Venezuelans Deported To El Salvador Are Getting Cases Dismissed And Advocates Say It's To 'Complete Their Disappearance'

Venezuelans deported to El Salvador are increasingly seeing their cases dismissed, a development advocates claim is a way to complete their "disappearance" from the U.S. legal system and further complicate their return from imprisonment in the Central American country.

NBC News reported 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 mega-prison in El Salvador.

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.

The Trump administration has so far failed to return Venezuelans sent to the country and has given no indication that it will take steps to do so. At least 50 of the over 200 people sent to the prison had entered the United States legally, according to a recent report by the Cato Institute.

Of the 90 cases with clear entry documentation, 50 individuals had entered the U.S. through official channels, such as parole programs, ports of entry, refugee resettlement, or valid visas.

The U.S. government has yet to release full records of those deported, and lawyers for the migrants allege that detainees face severe conditions in El Salvador, including psychological and physical abuse.