All posts tagged "Cecot"

The anguished family of a Trump deportee shipped off to a brutal prison in El Salvador four months ago is begging the administration for any sign that he might still be alive.

Andry José Hernández Romero, 32, had applied for asylum in the United States, "citing the conditions he faced as a gay man and political dissident in Venezuela," according to reporting in Salon.

Romero's attorney told Salon that he had "applied for asylum the right way — by scheduling an appointment and presenting himself at a port of entry — and yet was languishing behind bars" at a privately-run prison along the U.S.-Mexico border....

An immigration expert was taken aback by a CNN report that the Trump administration is looking beyond El Salvador for a "safe third country" to ship undocumented migrants.

CNN correspondent Priscilla Alvarez posted to X on Wednesday afternoon, "Trump admin has discussed with Libya and Rwanda the possibility of sending migrants who have criminal records to those two countries, sources tell me + @kylieatwood. Trump officials are also hoping to enter negotiations with Libya to strike a safe third country agreement."

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, an immigration lawyer and senior fellow with the American Immigration Council, responded, "Whoa. Using Libya and Rwanda as a deportation spot for people from the Western Hemisphere would be unprecedented, and declaring LIBYA a 'safe third country' to deport asylum seekers to would be the height of absurdity."...

El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele was skeptical that the deportees being flown from the U.S. to his notoriously rough Cecot prison were actually members of the violent Tren de Aragua gang, according to new reporting in The New York Times.

And a demand he issued in exchange for taking the men triggered panic in the U.S. as it threatened to blow up a claim made by the Department of Justice, the report added.

Bukele flew to Washington, D.C. last month for an Oval Office meeting with President Donald Trump, during which both men claimed that they had no power to return a mistakenly deported Maryland man, whom Trump asserted was a criminal but who received no Constitutional due process before being shipped out....