Deported a teenager who was arrested by mistake
A 19-year-old Venezuelan asylum seeker named Merwil Gutiérrez was deported from the Bronx to El Salvador's notorious Cecot prison, despite ICE agents reportedly acknowledging during his arrest that he was not the person they were targeting. His family says he has no criminal record, no gang tattoos, and no ties whatsoever to El Salvador, yet he was swept up alongside 237 other Venezuelans and expelled under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. His father learned of his son's deportation through a news report and has been unable to obtain any official information or documentation about the case. The incident mirrors the widely publicized wrongful deportation of Kilmar Abrego García, a Maryland man also sent to the same Salvadoran prison, and comes amid a broader Trump administration push to remove noncitizens — including people with legal status and no criminal charges — while the president has also floated the idea of deporting American citizens to the same facility.