As U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen headed to El Salvador on Wednesday morning to demand the discharge of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, some social media customers urged him to seek out out extra in regards to the standing of one other younger man who immigration brokers reportedly wrongly despatched to the Central American nation’s infamous Terrorism Confinement Middle — even if he had no felony document.
“Please ask about Merwil Gutiérrez as effectively,” one individual asked Van Hollen on Bluesky.
As Abrego Garcia’s case, and the Trump administration’s repeated baseless lies that he was a “convicted” gang member, have garnered nationwide consideration, different tales of individuals being wrongly swept up in Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in latest weeks have additionally been reported — and within the case of Gutiérrez, the ICE brokers who arrested the 19-year-old apparently knew that he shouldn’t be detained.
As Documented reported on Wednesday, Gutiérrez’s father Wilmer realized on February 24 that his son had been detained by ICE. His nephew Luis, who lived with the daddy and son in a Bronx condominium, instructed him that he’d witnessed the arrest:
When his son was on his method again, simply steps from his residence, ICE brokers stopped him. “The officers grabbed him and two different boys proper on the entrance to our constructing. One stated, ‘No, he’s not the one,’ like they had been searching for another person. However the different stated, ‘Take him anyway.’”
With ICE performing on the Trump administration’s orders beneath the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to fast-track the expulsion of members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua — and suspending constitutional due course of rights — brokers have reportedly detained lots of the 238 folks they just lately arrested based mostly solely on the truth that that they had tattoos.
In Gutiérrez’s case, the Venezuelan asylum-seeker had none, and had no felony document both in his residence nation or america.
“I really feel like my son was kidnapped,” Wilmer Gutiérrez instructed Documented. “I’ve spent numerous hours trying to find him, going from one precinct to a different, talking with quite a few individuals who stored referring me elsewhere. But, in any case this, nobody has given me any info or supplied a single doc about his case.”
Wilmer and Merwil Gutiérrez arrived within the U.S. in 2023; Wilmer had labored at Venezuela’s state-owned oil and gasoline firm earlier than beginning a cellphone restore enterprise. The daddy and son, together with Luis, traveled to the U.S. on foot by means of the Darién jungle within the hopes of incomes extra money. They utilized for an appointment to hunt humanitarian parole by means of the CBP One app that was dismantled after President Donald Trump took workplace in January, and had been despatched to varied shelters earlier than arriving in New York Metropolis, the place they discovered jobs at a warehouse and commenced ready for his or her asylum standing to be formalized, with authorities giving them a court docket date for February 2027.
Their life was disrupted, stated William Parra, an lawyer representing Gutiérrez, when “Merwil was detained for hanging out with buddies and was on the incorrect place on the incorrect time.”
“ICE was not searching for him, neither is there any proof in anyway that Merwil was in any gang,” Parra instructed Documented.
Wilmer final spoke to his son on March 14, when police allowed Gutiérrez to make a quick cellphone name. On the time Gutiérrez was being held in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania and had been instructed he can be despatched to a facility in Texas earlier than being deported again to Venezuela. As an alternative, he was one in every of lots of of individuals despatched to the Terrorism Confinement Middle (CECOT) opened by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele — who this week appeared on the Oval Workplace and scoffed on the suggestion that he would launch a detainee who had been despatched to CECOT in error.
As The New York Instances reported Tuesday, Gutiérrez, Abrego Garcia, and Andry José Hernandez — a hair stylist who has denied any gang affiliation after being despatched to El Salvador by ICE — are seemingly only a few of probably dozens of individuals whom the Trump administration has imprisoned regardless of their lack of a felony historical past or conviction.
The Instances ran the names of the 238 Venezuelan males despatched to CECOT by means of three U.S. public information databases; ran background checks in Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, and Chile; interviewed members of the family and consultants on Tren de Aragua; and examined court docket paperwork.
The investigation discovered that a minimum of 32 of the lads “have confronted severe felony accusations or convictions in america or overseas, together with a person accused of taking part in an assault in Chicago, one other convicted of making an attempt to smuggle arms out of america, and others accused of theft, strangulation, home battery, or harboring undocumented immigrants.”
Out of the 206 different males, two dozen “had been accused or discovered responsible of lower-level offenses in america or elsewhere, together with trespassing, rushing in a college zone, and driving an improperly registered automobile,” whereas the others had “no proof of a felony background, past offenses associated to being unauthorized migrants.”
As Van Hollen headed to El Salvador, journalist Ashton Pittman said the U.S. “must also be checking on the opposite lots of of people that Trump’s administration kidnapped and human trafficked to El Salvador with out due course of.”
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