He was asked about tattoos and TikTok video in court. Five days later, he was in Salvadoran prison.

Albert Jesús Rodríguez Parra was one of the more than 230 Venezuelan immigrants that the Trump administration sent to a maximum security prison in Salvador. After his release, he says he wants the world to know what happened to him.

By Melissa Sanchez for Propublica

At the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, I spent a few weeks observing the Chicago immigration court to get an idea of how things changed. One afternoon in March, the case of a 27-year-old Venezuelan asylum seeker drew my attention.

Albert Jesús Rodríguez Parra looked at the camera at his virtual liaison audience. He wore the orange shirt given to detainees in a prison in Laredo, Texas, and headphones to listen to the procedure through an interpreter.

More than a year earlier, Rodríguez had been found guilty of display flight in the suburbs of Chicago. But since then, he had seemed to put his life on the right track. He found a job at Wrigley Field, sent money to his mother in Venezuela and went to the gymnasium and church with his girlfriend. Then, in November, the federal authorities arrested him in his apartment on the south side of Chicago and accused him of belonging to the Venezuelan gang Tren in Aragua.

“Is one of your tattoos gangs linked?” His lawyer asked the hearing, including the evidence presented against him in an immigration and customs application report. “No,” said Rodríguez, whose tattoos include an angel holding a firearm, a wolf and a rose. At one point, he raised his shirt to show the names of his inked parents on his chest.

He was questioned about a tiktok video that shows him dancing about an audio clip of someone who shouts: “You go agarrar el tren de Aragua”, which means “the thirteen of Aragua will offer you”, followed by a dance beat. This audio clip has been shared some 60,000 times on Tiktok – it is popular among the Venezuelans ridicules the stereotype that everyone in their country is a gangster. Rodríguez looked at the idea that it was proof against him incredulous.

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That day, the judge did not address the allegations of gangs. But she denied Rodríguez Bond, quoting the conviction for the offense of display. She reminded him that her last audience was March 20, just 10 days old. If she gave him asylum, he would be a free man and could continue his life in the United States

I spoke to my publishers and colleagues about what I had heard and I planned to attend the next hearing. I saw the potential of the complicated narrative history that I like: here is a young immigrant who, yes, had illegally entered the country, but he had gone to the border authorities to search for asylum. Yes, he had a criminal record, but it was for a non -violent offense. And, yes, he had tattoos, but also the beautiful white American mothers in my reading club. I was certain that there were members of Tren of Aragua in the United States, but if it was the kind of evidence that the government had, I had trouble believing that it was an “invasion” as Trump claimed. I asked Rodríguez’s lawyer for an interview and I started asking for police and judicial files.

Five days later, on March 15, the Trump administration expelled more than 230 Venezuelan men to a maximum security prison in Salvador, a country that many of them had never even set foot. Trump called them all terrorists and gang members. It would take a few days before the names of men were made public. Perhaps naively, it did not come to mind that Rodríguez could be in this group. Then I connected to his final audience and I heard his lawyer say that he did not know where the government had taken him. The lawyer looked tired and defeated. Later, he told me that he had barely slept, fearing that Rodríguez died. During the hearing, he begged a government lawyer to get information: “For the love of his family, would you know which country he was sent to?” She told him that she didn’t know either.

I was amazed. I know the history of authoritarian leaders who disappear from people they do not like in Latin America, the part of the world from which my family comes. I wanted to think that it does not happen in this country. But what I had just seen seemed uncomfortably similar.

From the end of the hearing, I received a call with my colleagues Mica Rosenberg and Perla Trevizo, who both cover immigration and had recently Written about how the American government had sent other venezuelans men to Guantanamo. We talked about what we should do with what I had just heard. Mica contacted a source of the federal government which confirmed, almost immediately, that Rodríguez was one of the men that our country had sent to Salvador.

The news suddenly seemed real and intimate for me. One of the men sent to a brutal prison in Salvador now had a name and a face and a story that I had heard of his own mouth. I couldn’t stop thinking about him.

As a press organization, we have decided to devote important resources to investigate who these men are really and what happened to them, bringing many talented Propublica journalists to help withdraw the files, go through social media accounts, analyze legal data and find the families of men. We have associated ourselves with a group of venezueelian journalists from points of sale Alianza Rebelde Investiga And Fake News Cazadores Who also started to find information on men.

Related | Parents of men illegally sent to El Salvador do not ask you not to look away

We talked to relatives and lawyers for more than 100 men and have obtained internal government files that undermine the statements of the Trump administration That all men are “monsters”, “sick criminals” and the “worst of the worst”. We have also published a story about how, overall, men were not hiding from the federal immigration authorities. They were in the system; many had open asylum boxes Like Rodríguez and was waiting for their day in court before being taken and imprisoned in Central America.

July 18 – After writing the first project of this note – we started to hear chatter on an exchange of potential prisoners between the United States and Venezuela. Later in the same day, the men had been released. We were working on accounting on a case -by -case basis of Venezuelan men who had been detained in Salvador. Although they were released, document who they are and how they found themselves in this Dragnet were always important, essential, even, as is the impact of their incarceration.

The result is a database that we published last week Profiles of 238 of the Trump men were expelled to a Salvadoral prison.

From the moment I heard about the return of men to Venezuela, I thought of Rodríguez. He had been in my mind since entering this project. I sent a message with her mother for days when we were waiting for men to be treated by the government of Nicolás Maduro and released to their families.

Finally, one morning of last week, he returned home. We spoke later in the afternoon. He said he was relieved to be at home with his family but felt traumatized. He told me that he wanted the world to know what happened to him in the Salvadorane prison – daily blows, humiliation, psychological abuses. “There is no reason for what I have experienced,” he said. “I didn’t deserve it.”

The Salvadoral government denied having mistreated Venezuelan prisoners.

We interviewed the Trump administration about its evidence against Rodríguez. This is the entire declaration: “Albert Jesús Rodriguez Parra is an illegal extraterrestrial in Venezuela and the member of the Gang of Tren de Aragua. He illegally crossed the border on April 22, 2023, under the administration of Biden. ”

While Rodríguez was imprisoned in Salvador and no one knew what would happen to him, the court continued to delay the hearings for his asylum case. But after months of continuation on Monday, Rodríguez connected to a virtual audience in Venezuela. “Oh my God, I am so happy to see this,” said judge Samia Naseem, clearly remembering what had happened in her case.

Rodríguez’s lawyer said his client had been tortured and mistreated in Salvador. “I can’t even describe to this court what he experienced,” he said. “He receives psychological help, and it’s my priority.”

It was a brief audience, maybe five minutes. Rodríguez’s lawyer mentioned his involvement in an in progress trial against the Trump administration concerning his use of the Act respecting extraterrestrial enemies to expel the Venezuelans. The government’s lawyer said little, except to wonder if Rodríguez was even authorized to appear practically due to “security problems” in Venezuela.

Finally, the judge said that she would administratively close the case while the dispute takes place. “If we were hopeful, let us return, return to the United States, we were calening the case,” she said.

Naseem turned to Rodríguez, who was in a mute and looked serious. “You don’t have to worry about reappearing until it is settled,” she told him. He nodded and soon disconnected.

We plan to continue to account for what happened and to bring another story about Rodríguez and the experiences of other men inside the prison. Please Contact if you have any information to share.