Trump shipped them to El Salvador. Their families say their only crime was a tattoo.

AURORA, Colorado ‒ The immigration judge looked over the crowded courtroom and called his next case: “Jefferson José? Jefferson José?”

No one answered.

Judge Joseph Imburgia again scanned the courtroom buried deep within a sprawling U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in suburban Denver, looking over the rows of men in orange or red detainee clothing. Venezuelan migrant Jefferson José Laya Freites, 33, was due in court for a pending asylum-and-detention hearing.

He wasn’t there.

Stepping forward, an attorney with an immigrant rights group told Imburgia that Laya Freites’ wife believed he’d been transferred to Texas following a Denver-area traffic stop, and then shipped to a notorious Salvadoran prison. Trump officials recently signed a $6 million detention deal with El Salvador to hold U.S. detainees.

“She saw her husband on video at the Salvadoran prison,” attorney Monique Sherman told Imburgia.

The judge turned to federal prosecutor Tanga Bernal for clarification. She said Laya Freites was released to “local authorities.” When Imburgia pressed for more details, Bernal said she needed to get permission from her superiors.

“I don’t know where he is and he’s on the docket today,” Imburgia said. “The government needs to show me something about where this individual is.”

Across the U.S., people like Laya Freites have been similarly vanishing ― and re-emerging in one of El Salvador’s most notorious prisons.

There’s little evidence to support the administration’s contention that large numbers of the deportees are members of the violent Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua. Reporting by USA TODAY last fall found ICE, the FBI and law enforcement agencies in states with reports of the gang’s activity had tallied fewer than 135 members of the gang, while the Trump administration says it deported more than 200 members to El Salvador last week alone.

Instead, family members and advocates say officials are rounding up members of an entire nationality without regard for their rights, often picking men with tattoos memorializing soccer teams, family members and their professions ― not dangerous gangs.

Speaking to USA TODAY on Thursday, Laya Freites’ wife said her husband has never been in a gang. They fled Venezuela and requested asylum at the southern border 15 months ago. The pair were released into the United States.

Laya Freites was driving home from work with his cousin on Jan. 28 when they were stopped by federal agents. Although both men had valid work authorizations and pending asylum hearings, they were taken into ICE custody. 

Held in the Aurora ICE facility for a month, the two were then transferred to Texas, where they told their wives they were being deported to Venezuela.

But last weekend, Laya Freites’ son saw his dad on a social media video posted by Salvadoran officials, recognizing a cut on his father’s hand. Laya Freites’ wife asked not to be named over concerns that speaking out might make her a target for immigration officials.

“My husband doesn’t even have tattoos,” she told USA TODAY. “It’s a kidnapping … What happened to them is a great injustice.”

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Federal officials have repeatedly refused to provide evidence they claim to have against the deportees, sometimes invoking unspecified national security concerns. Officials have declined to release a list of the people sent to El Salvador, where they face indefinite incarceration.

President Donald Trump has designated Tren de Aragua as a foreign terrorist organization and proclaimed the group’s members are invaders who can be deported without hearings under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act.

USA TODAY spoke with law enforcement in Aurora, Colorado and Denver who reiterated that they have identified a combined 18 Tren de Aragua members. When asked whether any of those members had been deported to El Salvador, they deferred to federal authorities.

CBS News reported that it obtained a government list Thursday of the names of the Venezuelan men the Trump administration sent to El Salvador. Laya Freites’ name appears.

“This is a human rights injustice,” said Margaret Cargioli, an attorney with the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, an L.A.-based law firm that represents one of the men deported to El Salvador. “People have been literally snatched and removed to a third country and placed into prison without having had a hearing or a trial.”

Authorities were interested in his tattoos

Franco José Caraballo, 26, had attended all his court-ordered ICE check-ins and recently had his ankle monitor removed. So his wife, Johanny, and his attorney were stunned when he showed up to federal immigration offices in Dallas on Feb. 9 for another check-in – and agents detained him.

Last week, Caraballo called his wife in tears to say he was told he was being deported, despite not having a criminal record. They assumed Venezuela. Instead, Caraballo was among the 238 deportees flown to a Salvadoran prison because they had alleged ties to Tren de Aragua.

Caraballo, whose name also appears on the list obtained by CBS, crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in 2023 and turned himself in to border agents, seeking asylum. Late last week, his name disappeared from the ICE Online Detainee Locator System.

“I was in complete shock,” his attorney, Martin Rosenow, told USA TODAY. “He was complying. He was reporting to ICE. He doesn’t have a criminal record. He was not supposed to be deported.”

While Caraballo was in detention in the U.S., authorities became interested in a series of tattoos he had, particularly one of a stopwatch inked on his left arm, Rosenow said. The watch shows the time his 4-year-old daughter, Shalome, was born. Caraballo, a longtime barber in Venezuela who was cutting and styling hair in Sherman, Texas, near Dallas, before he was detained, has another tattoo of a razor on his neck, which represents his trade but also caught the eye of authorities.

Caraballo and his wife fled their hometown of Yaracuy, Venezuela, after rallying in support of political leaders opposed to President Nicolás Maduro. They were roughed up by presidential loyalists and fled Venezuela. They passed their “credible fear” interviews, received immigration court instructions and were released, Rosenow said.

More than 760,000 Venezuelans have arrived at the Southwest border seeking asylum from political repression and runaway violence in their homeland since 2021, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics.

Johanny became homeless after Caraballo’s arrest in February and lived in their car for several weeks. A family member recently brought her to live with them in New York.

The couple was hopeful they’d win asylum and carve out a new life in the U.S. For now, that dream has been shattered, he said.

“Our core belief is that you’re innocent until proven guilty,” Rosenow said. “That’s been completely violated here.”

What is Tren de Aragua?

