Progressive Politics

The Trump administration deported a Venezuelan professional soccer player, a youth soccer coach with no criminal record, to an El Salvadoran prison known for torture and abusive conditions, according an affidavit filed with the court and confirmed by a family member’s post on Facebook in Venezuela.

The family only discovered that their loved one, Jerce Reyes Barrios, had been renditioned to El Salvador when they saw him in viral videos posted by the Trump administration, in which it celebrated what it said was the mass deportation of violent members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.

“We were surprised to see him in the videos being released on social media of those deported to El Salvador,” his uncle, Jair Barrios, said in a Facebook post in Spanish. “We immediately contacted the lawyer because no more information about him was appearing on the ICE locator.”