A Venezuelan Man Said He Would 'Go Home.' The Trump Administration Sent Him To CECOT. (El Salvador Gulag)
A Venezuelan man who is among the hundreds of individuals that the Trump administration has sent to an infamous Salvadoran mega-prison said while in U.S. detention in February that he “just wanted to go home,” according to a court filing Wednesday.
Edicson David Quintero Chacón, a father of two small children, is now languishing behind bars at Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT. The prison’s torturous conditions are front-page news in the United States, as lawyers and human rights groups accuse the Trump administration of enacting forced disappearances against hundreds of innocent men.
Quintero’s ongoing detention could “amount to an effective life sentence—and possibly a death sentence,” his lawyers, one of whom was appointed by a federal district court last week, said in a new habeas corpus petition filed Wednesday. Habeaspetitions challenge the grounds of someone’s detention.
The lawyers argued for Quintero to be released from CECOT, saying his ongoing detention violates his Fifth Amendment rights, among a slew of other violations. They alleged that the Trump administration used the Salvadoran prison as a way to get around legal limits on the detention of people in immigration custody.
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Quintero has been in U.S. government custody for nearly a year.
After arriving at the border in April last year, he turned himself in to immigration officers, according to the court filing. Those officers released him into the United States with an ankle monitor and instructions on how to check in with Immigration and Custom Enforcement officials, the filing said. Quintero did as he was told, but he was taken into custody in June nonetheless.
During a July bond hearing, the government “alleged, but did not prove” that he was a member of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. The Trump administration has claimed, without evidence, that many of the men it sent to CECOT are affiliated with that gang.
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The filing noted that Quintero is believed to have never been charged withor convicted of any crime, anywhere. “On information and belief, Mr. Quintero has no connection whatsoever with Tren de Aragua,” the filing said.
In September, an immigration judge ordered him removed to Venezuela ― not on the grounds of any alleged gang membership, but for a simple immigration violation.
Quintero sat for months in U.S. immigration detention. Finally, in February, he filed a habeas corpus petition on his own behalf, seeking release from custody. Quintero wrote that he “was not fighting [his] case anymore,” and that he “just wanted to go home,” according to the new filing.
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/venezuelan-migrant-said-home-trump-010439846.html