Venezuelan Migrant Takes First Step Toward Suing the U.S. Over Detention in El Salvador

A Venezuelan migrant took the first step on Thursday toward suing the United States for what he says was his wrongful detention and removal to a notorious prison in El Salvador.

Neiyerver Adrián Leon Rengel, 27, spent four months in the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, where he said he was beaten and abused. He filed an administrative claim on Thursday with the Homeland Security Department, accusing U.S. immigration agencies of removing him without due process.

It is the first such claim to be filed by one of the 252 Venezuelan men who were expelled and sent to El Salvador in March, his lawyers said, and is a necessary step before taking legal action against the U.S. government in federal court.

Mr. Rengel, who is seeking $1.3 million in damages, was released last week as part of a large-scale prisoner swap between Venezuela and the United States. He is now living in Venezuela.

“I want to clear my name,” he said in a phone interview late Wednesday from his home in the state of Miranda. “I am not a bad person.”

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately comment on Mr. Rengel’s claim.

The detention of Venezuelan men in El Salvador in March was one of the first high-profile efforts to fulfill President Trump’s campaign promise of mass deportations. His administration has accused the migrants of belonging to a Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, and his administration has used the Alien Enemies Act, a rarely invoked wartime law, to justify capturing and removing many of the men to El Salvador.

Some of the deported migrants had criminal records, including at least 32 who were convicted or charged with serious charges, but a New York Times investigation found that most of the men did not. The families of many of the men have stepped forward to contest the allegations of gang membership, and their lawyers argue that the men were deported without a fair chance to plead their case in court.

Mr. Rengel filed his claim with the help of the League of United Latin American Citizens, a civil rights group. Its chief executive, Juan Proaño, says it plans to file dozens more claims on behalf of men who were sent to the prison in El Salvador.

Norman Eisen, chairman of the Democracy Defenders Fund, a nonpartisan pro-democracy group, said it was important to respond vigorously to what he described as an “illegal abduction” by the U.S. government.

“If migrants can be treated this way, we’re on a slippery slope where anyone can be abducted,” Mr. Eisen said.

In his claim, Mr. Rengel, who had worked as a barber in Texas, said he was detained on March 13, his birthday, in the parking lot of his apartment complex in Irving. Federal agents asked to see his tattoos, which they told him indicated that he was affiliated with Tren de Aragua. Mr. Rengel said in the interview that he has no connection to the gang.

His lawyers say he has no criminal record in the United States other than for a misdemeanor in November 2024. In that incident, Mr. Rengel was arrested after police stopped a car he was in and found drug paraphernalia. Mr. Rengel said that he did not own the material, and had not even been aware of its presence. He pleaded guilty and was fined.

When Mr. Rengel was sent to El Salvador, his family could not find him for more than a month, his brother David said in an interview from his home in Chicago. Mr. Rengel’s alien identification number vanished from the online site that is used to track detainees in the U.S. immigration system. Neither his brother nor Mr. Rengel’s girlfriend were able to obtain answers from federal immigration agencies about his whereabouts.

Eventually, his family learned that Mr. Rengel was being held in CECOT, the facility in El Salvador. Guards there routinely assaulted detainees in an area without cameras so they would leave no digital evidence of the abuse, according to Mr. Rengel’s claim. In the document, Mr. Rengel said that officers used fists and batons to beat him in the chest and stomach, and forced him to watch them brutally abuse other prisoners.

His claim describes harrowing conditions at CECOT. It says he was held with nearly 20 other Venezuelan detainees in a cell roughly 10 feet square, which was cleaned only once a week. The men were rarely allowed to go outside, did not have access to medication and were not permitted to exercise or to speak to relatives or their lawyers, the claim says.

When Mr. Rengel complained about his gastritis, he said he was given only water. To pass the time, inmates made dice out of soap and tortillas and used toilet paper to play Parqués, a board game.

Anything could lead to beatings, Mr. Rengel said in the interview.

“If they caught you playing, they beat you,” he said. “If you talked, they beat you. If you laughed, they beat you. If you took a shower, they beat you.”

He recalled having contact with an outsider only once during his stay, with the Red Cross, which visited for 30 minutes on June 12.

Mr. Rengel entered the United States in June 2023 through a CBP One application, which was used by the Biden administration to manage migrant appointments at the border with Mexico. He had applied for legal status under the Temporary Protected Status program, and his application was still being processed when he was detained.

The Trump administration has since ended the program for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans, and his administration has repurposed the CBP One app to enable a “self-deportation” process.

Mr. Rengel is now reunited with his daughter, Isabela. In the interview, he said that he had no plans to return to the United States, but was proceeding with his legal claim in the hope of sparing other migrants from enduring the same treatment he received.

He added, “For every other migrant still in the United States — no matter who they are or what country they are from — I wish that they are able to meet their goals and work hard for their families and not have everything taken from them.”