Carmen Bonilla has barely slept for nearly two months, her mind filled with terrifying thoughts about what might be happening to her son, whose dream to go to the United States for a better life has turned into a waking nightmare.
Andry Blanco Bonilla, 40, was among the nearly 240 Venezuelan immigrants who were boarded onto planes and taken to a mega-prison in El Salvador on March 15, in a case that has spurred multiple legal battles and reached the Supreme Court.
Families and attorneys told NBC News they haven’t heard from the men since, and that the United States and Salvadoran governments have given them little to no information. The Trump administration’s action taken nearly two months ago has rippled across continents, leaving loved ones broken and in the dark, they said. They said that their family members have been wrongfully caught up in the administration’s agenda to deport immigrants en masse.
“I know nothing about what’s happening to him,” Bonilla said in Spanish from her home in Venezuela. “I don’t sleep. I’ve lost weight. Watching the news about this makes me sick.”
The men are expected to be held in El Salvador for at least a year, in a prison system that has faced multiple allegations of human rights abuses. The president of El Salvador has said that the one-year sentence is “renewable.”
“A whole year lost because he was unjustly sent to that prison?” Bonilla said through tears. “He’s always been a good son, father, brother and hard worker. He is not a criminal. It’s not fair.”
It remains unclear what will happen to the men after a year spent in the prison. Bonilla and other families are praying they are somehow released before then, but legal pathways for that are also still uncertain.
The Trump administration has said the men are members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, but has shared little evidence of its claims or explained why these men were chosen to be sent to El Salvador. In a proclamation on March 15, Trump said that Tren de Aragua was designated a terrorist organization and was “perpetuating, attempting, and threatening an invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States.”
The Department of Homeland Security and White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Some of the men’s families and attorneys strongly denied their loved ones have any ties to the gang and said they were unfairly targeted because of tattoos that may be popular in Venezuela and are unrelated to Tren de Aragua. They also say the migrants were denied due process and a chance to defend themselves from the accusations against them. Experts have said tattoos are not closely connected with affiliation to Tren de Aragua.
The United States government has not released a list of the Venezuelan men who were taken, but their names were first reported by CBS News. A New York Times investigation found that most of the men don’t have criminal records in the United States or in the region and that very few of them appear to have any documented evidence connecting them to the gang.
Blanco Bonilla was living in Texas and seeking asylum when immigration authorities arrested him in February after an official stopped him at his cousin’s immigration appointment and asked about his tattoos. He was an engineer in Venezuela but had recently been working as a delivery man in the United States to make ends meet and support his family still in his home country, his mother said. He used to call her every day he could. Now, she hasn’t heard his voice for nearly two months and has no idea when she will hear from him again.
“We don’t know if he’s eating. How he’s feeling. What he’s going through,” Blanco Bonilla’s sister, Angy Blanco Bonilla, said. “We ask God for a sign that he’s OK. Not having any information is what hurts us the most.”
Some of the Venezuelan men had open immigration cases, including asylum-related, while others had orders of deportation, according to attorneys representing them.
“How did they end up in El Salvador?” asked Martin Rosenow, a Miami attorney who represents one of the Venezuelan men, asylum-seeker Franco Jose Caraballo Tiapa.
Caraballo Tiapa, 26, a barber and father of two, was in the United States seeking asylum because of political persecution related to his advocacy against the current Venezuelan government and has no criminal history, Rosenow said. He had been released into the United States with his wife before he was detained after a routine immigration appointment in February.
“The fact that en masse, these individuals have been sent without due process to another country, this has never happened before,” Rosenow said.
What has been alarming to Rosenow and a group of attorneys representing the men, is how “the Trump administration has casually dismissed the possibility of bringing these people back,” he said.
Even for those who had orders of removal against them, the orders were for them to be returned to Venezuela, not to be sent to a different country, said attorney Natalie Cadwalader-Schultheis. She represents three Venezuelan men who had orders of removal to their home country and were sent to El Salvador instead. The men all entered the United States legally through a Biden-era app that set appointments for migrants with immigration authorities, she said, adding that the men did not have criminal convictions.
“I hope people recognize that this is a really dangerous precedent to set. We are seeing people disappeared by the government to a torture prison in another country,” Cadwalader said.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man who was also taken to the prison in El Salvador despite a judge’s order that barred him from being sent there, has become a center of the legal battles relating to the deportations. His attorneys have brought a lawsuit against the federal government seeking his return to the United States.
The Trump administration has accused Abrego Garcia of being a member of the gang MS-13, which his attorney and family deny. He was also subject to a judge’s order that he could not be returned to El Salvador, based on evidence presented in court that he would be targeted by gang members.
The Supreme Court has weighed in and ordered that the Trump administration facilitate his return.
President Donald Trump said in an interview with ABC News last week that he “could” have Kilmar Abrego Garcia returned to the United States with one phone call, even though the administration had argued previously in court that the government had no ability to get him back.
“If he were the gentleman that you say he is, I would do that. But he is not,” Trump said in the interview.
Rosenow responded to the president’s comment. “It’s very disheartening for him to say he does have the authority. It also shows a kind of blatant disregard for the Supreme Court’s order to facilitate his return.”
“The whole fight has to do with due process. He should be entitled to due process as the Constitution dictates,” he said.
A federal judge, an appeals court and the Supreme Court have all ordered the administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States. Lawyers for the Justice Department have acknowledged in court filings that the deportation was a mistake because an immigration judge had ruled he could not be sent back to his native El Salvador. Lawyers have argued that Abrego Garcia and the other men were denied due process and the chance to defend themselves in court.
Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act in March after declaring the Venezuela gang Tren de Aragua an invading force. Immigration officials have since used that act to deport hundreds of people, without immigration hearings, alleging that they are members of the gang. Many have ended up in the mega-prison in El Salvador known for its harsh conditions and reported abuse.
On May 1, a Trump-appointed judge rejected the administration’s invocation of the act from 1798 to deport Venezuelans it alleges are members of Tren de Aragua. The Supreme Court also put a pause on deportations under the act in April, as buses with Venezuelans were headed to an airport.
In Venezuela, a group of mothers has been closely following Abrego Garcia’s case.
“If they bring Kilmar back, then there’s still hope that they could bring the more than 200 Venezuelan men back as well,” Bonilla said. “But when I see Trump talk like this, every day I lose more hope.”
Austria Pulgar, 65, whose son is also in El Salvador, said Trump’s latest comments “are so unjust. The Venezuelan men have no reason to be there. They have wrongly accused people and sent them to El Salvador without a chance to defend themselves.” She denies her son has gang ties.
“All I do is cry. I miss my son so much,” she said in Spanish from her home in Venezuela. “I’m afraid this is going to give me a heart attack.”
Frizgeralth de Jesús Cornejo Pulgar, 25, entered the United States with his girlfriend in June 2024, his mother said. His girlfriend was released into the country, but his mother said Cornejo Pulgar was detained because he had a floral tattoo on his neck. He was seeking asylum and remained in detention until he was sent to El Salvador, she said.
Like many families, she discovered her son was taken to El Salvador when she recognized his face in propaganda videos and photos released by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele.
“That photo broke my soul,” she said.
For the families of the men already sent to El Salvador, the situation feels dire and they pray that there is still a chance their loved ones could be released.
“I’m desperate,” Cornejo Pulgar said. “I just want my son to return safe and sound.”
