'We were lied to': Women sent to El Salvador spill about chaotic deportation process
Two women who were taken to El Salvador as part of Donald Trump's mass deportation policy say that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials deceived them about their destination, and the chaotic process resulted in them being returned to the U.S. – at least for now.
The Trump administration herded more than 200 men onto planes March 15 and flew them to the Central American nation's notorious CECOT prison in a widely publicized operation, but eight women also on the planes never got off because El Salvador refused to take them, and two of them told NBC News about their experience.
“We were lied to,” said 24-year-old Heymar Padilla Moyetones. “They told us we were going to Venezuela, and it turns out that, no. When we arrived at our destination, that’s when they told us we were in El Salvador.”
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The administration claims all the people deported to El Salvador were Venezuelans with ties to the Tren de Aragua gang Trump has declared a terrorist organization, but their vetting process did not include a determination that El Salvador would accept women detainees.
“They didn’t let us leave [the plane]," Moyetones said. "They told us that we were going back, that we were coming back here."
Senior administration officials insist there's no need for judges to review the cases of anyone sent to El Salvador, but the women's experience and the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a father married to a U.S. citizen sent on those same planes to El Salvador, show a chaotic and haphazard vetting process.
“It just shows how little process there is and how little due diligence,” said Lee Gelernt, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union who is challenging the deportations. “Whoever heard of sending someone potentially for a life sentence in El Salvador without giving them any due process?”
The women described confusion and delay consistent with an affidavit that describes two failed attempts to move them out of detention to an airport, and 18 women were ultimately taken to the airport but only eight were flown to El Salvador, and one of the 10 left behind on a bus told NBC News they were "desperate" to find out what was going on.
“An immigration official got on and she told us, ‘You want to go back to your country, right?’ and we said, ‘Yes, obviously!’” said one of those 10 women, who gave her name as Karla. “'Well then, you should thank God that you’re not going on that plane, because that plane is not going to Venezuela.'"
The women on the plane didn't realize where they were going until they landed in El Salvador after a brief stop in Guatemala, but officials continued to lie about their destination as the men were taken off the plane and roughly treated by Salvadoran officials on the tarmac.
“We kept asking where we were,” said one of the women, Scarleth Rodriguez. “They would tell us, ‘You’re in Venezuela.’ We are from Venezuela, we know that airport, it’s the only airport that’s in Caracas, so, like, we would know where we were, and we were not in Venezuela.”
Moyetones, who is sharing a cell with Rodriguez at a detention center in Laredo, Texas, describes what they saw from the plane windows.
“Very little. ... But the little we could see was the brutal way they were taking the men down, because [Salvadoran officials] did take them down in a very ugly way," Moyetones said. "Almost hitting them, dragging them.”