In January, a delivery worker in Michigan had picked up an order from McDonald’s and was on his way to its destination when he made a wrong turn on a bridge into Canada.
When Ricardo Prada Vásquez tried to re-enter the country from the Ambassador Bridge, the 32-year-old Venezuelan immigrant was detained by immigration authorities. On March 15, the same day dozens of alleged gang members were summarily removed from the country and sent to a brutal Salvadoran prison, Prada told a friend in Chicago he was detained in Texas, expecting to board a plane to Venezuela.
But he was not on a leaked list of 238 names of immigrants sent to El Salvador. He wasn’t identified in the photos of men filmed inside the jail getting their heads shaved in shackles. Attorneys and family members have no idea where he is.
His story, as reported in The New York Times, is raising alarms from immigration attorneys and advocates who fear he is not the only one to seemingly disappear, or that more people have been removed from the country than previously reported.
“There is something terrifying about this. The only thing ICE will say is that the man was deported. But for all intents and purposes, it’s like he’s fallen off the face of the planet or dropped into some black hole,” according to Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council.
“Everyone deserves equal treatment under the law and a fair day in court, no matter one’s immigration status,” Nayna Gupta, policy director at the American Immigration Council, told The Independent.
“Without a fair process, the greater the risk for wrongful deportations or for someone to simply disappear within the system, as we’re already seeing,” Gupta added. “The lack of accountability and transparency for these deportations is scary because it sets a precedent for unchecked abuses of power across our government, which is something that should concern every American.”
A leak of names on the initial Alien Enemies Act flights includes 238 people. At least 27 other alleged gang members were deported to El Salvador in recent weeks. Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele says there are 252 Venezuelans from the United States in his custody. It is unclear whether 13 others are missing.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have not disclosed his destination. The Independent has requested additional information from ICE about Prada’s whereabouts.
“This is textbook enforced disappearance,” according to Adam Isacson with the Washington Office on Latin America, a research and advocacy group.
Cornell Law School immigration law scholar Stephen Yale-Loehr said the case “shocks the conscience.”
“I have not heard of a disappearance like this in my 40-plus years of practicing and teaching immigration law,” he told The New York Times.
“How many Ricardos are lost within our broken system?” asked the Immigrant Legal Resource Center.
A legal battle over Trump’s authority to invoke a centuries-old wartime law to summarily deport immigrants from the United States is in the hands of the Supreme Court. Attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union are asking whether the president can use that authority at all “outside of wartime” to target a criminal organization.
But it’s unclear whether Prada’s family and attorneys have any legal recourse, as there is no record of his detention.
According to The New York Times, Prada reached the United States on November 29, 2024 after waiting to obtain an appointment through CBP One, an app created under Joe Biden’s administration to provide a legal pathway for immigrants to make appointments for their asylum claims before reaching the southern border.
He was allowed to stay in the United States while his case was considered.
Prada then moved to Chicago before moving to Detroit.
While Prada’s entry was approved through CBP One app, he did not have permission to re-enter the country if he left. Following his arrest in January after trying to return to the United States after accidentally crossing into Canada, Prada was ordered deported on February 27, according to The Times. He was transferred to an ICE facility in Ohio and then to the El Valle Detention Facility in Texas.
His case appears to end there. The administration does not appear to have any record of his removal, and he does not appear in ICE custody. His family and friends say they have not heard from him.
In his proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act for only the fourth time in U.S. history, Trump stated that “all Venezuelan citizens 14 years of age or older who are members of [Tren de Aragua], are within the United States, and are not actually naturalized or lawful permanent residents of the United States are liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as Alien Enemies.”
But the administration has admitted in court filings that “many” of the people sent to a notorious prison in El Salvador did not have criminal records, and attorneys and family members say their clients and relatives — some of whom were in the country with legal permission and have upcoming court hearings on their asylum claims — have nothing to do with Tren de Aragua.
Prada’s family and friends deny his involvement in any gangs, they told The Times.
On April 7, a divided Supreme Court agreed to lift Judge James Boasberg’s order that temporarily blocked the president’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to swiftly deport people from the country. But the justices stressed that immigrants marked for removal are “entitled to notice and an opportunity to challenge their removal” in front of a judge within the district where they are detained.
Following that ruling, lawsuits challenging immigrants’ deportations under the Alien Enemies Act have been filed in several states. Several judges have since blocked the administration from summarily deporting them without a hearing.
On Saturday, the Supreme Court further blocked the administration from using the Alien Enemies Act to summarily deport another group of Venezuelans detained in Texas.
