As the Trump administration over the weekend deported more Venezuelan migrants to the controversial, high-security CECOT prison in El Salvador, the deportees' attorneys have begun seeking help from an unexpected but apparently willing source: the U.N. human rights commission.
An additional 17 Venezuelans were deported to El Salvador, two weeks after 238 others were flown there as part of the president's sweeping campaign of arrests and expulsions of undocumented migrants.
Most of the Venezuelans are accused of belonging to a violent Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua — but in many if not most cases their lawyers insist there’s no real evidence of that.
The administration deported the first group of Venezuelans on March 15 under the rarely evoked 1798 Alien Enemies Act, which officials claim allowed for them to be identified as gang members and deported with no due process of law.
As a result, the administration has still not officially released the deportees' names, though unofficially they've been identified, nor has the government of authoritarian Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele allowed them any contact with the world outside the CECOT lockup.
In response, several of the deportees' attorneys have now petitioned the U.N. High Commission for Human Rights to urge El Salvador to give them access to the deportees.
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They hope the process will lead to due-process review of Venezuelans' cases and, if they are proven not to be Tren de Aragua members or otherwise criminals, to their return to the U.S. to continue their immigration cases.
“We needed an objective third party to put a little more pressure on the government of El Salvador," Miami immigration Martin Rosenow, who represents one of the Venezuelans deported on March 15, barber Franco Caraballo, told WLRN.
"At the very least we’re hoping to get some sort of access in terms of knowing about their well being.”
The U.N. human rights commission's working group has in fact now said it will appeal to El Salvador to consider the deportation and imprisonment of Venezuelans like Caraballo “alleged enforced or involuntary disappearances” cases.
Its representatives informed Rosenow in recent days that it has "decided to transmit an urgent appeal to the Government of El Salvador ... through [the U.N.'s] humanitarian procedure ... to clarify [Caraballo's] fate and whereabouts."
Natalie Cadwalader, a senior staff attorney at the nonprofit Human Rights First who represents three of the deportees, told WLRN the U.N. human rights commission is "concerned because so many of the Venezuelans' cases meet the U.N.'s definition" of alleged enforced or involuntary disappearances.
Meaning, Cadwalader said, “A detention, followed by either refusal to acknowledge they’ve been detained or concealment of their fate or whereabouts.”
"That matters more," Cadwalader added, "because the CECOT prison has a reputation for human rights abuses."
The U.N. human rights commission has also indicated to Cadwalader that they will appeal to El Salvador on her clients' behalf.
(The commission offers these links in English and Spanish for families and lawyers like those of the Venezuelan migrants, to report what they think is an enforced or involuntary disappearance.)
It's unclear if Bukele, however, will be sympathetic to the U.N.'s entreaties.
The Salvadoran president — widely hailed for reining in his country's gang violence but just as widely denounced for violating his country's constitution in the process — has made it clear he's fully aligned with President Trump on the draconian Venezuelan deportations and incarceration, for which the U.S. is paying him millions of dollars.
Over the weekend, for example, he hailed Trump's Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem, for visiting the CECOT and recording a controversial video in front of its prisoners celebrating the March 15 deportations.
Bukele also declared on Instagram that the 17 additional Venezuelan deportees arriving in El Salvador were "extremely dangerous and belong to Tren de Aragua" as well as MS-13, another gang with roots in El Salvador's diaspora.
But hat has been far from proven back in the U.S. What's more, the deportations may have violated a U.S. judge’s order to halt them.
U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg, told the Trump administration to halt the March 15 deportations because of its questionable use of the Alien Enemies Act, which legal experts say is only supposed to be summoned during time of war.
The administration claimed that deportation flight was already over international waters en route to El Salvador when Boasberg issued the order.
Since then, Boasberg has ordered a halt to any more deportations under the act — but it's unclear if the administration's latest deportation flight to El Salvador violated that injunction, or if it used another legal channel to carry it out.
