Ricardo Prada Vásquez has already appeared, and appeared in the place to which no one wants to be sent. The 32 -year -old Venezuelan, whom family and friends had sought for days, is in the center of the confinement of terrorism (CECOT), the Salvadoran megacárcel to which the Donald Trump government sent about 252 Venezuelan migrants accused of criminals. “They tell me that he also appeared in El Salvador and related to him,” confirms a friend of his in the United States who prefers not to identify himself for fear of the same thing. The name of Prada is not even in the records of the American detention centers or in the ICE detainees location system, days after three planes took off from Texas and landed in Central America with hundreds of prisoners on board. Without any trace of Prada, without so far knowing whether it was alive or dead, the question opens if there are actually many more people deported than the government has been willing to admit.
Gris Vogt, an American of Mexican origin who is in contact with relatives of Prada and who, through his Tik Tok account gives voice confirmed the finding of man to El País “since March 14 the family did not know anything about Ricardo, and they were very afraid to speak. But it is not the only case, there are many people still looking for their relatives,” he adds.
This Tuesday, when the case of a detainee by ICE disappeared jumped to the press, the Department of National Security (DHS) publicly recognized in the social network X that the young man “was expelled” to El Salvador on March 15, the same day they were sent to the first 238 detainees. Department’s information, as a response to an article published by The New York TimesTilda of “false the publication and ensures that, after the arrest of Prada and a subsequent investigation, they came to the concussion that” it was a threat to public security for being a confirmed member of TDA (Aragua Train) and violating its admission conditions. “
On January 15, five days after Trump arrived at the White House, Prada – a home food delivery man in Detroit, Mischigan, who had legally entered the United States in November 2024 through the CBP One application – was arrested when he was aimed at delivering a request from McDonald’s. By mistake, he crossed the Amblassor Collapse bridge, which stands about 118 meters above the Detroit River and that unites that American city with Windsor, in the Canadian province of Ontario.
When he tried to re -enter the United States, Prada, father of a four -year -old boy, was arrested by the authorities. First it was learned that the Venezuelan was in the Counting Penitentiary Center of Calhoun, west of Michigan. Then, he had been transferred to an ICE detention center in Ohio. Later, to the El Valle detention Center, in Texas, the same place from which deported flights that Trump manages since the beginning of his second presidency left.
Since February 27, the day they gave him a deportation order, Prada knew that he would probably be expelled from the country, but always believed that he was going to arrive in Caracas, the same as they thought dozens of other detainees who, without anyone notifying them, actually landed in the country of Nayib Bukele. And some only knew that their children or brothers were in the CECOT for the tattoos or physical features that could see in the images disseminated from the prison. Days later, the media made public the lists of those deported to El Salvador. The people who were looking for Prada never saw it in the videos, or in any record that would return information about their stay.
But he is not the only inmate that his whereabouts are unknown. Gris Vogt says he has helped other Venezuelan and Salvadoran mothers to locate their children in New York or Baltimore prisons, after weeks without knowing absolutely anything about them. Neiyerver Adrian Leon Rengel, a 27 -year -old Venezuelan barber who was arrested on March 13 in Dallas, is another name that never appeared in the famous deportees list. His relatives knew for an Instagram post that had been arrested by ICE. When on March 16 they called the center of Hidalgo, where he was, the authorities reported that they had transferred him. It was not until March 24 that the Federal Agency confirmed that it had been deported to their country of origin, El Salvador.
Juan Pappier, deputy director of the Division of the Americas of Human Rights Watch (HRW), an organization that investigates these deportations and has also registered other cases of deportees whose names do not appear in any list, assures El País that these deportations not only violate due process, but are “forced disappearances”. “From the point of view of international law, that is a crime, a serious human rights violation,” he says.
According to Pappier, it is inconceivable that until today the government has not issued an official list of deportees names, beyond the one revealed by the press. It also points out that, for political prisoners, it was learned that there were actually 252 Venezuelans deported in El Salvador.
A first deported flight departed on March 15 with 238 inmates. On March 31, they had been deported to the Central American country. And on April 13, El Salvador Security Minister said they had received 10 other people from Guantanamo. Of some of them, relatives have no news until today. “Family members do not have to be depending on the work of journalists to discover where their loved ones are,” says Pappier. “There is an obligation of the state to publicize the whereabouts of these people. This is of great cruelty and generates a brutal suffering in family members.”
