Catholics powerless as 238 Venezuelan migrants deported by Trump are jailed in El Salvador

Eduardo Campos Lima/Crux• March 24, 2025

Catholic activists who assist immigrants and refugees in El Salvador have lamented the deportation of 238 Venezuelan immigrants by President Donald Trump’s administration to El Salvador, where they were placed by President Nayib Bukele’s administration in a mega-prison on 16 March. They say they feel impotent in the face of the arbitrariness of Bukele’s regime, which ignored information requests and failed to clarify any doubts raised by the detainees’ families.

Since his presidential campaign, Trump had pledged to invoke the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to expel undocumented immigrants allegedly affiliated with criminal or “terrorist” organisations.

In his previous campaign, Trump had repeatedly mentioned MS-13 (or Mara Salvatrucha, a gang originally formed by Salvadorans in Los Angeles and later expanded throughout Central America and Mexico). Now, he has frequently cited the Venezuelan mafia group Tren de Aragua, claiming that it had infiltrated the United States.

The deported Venezuelans were accused by the US government of being members of Tren de Aragua. On 14 March, Trump issued a proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act—despite a prohibition by Washington DC federal judge James Boasberg—and reiterated that the organisation was a terrorist group connected to President Nicolás Maduro’s regime in Venezuela. Foreign nationals linked to Tren de Aragua would therefore be subject to “immediate apprehension, detention and removal.”

On 16 March, Bukele posted on X that the 238 “members of the Venezuelan criminal organisation Tren de Aragua” had been taken to the Centre for Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT), a maximum-security facility, where they would be detained for at least one year. Trump paid US$6 million for their incarceration and also promised Bukele the extradition of two MS-13 leaders and 21 Salvadorans arrested in the United States.

Photographs of detainees with shaved heads, seated in lines awaiting transfer to their cells, were released by The Bukele regime the same day. Upon seeing the tattoos of the new inmates, many families realised where their loved ones were being held.

One such case is that of Arturo Suárez Trejo, a 33-year-old singer who had been attempting to build his career and entered the United States in September 2024. His family identified him in one of the photographs released by El Salvador after losing contact with him for several days.

His wife, Nathali Sánchez, said he had decided to go to the US in May 2024 to earn a living and invest in his music.

“He was the first among his siblings to leave Venezuela in 2016 due to economic hardship. He went to Colombia and then to Chile. We’ve been living together for the past three years in Santiago,” she said.

In Chile, he worked as a refrigeration technician for one company and in the warehouse of another. He regularly used part of his income to produce songs and music videos, gaining some notoriety in the reggaeton scene.

He travelled overland to the United States and was allowed to enter while requesting political asylum. He moved in with his older brother, Nelson, and began working in construction.

“In February, he travelled to Raleigh to record a music video. ICE agents appeared during the shoot and arrested everyone, including his manager,” his brother Nelson Suárez told Crux.

After his arrest on 8 February, Arturo was taken to a detention centre in Georgia, where he was held for a month before being transferred to another facility in El Paso.

His relatives were able to speak to him via video calls during this time. They attempted to secure his voluntary departure from the US, which was denied, and also tried to pay bail—also refused, despite the fact that he was not a criminal undergoing prosecution. His wife said that during his detention he became ill and coughed up blood for several days, but received no medical attention.

“The last we heard from Arturo was that he was going to be deported to Venezuela. He was very happy about it,” Nelson said.

Then all communication ceased. The family tried to find out what had happened, but received no information. When they learned about the flight to El Salvador, they checked the photos and identified him by a tattoo.

Nelson emphasised that Arturo had a court hearing scheduled for 2026 and that his status in the US at the time was not irregular. Nathali added that the family had documents proving that Arturo had no criminal record in Venezuela, Colombia or Chile.

“The sad part is that El Salvador doesn’t recognise Venezuela as a democratic country and has no diplomatic relations with it. We have no institution there to assist us,” Nelson said.

Nathali stated that a Salvadoran lawyer offered to help, but has so far been unable to obtain any information about Arturo. She is currently caring alone for their three-month-old daughter in Santiago.

Other families of deportees also insist that their relatives are not members of any criminal organisation and were arrested solely for being Venezuelan and having tattoos.

The Church appears just as powerless as Arturo’s family. According to Fr Fernando Cuevas, who leads the El Salvador chapter of the Latin American and Caribbean Ecclesial Network on Migration, Displacement, Refuge and Human Trafficking (Red Clamor), Catholic movements and organisations have lost all channels of communication they once had with the government.

“We’ve been living in a state of emergency. There’s no information, and no public access to it,” he told Crux.

He said that even groups that used to regularly visit prisons—such as the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mercy—have been prevented from doing so in recent years.

“So, any intention of supporting detainees is fruitless,” Fr Cuevas said.

He recalled that just last week the Church submitted to Congress a document signed by 150,000 citizens opposing Bukele’s proposal to resume metal mining in the country, which has been banned since 2017.

“The government hasn’t even issued a response,” he said.

Cuevas remarked that Bukele has become “a kind of myth” and added: “Everything he says is seen almost as the word of God.”

“But we very much lament that those deportees are facing such a situation. They have not been judged – they were directly criminalised,” he said.

Photo provided by the president of El Salvador’s press office. A prison guard transfers deportees from the U.S. alleged to be from Venezuelan gangs, to the Terrorism Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, on March 16, 2025. (Credit: AP.)