Venezuelan Professional Goaltender Deported to El Salvador Prison, Stunning Family Back Home

[Passages]

Mar 20, 2025

The Trump administration deported a Venezuelan professional soccer player and youth soccer coach with no criminal record to an El Salvadoran prison known for torture and abusive conditions, according an affidavit filed with the court and confirmed by a family member’s post on Facebook in Venezuela.

The family only discovered that their loved one, Jerce Reyes Barrios, had been renditioned to El Salvador when they saw him in viral videos posted by the Trump administration, in which it celebrated what it said was the mass deportation of violent members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. “We were surprised to see him in the videos being released on social media of those deported to El Salvador,” his uncle, Jair Barrios, said in a Facebook post in Spanish. “We immediately contacted the lawyer because no more information about him was appearing on the ICE locator.”

Reyes Barrios was due for a hearing on April 17, 2025. He had been applying for political asylum, a case he had a plausible chance to win given his backstory. Reyes Barrios was not an economic migrant, but he had participated in two marches against the government of Nicolás Maduro in the context of 2024’s controversial presidential election. The United States has long pressured the Maduro government—which the U.S. does not officially recognize—to hold free and fair elections. The U.S. responded angrily when Venezuela’s Supreme Court, aligned with Maduro, kicked his leading opponent off the ballot, and multiple demonstrations throughout the country were held.


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Barrios said that his nephew left Venezuela in March, after his torture. In October 2023, the U.S. had offered Temporary Protective Status to Venezuelans in the United States, arguing that government repression in the country meant it was unsafe to return. “He spent several months working in Mexico waiting for his CBP One appointment,” Jair Barrios said. “In September of the same year, exactly on the 1st, he had his appointment to enter the United States.”

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