A 19-year-old Venezuelan in New York City reportedly was apprehended by Trump administration immigration authorities and deported to El Salvador despite agents’ realizing he was not whom they meant to arrest in a targeted operation.
Merwil Gutiérrez, whose family opened an asylum case after arriving in the US, was deported from the Bronx to the notorious Cecot prison in El Salvador despite his relatives’ insistence that he has no gang ties or criminal history, according to Documented, a newsroom dedicated to telling the stories of immigrants in New York City. The Gutiérrez family says it has been left without information or answers.
The teen was detained alongside 237 other Venezuelans on 24 February by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice). His father, Wilmer Gutiérrez, told Documented: “I feel like my son was kidnapped.
“I’ve spent countless hours searching for him, going from one precinct to another, speaking with numerous people who kept referring me elsewhere. Yet, after all this, no one has given me any information or provided a single document about his case.”
The elder Gutiérrez reportedly said he overheard Ice agents saying that his son had not been the person they had come to get.
“The officers grabbed him and two other boys right at the entrance to our building. One said: ‘No, he’s not the one,’ like they were looking for someone else. But the other said: ‘Take him anyway,’” he recalled.
Gutiérrez has no criminal record either in Venezuela or the US, his family said. He also did not have any tattoos, which is a feature that US law enforcement often use to link people to the Tren de Aragua gang – a transnational criminal organization from Venezuela – and to justify their expulsions from the country.
Despite this, Gutiérrez was arrested and later deported to El Salvador, to which he has no ties.
Wilmer Gutiérrez says he discovered through a news report that his son had been deported to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. He watched videos on social media that showed detainees facing harsh conditions, such as having their heads shaved by authorities and being marched to their prison cells.
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“I could have understood if he’d been sent back to Venezuela,” he said. “But why to a foreign country he’s never even been to?”
The Gutiérrez family’s reported ordeal comes after the Trump administration admitted to wrongly deporting a Maryland man, Kilmar Abrego García, to the same Cecot facility.
The president of El Salvador said in a meeting with Trump on Monday that the Salvadoran government would not order the return of Abrego García to the US.
Monday’s meeting at the White House came amid a broader push by the Trump administration to remove noncitizens from the US, including people who are here legally and have not been charged with crimes.
Trump has also openly stated that he would like to remove US citizens who commit unspecified violent crimes and send them to the same Salvadoran prison as Abrego García and Gutiérrez.
