A professional soccer player who protested Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro’s repressive regime. Another man who claims he fled torture there to New York, where American police allegedly deemed his tattoos memorializing his grandmother as gang-related. And a third who cried “uncontrollably” during his rushed deportation last week and “begged officers for food and water” as they “laughed.”
Late Wednesday, detailed accounts were filed in federal court by attorneys for several of the people whom the Trump administration whisked to El Salvador’s “Terrorism Confinement Center” under dubious legal authority. It’s the latest revelation in an ongoing legal battle that has become the center of a dramatic showdown between President Donald Trump and the nation’s courts.
The sworn testimony of these lawyers directly contradict the assertions made by the Trump administration, which is seeking to strip the migrants of legal rights under what amounts to a state of exception.
Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to rapidly deport dozens of immigrants last weekend despite a mid-operation court order by U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg, who is now demanding answers about the exact timing of those flights.
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The White House has maintained that it will not be deterred, claiming that these migrants are “terrorists,” and going so far as to dispute the judiciary’s power to even question the executive branch’s actions. On Fox News this week, Trump “border czar” Tom Homan vowed to plow forward.
“We’re not stopping. I don’t care what the judges think. I don’t care what the left thinks. We’re coming,” he said.
Court filings present a narrow window into this law enforcement strategy and its targets.
One of the men deported is 26-year-old Jerce Reyes Barrios, whose lawyer described him as a “professional soccer player” who “has never been arrested or charged with a crime.” Linette Tobin, his immigration attorney, said Barrios had been subjected to “electric shocks and suffocation” in Venezuela by Maduro’s security forces after he took part in pro-democracy demonstrations — a political movement that had been vehemently supported by both the Trump and Biden administrations. Upon release, Barrios immediately fled to the United States and, his lawyer said, did exactly what American officials have demanded of asylum seekers: He used the CBP One phone app to apply for asylum while in Mexico and showed up for his appointment with Customs and Border Protection across the border.
However, the filing said Barrios was then detained at the Otay Mesa Detention Center, a privately run prison in the foothills of California’s San Ysidro Mountains, where law enforcement officials accused him of being a member of Venezuela’s notorious Tren de Aragua gang — partly based on his arm tattoo of a soccer ball, a Catholic rosary, and the Spanish word for God: “Dios.”
His lawyer says the tattoo is a reference to Barrios’ favorite soccer team, Real Madrid, and a nearly identical copy of the team’s logo.
Solanyer Michell Sarabia Gonzalez, 25, signed a similar declaration describing the experience of her 19-year-old younger brother. She explained how she and Anyelo Jose Sarabia fled Venezuela and arrived in the United States in November 2023, applying for asylum as required and making their home in Arlington, Texas. When they showed up for a scheduled check-in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Jan. 31, officials allowed her to leave but detained her brother — asking her about a tattoo on his hand.
“My brother is not part, or was never part, of any gang. The tattoo on his left hand is of a rose with money as petals,” she said in recent court papers. “He had that tattoo done in August 2024 in Arlington, Texas, because he thought it looked cool. The tattoo has no meaning or connection to any gang.”
And she claims she’d also know well the inoffensive meaning behind his two other tattoos: a Christian affirmation that directly cites Bible scripture in Philippians 4:13 and another that features the phrase “fuerza y valiente,” which means “strength and courage.”
“I did both of these tattoos when my brother was in Texas. These tattoos have no meaning or connection to any gang,” she wrote.
Another four legal filings by immigration attorneys generally retold the same story about this weekend’s aggressive government deportation tactics. Although these lawyers represent different people who were placed on planes bound for El Salvador, each one described how prisoners wept while awaiting their fate inside a hot bus on an airport tarmac.
Four filings described how ICE officials openly ridiculed their detainees, with one lawyer claiming that an ICE agent “verbally taunted them,” saying “You all do not know how lucky you are, and you all hit the lottery because you are not getting deported today.”
Three separate declarations also described a medical incident involving a male prisoner. One stated that a man “almost passed out from the heat exhaustion and dehydration and started bleeding profusely from his nose.” A second filing went into more detail, noting how “officers yelled at the man to close his nose. However, the man was shackled and could not reach his nose. The officers continued to yell at the man to close his nose and to stop the drama.”
The second filing said detainees “asked and begged officers for food and water. The officers did not provide any water or food but instead drank water themselves in front of them and laughed.”
The third declaration, written by Legal Aid Society attorney Grace Carney in New York, recalled how during a call, their client “was very emotional, and could not stop crying.”
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Jose Pagliery is a reporter at NOTUS.
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