Adam Isacson

The list below is an excerpt from tomorrow’s Border Update, which I’m still drafting. But it deserves to be shared separately.

On March 20 CBS News obtained and published a full list of all 238 Venezuelan men whom the Trump administration sent to El Salvador on March 15, despite a judge’s orders. It appears that 137 had no due process at all—they were sent under the fourth-ever invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. The other 101 apparently had orders of removal.

But even though none committed any crimes in El Salvador, the government of Nayib Bukele sent them directly to the “Center for Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT),” a mega-jail built about two years ago to hold gang members, from which no prisoner is known to have been released.

For many of their loved ones, the CBS list was the first confirmation of their whereabouts. “Family members of the men say they’ve had no way to communicate with their loved ones,” noted Jonathan Lemire and Nick Miroff at the Atlantic, “So they study the [Salvadoran government’s] propaganda videos for glimpses of sons and spouses among the deportees.”

Here are profiles that I’ve seen of 15 of them, with links to sources. They really do not seem to be gang members at all.

• Gustavo Adolfo Aguilera Agüero, 27, had been living in Dallas with his wife since December 2023, when they entered the United States with a CBP One appointment. In early February 2025, Aguilera was arrested while taking out the trash outside their home, his wife told the Miami Herald. He has a nine-month-old U.S. citizen son. His tattoos include his older, Venezuelan-born son’s name, his name and his mother’s name, and a reggaeton lyric. His mother says he has no criminal record.
• ”JABV,” a 24-year-old who was abducted and beaten for carrying out campaign work on behalf of opposition leader María Corina Machado in 2024. His attorney stated that he has no criminal record in either the United States or Venezuela, no removal order, and “his tattoos are a Rose, a Clock and a Crown with his son’s name on it.”
• Franco Caraballo, a 26-year-old barber detained in Dallas on February 3 when he reported to a regular check-in with ICE. His wife, Johanny Sánchez, insists he has no gang ties. “She struggles even to find logic in the accusation,” the Associated Press reported. Caraballo has several tattoos, including an image of a clock commemorating his daughter’s birthday. He had called Ms. Sánchez on the evening of March 14, Reuters reported, to tell her that he was probably being deported to Venezuela even though he had a pending asylum claim.
• ”L.G.,” who has no removal order and a pending asylum claim. His attorney stated, “L.G. has three tattoos: one is a rosary, the other is his partner’s name, and the third is a rose and a clock.”
• Edwuar Hernández, a 23-year-old man from Maracaibo, was arrested along with three friends at the Dallas townhouse they shared on March 13. Relatives tell the Washington Post that he had no gang ties and no criminal record in Venezuela. (See the narrative for Mervyn Yamarte below.)
• Francisco Javier García Casique, a 24-year-old barber from Maracay, Venezuela, had a clean criminal record. He tried to make a living in Peru for four years before migrating to the United States. “He doesn’t belong to any criminal gang, either in the US or in Venezuela… he’s not a criminal,” his mother told the BBC. “My brother doesn’t belong to any criminal group, has no criminal history or record in any country and they have unjustly sent him to El Salvador simply because of his tattoos,” the Guardian reported that his brother wrote on Instagram.
• Ali David Navas Vizcaya, who was detained in early 2024 when appearing for an appointment with ICE. His mother told AP “he has no criminal record and suspects he may have been mistakenly identified as a Tren de Aragua member because of several tattoos.”
• Andy Javier Perozo, a 30-year-old father of five from Maracaibo who was doing food delivery gig work, was arrested along with three friends at the Dallas townhouse they shared on March 13. Relatives tell the Washington Post that he had no gang ties and no criminal record in Venezuela. (See the narrative for Mervyn Yamarte below.)
• Jerce Reyes Barrios, a 36-year-old former professional soccer player who was imprisoned and tortured after marching in two early-2024 demonstrations against the Maduro regime. Reyes has a tattoo of the Real Madrid soccer team’s logo and had a picture of himself in his social media feed making a rock-and-roll hand gesture that DHS officials decided was a gang sign. He had already submitted a document showing he had no criminal record and a declaration from the tattoo artist, to no avail. He has two daughters, aged two and six.
• Ringo Rincón, a 39-year-old man from Maracaibo, was arrested along with three friends at the Dallas townhouse they shared on March 13. Relatives tell the Washington Post that he had no gang ties and no criminal record in Venezuela. (See the narrative for Mervyn Yamarte below.)
• Anyelo Jose Sarabia, age 19, is an asylum seeker detained during a scheduled January 31, 2025 check-in with ICE in Dallas. His brother’s statement reads, “The tattoo on his left hand is of a rose with money as petals. A picture of the tattoo is below. He had that tattoo done in August 2024 in Arlington, Texas, because he thought it looked cool.” (His sister said something similar to Reuters.) Another tattoo is the words “strength and courage,” and another is a bible verse; both were applied by Anyelo’s brother, who has no criminal record in the United States or Venezuela.
• ”E.V.,” who fled Venezuela after being imprisoned and tortured for participating in a 2022 protest. His attorney said he “has only one arrest in the U.S., which resolved with a non-criminal disposition under New York state law and for which he received a sentence of a one-year conditional discharge.” He has “tattoos of anime, flowers, and animals.”
• Henry Javier Vargas Lugo, a 32-year-old, had been living and working odd jobs in Aurora, Colorado after trying to make a living as a mechanic in Colombia for seven years. He entered the United States with his mother and daughter. “He has several tattoos, including crowns with his niece and mother’s name, a clock on his arm and a rosary,” the Miami Herald reported.
• Mervyn Yamarte, a 29-year-old who entered the United States in 2023 after passing through the Darién Gap and lived in Dallas, is “‘a good, hardworking boy’ who had never been involved in crime,” his mother told the Guardian and the BBC. His wife said the same to the Washington Post, which reported that armed ICE officers showed up on March 13 at the townhouse where he and three friends from Maracaibo had been living, and hauled them away. Yamarte’s younger brother witnessed the arrest; he said that the agents asked whether he had tattoos. One of Mervyn Yamarte’s tattoos is his daughter’s name. Another reads, “strong like Mom.” Yamarte appears—shaved, wincing, but recognizable—in the video shared by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on March 16.
• An unnamed client of Lindsay Toczylowski, an attorney at the Los Angeles-based Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef), is an LGBTQ+ artist and asylum seeker whose tattoos included a verse from the Book of Isaiah. “They’re fairly benign. Clearly not gang tattoos,” Toczylowski told Mother Jones. “In my 15 years of representing people in removal proceedings in the United States, this is the most shocking thing that I’ve ever seen happen to one of our clients,” she told the Guardian.