an update. The detainees were about to board a plane at the airport – climbing to Venezuela, they were told – when Ice The officers led them to the detention center due to bad weather. Al -Siddiq told her: “She is still in a line because they have to re -register us to return us inside.” “There are many of us, so it may take some time. But they told us that at any moment, between Sunday and Monday, we will be in Venezuela.” Marella told me, “They did not arrive, and rumors started about flights to El Salvador. I said to myself,” Wow, my brother should be there because anywhere else? Why not in contact with us? “” “
Brané and her team started collecting lists based on the calls they received. This was almost how exactly Her work It started during the family separation crisis in 2018. Then, as now, the government had no reliable or comprehensive narration for those who had been invaded during the implementation of its plans. In 2018, the reason was a mixture of Incompetenceand NeglectPublic loss From the political will this time, it appears to be more calculated. “All this is related to power,” Bran said. “It is about showing that they do not have to play the game.”
Brané and other preachers in her organization began building detailed profiles with about fifty names in their list. They obtained copies of Venezuelan’s knowledge of men, talked to their family members, conducted a rear examination in Venezuela, his introduction with gang experts and verbal journalists, and searched in the Interpol database. They also conducted research in Chile, Colombia and Peru, where some men lived or traveled before reaching the United States
Men were initially detained for a range of different reasons. Some were captured during traffic stations. Others were arrested as “guarantees” when Ice He was looking for another person. The vast majority of men who looked at Brani and her team have no criminal records. In many cases, defenders and researchers have attended minor or mysterious violations. Two men were accused of stealing in the Venezuelan news article, but it seems that he has never been accused. One teenager had the charge of marijuana in Chile. There were a few exceptions: two men had home violence records, and another person was arrested in an accident and a candidate. One of the cases included a New York man who was charged with possession of a firearm, but the charge was dropped. “He was detained on the island of Rikeers and delivered to him Ice, Thanks to the new position of New York mayorBran said.
