<
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/03/trump-el-salvador-venezulea-deportation-prison-cecot-bukele/>
"On Friday, March 14, Arturo Suárez Trejo called his wife, Nathali Sánchez,
from an immigration detention center in Texas. Suárez, a 33-year-old native of
Caracas, Venezuela, explained that his deportation flight had been delayed. He
told his wife he would be home soon. Suárez did not want to go back to
Venezuela. Still, there was at least a silver lining: In December, Sánchez had
given birth to their daughter, Nahiara. Suárez would finally have a chance to
meet the three-month-old baby girl he had only ever seen on screens.
But, Sánchez told
Mother Jones, she has not heard from Suárez since. Instead,
last weekend, she found herself zooming in on a photo the government of El
Salvador published of Venezuelan men the Trump administration had sent to
President Nayib Bukele’s infamous Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT. “I
realized that one of them was my husband,” she said. “I recognized him by the
tattoo [on his neck], by his ear, and by his chin. Even though I couldn’t see
his face, I knew it was him.” The photo Sánchez examined—and a highly produced
propaganda video promoted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the White
House—showed Venezuelans shackled in prison uniforms as they were pushed around
by guards and had their heads shaved.
The tattoo on Suárez’s neck is of a colibrí, a hummingbird. His wife said it is
meant to symbolize “harmony and good energy.” She said his other tattoos, like
a palm tree on his hand—an homage to Suárez’s late mother’s use of a Venezuelan
expression about God being greater than a coconut tree—were similarly
innocuous. Nevertheless, they may be why Suárez has been effectively
disappeared by the US government into a Salvadoran mega-prison.
Mother Jones has spoken with friends, family members, and lawyers of ten men
sent to El Salvador by the Trump administration based on allegations that they
are members of the Venezuelan organized crime group Tren de Aragua. All of them
say their relatives have tattoos and believe that is why their loved ones were
targeted. But they vigorously reject the idea that their sons, brothers, and
husbands have anything to do with Tren de Aragua, which the Trump
administration recently labeled a foreign terrorist organization. The families
have substantiated those assertions to
Mother Jones, including—in many
cases—by providing official documents attesting to their relatives’ lack of
criminal histories in Venezuela. Such evidence might have persuaded US judges
that the men were not part of any criminal organization had the Trump
administration not deliberately deprived them of due process."
Via
Garbage Day: New Elon Musk crime dropped
https://www.garbageday.email/p/new-elon-musk-crime-dropped
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
