The two planloads of alleged members of Venezuelan gangs who were deported to El Salvador last week included eight female detainees who were later returned to the United States, according to the affidavits filed on Monday.
A Venezuelan woman identified as SZFR described in a affidavit how she was transferred to a detention center in El Paso, Texas, last week before being sent to El Salvador last Saturday along with seven other women Venezuela.
“I asked where we were going and they told us that we were going to Venezuela,” said the Venezuelan woman in the presentation. “Several other people on the plane told me that they were in immigration procedures and waited for judicial hearings in the Immigration Court.”
The woman said that all the detainees, including women, were “chained on the arm and leg” all the time, even when they landed in another country for several hours while the plane was resuriving.
According to the woman, the officials asked the men to sign “a document they did not want.”
“Government officials were pressing them to sign the documents and threaten them,” said the woman. “I heard them discuss the documents and they were about men admitting that they were members of TDA” or Aragua Train, the Venezuelan gang whose criminal activity led President Donald Trump to invoke the alien enemies law to deport their members with little or not due process.
During a hearing on Monday before the United States Court of Appeals for the DC circuit, an ACLU lawyer said the organization plans to present the document that the migrant detainees signed before being sent to El Salvador.
The alleged members of the Venezuelan criminal organization, Aragua Train, which were deported by the United States government, are arrested at the Center for Confinement of Terrorism in Tecoluca, El Salvador in a photo obtained on March 16, 2025.
Press Secretary of the Presidency Via Reuters
“We will put in the district court the piece of paper that people are getting specifically: ‘He has no right to review,” said Lee Gellnt, the Aclu lawyer.
The officials with the application of immigration and customs did not respond to a request for ABC News comments.
The American district judge James Boasberg issued a restriction order last Saturday to temporarily block such deportations, leading the lawyers of the Department of Justice to challenge their order before the United States Court of Appeals.
An official of the application of immigration and customs of the United States last week recognized in an affidavit that “many” of non -citizens deported last week under the law of Alien enemies had no criminal record in the United States. Administration officials have not been clear about the evidence they have to show that detainees are gang members.
In his statement filed on Monday, Szfr said that after landing in El Salvador, the women remained on the plane after the men got off.
“The remaining women asked: ‘What’s wrong with us?'” The woman said in the statement. “They told me that the president of El Salvador would not accept women. They also told me that we were going back to arrest in the United States.”
According to SZFR, he was returned to the United States in the middle of the night.
In a separate affidavit, a Nicaraguan migrant said he was also returned to the United States after being in one of the planes that landed in El Salvador.
“I heard a Salvadoran official tell an ICE officer that the Salvadoran government would not stop someone from another Central American country due to the conflict that would cause,” said Nicaraguan man in the statement.
“I also heard him say they would not receive women because prison was not for women and women were not mentioned in the agreement,” he said.
The Nicaraguan migrant, who was not appointed, said he was removed by force from the plane when he landed in El Salvador and interrogated his citizenship.
“Everyone were scared and some people had to be removed by force from the plane,” he said.
