President Donald Trump's Department of Homeland Security has reportedly sent a Venezuelan asylum seeker to an El Salvador prison due to a paperwork snafu.
The Miami Herald reported that Frengel Reyes Mota was among hundreds of Venezuelans deported to El Salvador under a 1798 law called the Alien Enemies Act.
"But the 24-year-old father does not have a criminal record in Venezuela," the report noted. "His U.S. immigration detention records are riddled with mistakes, raising questions about how reliable they are. He does not have tattoos and his family members deny he has any gang ties."
Lawyers have argued the deportation flights to El Salvador were illegal, and U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg has issued a restraining order preventing additional actions under the little-used wartime law.
The paper noted that Reyes' deportation documents were filled with errors, including the suggestion he was an associate of the Tren de Aragua gang.
"But in those same documents, the government says he has no criminal records or immigration history in the United States," the report said. "The government also uses someone else's last name in several parts of the document, identifies him with female pronouns, and uses two different unique identification numbers that immigration authorities use to keep track of individuals, raising questions about the reliability of Trump officials' accusations against him."
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DHS Secretary Kristi Noem's department has pledged to investigate, but there are no additional court hearings set to correct the mistake.
"People often dismiss due process as some technical right that interferes with government efficiency," University of North Carolina law professor Carissa Byrne Hessick wrote on X. "But it is also the most important tool for ensuring that government doesn't make mistakes."
"And it looks like many mistakes were made in the deportations to El Salvador," she added.