Tren de Aragua, known to law enforcement by the shorthand “TdA,” grew out of the prison system in the central state of Aragua in Venezuela and became one of the most violent groups in that country, focusing on extortion, smuggling and drug trafficking, according to the U.S.Treasury Department.

Law enforcement officials around the U.S. have said they’ve arrested members of Tren de Aragua in connection with crimes including brazen retail thefts, moped muggings in New York City and a jewelry heist in Denver.

But Trump thrust the group and the Biden-Harris administration’s border policies into the spotlight during the general election when he falsely claimed that members of Tren de Aragua had “taken over” U.S. cities.

A USA TODAY investigation last year found that law enforcement officials across the country view them as a fledgling group trying to establish a foothold in the U.S., whose ranks are thin and whose activities pale in comparison to the violence and criminality of more established criminal organizations, such as MS-13.

In November, ICE officials told USA TODAY they had arrested fewer than 30 people with TdA connections – two on criminal charges and the rest on immigration infractions. The agency has referred another 100 people to an FBI “watch list” for further review. Separately, according to the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Border Patrol apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border 27 people in fiscal 2024 and 41 people in fiscal 2023 with Tren de Aragua gang affiliation.

This week, USA TODAY surveyed law enforcement in several cities to ask if there had been an uptick in TdA presence and found the opposite. Aurora, Colorado has only identified 10 TdA members. Nearby Denver had identified eight. Prairie du Chien in Wisconsin had identified a single member who was then referred to federal authorities. Texas cities, including Houston, El Paso, Dallas and Fort Worth deferred to the FBI for more information or required a records request.

Immigration-rights activist Kate Wheatcroft of the New York-based nonprofit Together & Free said her staff has identified about 50 deportees sent to El Salvador. Of those, 44 have no criminal record either in the U.S. or Venezuela, she said.

“None of these people have even been in prison,” she said. “One guy got too many traffic tickets. We’re talking about really minor things that were mostly in the United States.”

She added: “We’re deeply skeptical of this gang narrative, having compiled 50 cases.”

Government officials won’t detail deportations

Even in federal court, administration officials have repeatedly refused to divulge basic facts, names or other details that they would ordinarily disclosed publicly. And now Trump and other Republicans are attacking a judge who has raised concerns about the process.

Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg last weekend tried to temporarily block deportation flights while a case was litigated, then ordered government attorneys into court the next day to explain why they had defied his orders. Lawyers for Venezuelans cited three flights that might have violated his Saturday evening ruling.

Justice Department lawyer Abhishek Kambli said one of the flights that took off a few minutes after Boasberg’s written order posted at 7:26 p.m. Saturday carried no deportees under the Alien Enemies Act. But Kambli refused to say how many other flights there may have been, citing national-security and foreign-affairs concerns.

“I’m not at liberty to disclose anything about any flights,” Kambli said.

In response to a Boasberg request, Robert Cerna, an acting field office director for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Harlingen, Texas, said in a sworn statement Tuesday that two deportation flights took off Saturday and were in international airspace when a judge’s written order was posted that would have blocked them.

But Cerna refused to disclose further details about the flights.

Even as the U.S. government discloses scant information about the deportees, the Salvadoran government has released photos and video of the inmates shackled together, marched around the prison complex and having their hair sheared off, their faces clearly visible. 

Trump signed the Alien Enemies Act order last Friday and it became effective when published on Saturday, Cerna said. Aside from those already deported, ICE is detaining about 54 other alleged TdA members, another 172 are known to ICE but not detained, and 32 others are in criminal custody, Cerna said.

“Should they be transferred to ICE custody, they will likely be placed in removal proceedings,” Cerna said.Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, told reporters outside the White House on Monday that various investigations identified the deportees as members of Tren de Aragua through law enforcement, social media, their activities and criminal records in the U.S. and abroad. But as have other administration officials, Homan declined to offer any evidence.

“We removed terrorists,” Homan declared. “That should be a celebration in this country.”

Deported Venezuelans are not gang members, families say

Boasberg’s ruling to halt some flights came in the case of five Venezuelans who asked him to block their deportation. Identified only by their initials, the five denied being TdA members and said they were transported to Texas without notice and prepared for deportation, and then removed from waiting planes and told they had “just won the lottery,” according to court proceedings.

In statements to the court, lawyers for the migrants described them fleeing Venezuela over political or sexual harassment. They denied being gang members and said they had no criminal records in either country.

Tattoos seemed to draw the attention of immigration authorities, according to several of the participants in the lawsuit.

Solanyer Michell Sarabia Gonzalez, 25, of Arlington, Texas, said in a statement to the court that her brother Anyelo Jose Sarabia, 19, was deported on Saturday. ICE agents in Dallas had detained him Jan. 31 after a check-in meeting where they noticed a tattoo on his left hand of a large rose with dollars for petals, she said.

“The tattoo has no meaning or connection to any gang,” Gonzalez said. His two other tattoos are “fuerza y valiente,” ‒ valor and strength ‒ on his bicep and “todo lo puedo en cristo que me fortalice” for “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens” on his forearm, she said.

Jerce Reyes Barrios, 36, a professional soccer player in Venezuela, was deported while awaiting a ruling on his asylum claim by ICE agents who said his tattoos “were proof of gang membership,” according to court statements by his lawyer, Linette Tobin.

Reyes Barrios, who marched in protests against the Maduro regime in February and March 2024, had been tortured by government officials.

U.S. officials accused him of being a gang member because he has tattoos of a crown sitting atop a soccer ball, which is similar to the official Real Madrid soccer logo, and of a rosary with the word “Dios,” Tobin said.

Both Sarabia and Reyes Barrios’ names appear on the CBS list.

“He has never been arrested or charged with a crime,” Tobin said of her client.

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