Family Members Of Venezuelans Deported To El Salvador's Mega-Prison Demand Proof of Life

Family members of two Venezuelan men deported to El Salvador's infamous CECOT mega-prison are requesting the government for proof of life of their loved ones.

The men in question are Widmen Agelvis Sanguino and Any Hernandez, according to The Associated Press. Their family members asked for updates about their legal status and to be allowed to see them.

"We ask to be allowed to see them because many are known to have been deported from the U.S.to El Salvador, but there is no proof of life, we don't know that," said Walter Marquez, member of organization El Amparo Internacional.

The Trump administration deported the men earlier this year, accusing them of being members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan-born gang. Their family members deny such allegations and claim that neither American nor Salvadoran authorities have released a list of deportees.

There is little information about most deportees, and the Trump administration has been accused of increasingly dismissing their cases in the U.S. to complete their "disappearance" from the legal system.

NBC News reported in late may that at least 14 asylum cases have been dismissed over the past weeks. "It seems the government's intention in dismissing these cases across the country is to complete the disappearance of people to El Salvador, to end their legal proceedings, and to act as though they weren't here seeking asylum in the first place," Lindsay Toczylowski, executive director of Immigrant Defenders Law Center, told the outlet. She is representing Andry Hernandez Romero, who was involved in such a case before being sent to the CECOT prison.

Romero's lawyers sought to kept the case open after his deportation so he would continue to be in the legal system, but an immigration judge in San Diego dismissed the claim on Tuesday. He had argued that he experienced persecution in his home country due to him being gay and opposed to Nicolas Maduro's authoritarian government.

Hernandez, the outlet added, is the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit filed by the ACLU against the Trump administration over the use of the wartime Alien Enemies Act to deport hundreds of Venezuelans to El Salvador. Him and at least a dozen others have seen their cases dismissed across the country. Together and Free, a nonprofit group coordinating legal responses to deportations, tracked such cases in Texas and California.

Advocates say they are planning to appeal the decision, and the judge who dismissed Hernandez's case allowed for the possibility that his case be reopened should he return to the U.S.