Immigrants disappear from the tracking system: Those arrested in the US later appear in prisons in El Salvador

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Immigrants disappear from US detainee tracking system after deportation flights

Flights by U.S. Immigration authorities set off a frantic scramble among terrified families after hundreds of immigrants vanished from ICE’s online locator.

Some turned up at that massive El Salvador prison, where visitors, recreation and education are not allowed. The U.S. has paid El Salvador’s government $6 million to hold immigrants, many of them Venezuelan, whose government rarely accepts sports from the U.S.

But many families have no idea where to find their loved ones. El Salvador has no online database to look up inmates, and families there often struggle to get information.“I don’t know anything about my son,” said Xiomara Vizcaya, a 46-year-old Venezuelan.

Ali David Navas Vizcaya had been in U.S. detention since early 2024, when he was stopped at a U.S.-Mexico border crossing where he had an appointment to talk to immigration officers. He called his late Friday and said he thought he was being deported to Venezuela or Mexico.

“He told me, ‘Finally, we’re going to be together, and this nightmare is going to be over,’” Vizcaya said in telephone interview from her home in the northern Venezuela city of Barquisimeto.

His name is no longer in ICE’s system. She said he has no criminal record and suspects he may have been mistakenly identified as a Tren de Aragua member because of several tattoos.

“He left for the American dream, to be able to help me financially, but he never had the chance to get out” of prison, she said.

Nearly 8 million Venezuelans have left their homeland since 2013, when its oil-dependent economy collapsed. Most initially went to other Latin American countries but more headed to the U.S. after COVID-19 restrictions lifted during the Biden administration.