Propublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates power abuse. This story originally appeared in Dispatches Newsletter. Sign up to receive notes from journalists.
Early in President Donald Trump’s second term, I spent several weeks observing the immigration courts in Chicago to understand how things were changing. One afternoon in March, the case of a 27-year-old Venezuelan asylum seeker caught my attention.
Albert Hesús Rodríguez Parra stared at the camera during a virtual bond hearing. He wore an orange shirt and headphones given to prisoners at the Laredo, Texas prison, and listened to the minutes through an interpreter.
More than a year ago, Rodriguez was convicted of shoplifting outside Chicago. But since then, he seemed to be on track with his life. He found a job at Wrigley Field, sent money home to his Venezuelan mother and went to church with his girlfriend with his gym. Then in November, federal authorities detained him in his apartment south of Chicago and accused him of belonging to Venezuelan gang Tren de Lagua.
“Is your tattoo gang related?” his lawyer asked at the hearing, examining evidence laid out against him in immigration and customs enforcement reports. “No,” Rodriguez said. The tattoo includes a gun, a wolf and a rose angel. At one point he lifted his shirt and showed his parents’ names engraved on his chest.
He was asked about a video from Tiktok showing him dancing to an audio clip of someone screaming “Te Va Agarrar el Tren de Aragua.” That is, “Tren de aragua will take you,” followed by a dance beat. This audio clip has been shared around 60,000 times in Tiktok. It is popular for Venezuelans to ride laughing at the stereotype that everyone in the country is a gang. Rodriguez seemed incredible at the idea that this was evidence against him.
The judge did not address the gang claim that day. However, she denied Rodriguez Bond, citing her misdemeanor shoplifting conviction. She reminded him that his final hearing was March 20th, only 10 days away. If she gave him exile, he could become a free man and continue his life in America
I told my editor and colleagues what I had heard and planned to attend the next hearing. I saw the possibilities of a complex storyline like I like. There were young immigrants here. Yes, he had a criminal history, but that was due to non-violent crimes. And yes, he had tattoos, and so did the lovely white American mom from my book club. I was sure there were Tren de Aragua members in the US, but I found it hard to believe that if this was the kind of evidence the government had, it was an “aggression” as Trump claimed. I began asking Rodriguez’s lawyer for an interview and asking for police and court records.
Five days later, on March 15, the Trump administration expelled more than 230 Venezuelan men to El Salvador’s largest security prison. It will take several days for the man’s name to be published. Perhaps naively, it didn’t happen to me that Rodriguez might be in that group. I then logged into his final hearing and heard his lawyer say he didn’t know where the government had taken him. The lawyer sounded tired and defeated. He then said he was barely asleep, worried that Rodriguez might be dead. During the hearing, he sought information from a government lawyer. “Do you know which country he was sent to for his family?” she said she didn’t know either.
Rodriguez lifts his shirt and displays some of his tattoos. The Trump administration has relied in part on tattoos that brand Venezuelan immigrants as members of the Tren de Aragua gang. Experts told us that tattoos are not an indicator of gang membership. Credit: Andrea Hernández Briceño from ProPublica
I was surprised. I am familiar with the history of authoritarian leaders who extinguish people they dislike in Latin America, part of the world where my family comes. I wanted to think that wouldn’t happen in this country. However, what I witnessed felt uncomfortable similar.
As soon as the hearing was over, I called with my colleagues Micah Rosenberg and Perla Treviso. We just heard about what we should do. Mica contacted a federal source and almost immediately confirmed that Rodriguez was among the men our country had sent to El Salvador.
The news suddenly felt more real and intimate for me. One of the men sent to a brutal prison in El Salvador had a name, face and story heard from his own mouth. I couldn’t stop thinking about him.
As a news organization, we decided to put important resources into investigating who these men were actually and what happened to them, and took many talented Propublica journalists to pull records, sift through social media accounts, analysing court data, and found male families. We worked with a group of Venezuelan journalists from the outlets of Arianza Rebelde Ariande Eyyantage and Cazador de Fake News, who were beginning to track information about men.
We spoke with relatives and lawyers of over 100 men, and we have won internal government records that und Trump administration’s claims that all men are “monsters,” “sick criminals,” and “worst and worst.” He also published stories about how men generally do not hide from federal immigration authorities. They were in the system. Many had open asylum cases like Rodriguez, waiting for a day in court before being taken and imprisoned in Central America.
July 18th – After writing to you the first draft of this memo, we began to hear chatter about a potential prisoner exchange between the United States and Venezuela. On that same day, the man had been released. We were working on case-by-case accounting for a Venezuelan man who was being held in El Salvador. Although they were being released, documenting who they were and how they got caught up in this dragnet was still important and essential, as was the impact of their incarceration.
As a result, there is a database published last week, which includes profiles of 238 men who were deported to Salvador prisons.
From the moment I heard about the man’s return to Venezuela, I thought of Rodriguez. He has been in my heart ever since I started this project. We had been waiting for the man to be edited and released by the government of Nicolas Maduro, so I sent a message with his mother for days.
Surrounded by her mother, right, aunt, older aunt and grandmother, Rodriguez returns to Venezuela. Credit: Andrea Hernández Briceño from ProPublica
Finally, one morning last week he went home. We spoke late that afternoon. He said he was relieved he was home with his family, but he felt hurt. He wants the world to know what happened to him in Salvador’s prison – daily assault, humiliation, psychological abuse. “There’s no reason for what I’ve experienced,” he said. “I didn’t deserve it.”
The Salvadora government has refused to abuse Venezuelan prisoners.
We asked the Trump administration about the evidence against Rodriguez. This is the whole statement. “Albert Jesus Rodriguez Para is an illegal foreigner from members of the Gangs in Venezuela and Tren de Aragua. He illegally crossed the border on April 22, 2023 under the Biden administration.”
Rodriguez was imprisoned in El Salvador, and no one knew what would happen to him, but the court continued to delay hearings in his asylum case. However, after several months of continuance, on Monday, Rodriguez was logged in to a virtual hearing from Venezuela. “Oh, I’m so happy to see that,” said Judge Samia Nasiem, who clearly remembers what happened in his case.
Rodriguez’s lawyer said his client had been tortured and abused in El Salvador. “I can’t even explain to this court what he’s going on,” he said. “He’s got psychological help, and that’s my priority.”
It was a short hearing, probably five minutes. Rodriguez’s lawyers mentioned deporting Venezuelans to their involvement in an ongoing lawsuit against the Trump administration over the use of alien enemies. Government lawyers have mostly said, except that they questioned whether Rodriguez was even allowed to effectively show up due to Venezuela’s “security issues.”
Finally, the judge said the administrative appeal would be closed while the lawsuit was underway. “If he hopefully gets back to the US, we’ll calendar the case,” she said.
Naseem turned his eyes to Rodriguez. “You don’t have to worry about this coming back up until it’s sorted out,” she told him. He nodded and immediately logged off.
We will continue to report on what happened and will soon be another story about Rodriguez and other men’s experiences in prison. If you have any information to share, please reach out to us.
The man was deported to a prison in Salvador
