A respected immigration attorney expressed his shock and dismay on social media over the fate of a Venezuelan immigrant who disappeared after accidentally crossing into Canada and being detained by U.S. authorities.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow with the American Immigration Council, wrote Tuesday, "This story from today is SHOCKING. The United States has disappeared a man. His last known whereabouts on March 15 was in the same place as others sent to El Salvador, but his name doesn't appear on the leaked list of people sent there. He is, for all intents and purposes, gone."
The story Reichlin-Melnick referred to was written by Miriam Jordan, national immigration correspondent for The New York Times.
Jordan wrote about Ricardo Prada Vásquez, who was working a delivery job in Detroit.
He was heading to the address to drop off a McDonald's order "when he erroneously turned onto the Ambassador Bridge, which leads to Canada. It is a common mistake even for those who live in the Michigan border city. But for Mr. Prada, 32, it proved fateful," she wrote.
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U.S. authorities took Prada into custody when he tried to re-enter the country, and he was ordered deported," Jordan wrote.
"That evening, the Trump administration flew three planes carrying Venezuelan migrants from the Texas facility to El Salvador, where they have been ever since, locked up in a maximum-security prison and denied contact with the outside world."
According to Jordan, Prada has not been heard from or seen since.
"He is not on the list of 238 people who were deported to El Salvador that day. He does not appear in the photos and videos released by the authorities of shackled men with shaved heads."
Jordan quoted a friend of Prada's saying, "He has simply disappeared."
"Mr. Prada’s disappearance has created concerns that more immigrants have been deported to El Salvador than previously known," Jordan wrote. "It also raises the question of whether some deportees may have been sent to other countries with no record of it. The U.S. authorities have confirmed that he was removed from the United States. But to where?"