Frizgeralth de Jesús Cornejo Pulgar had been detained since arriving at the southern border from Venezuela in June, but when the time came for his final asylum hearing the government was unwilling to say exactly where he was.
He might as well have vanished into some Trumpian gulag. In fact, he had.
“They said, ‘He’s no longer in ICE (Immigration Customs Enforcement) custody, that’s all we’re prepared to say.” his attorney, Joseph Giardina of Giardina & Guevara in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, told the Daily Beast. “They wouldn’t even say where he is.”
Giardina continued, “I’m like, ‘I know where he is, judge. It’s ridiculous that the government isn’t prepared to say where he is, considering they sent him there and they’re paying for him to be housed there.‘”
Rather than just tell the judge at the hearing last week where Cornejo Pulgar was, the government asked for a continuance. The judge scheduled a new hearing for September 4.
“She gave them two weeks to file an updated address form,” Giardina told The Daily Beast.
Truthfully filling out that otherwise routine document could prove to be a challenge for the state. The original Gulag in Russia never had to worry about such things as completing an I830 Change of Address form.
In fact, as has been reported by the Daily Beast and other news outlets, Cornejo Pulgar was one of more than 200 migrants who had been flown to El Salvador and frogmarched into the dreaded Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo prison last month.
They were incarcerated there under a $6 million contract with the Trump administration, which describes them as ”the worst of the worst.”
Never mind that Cornejo Pulgar had followed all the legal procedures for seeking asylum: registering with the Customs and Border Protection app, CPB One, in Mexico and presenting himself at the assigned point of entry at the U.S. border at the designated date and time. Never mind he had no criminal record.
But he did have tattoos and that was enough for him to be immediately shackled and detained as a suspected member of the Tren de Aragua gang. He has since secured a certificate from the Venezuelan government showing that he had never been arrested.
And his tattoo artist provided a sworn statement: “I am Pedro Elias Freites Rodríguez, friend and tattoo artist of Frizgeralth De Jesús… I have about 8 years tattooing, in which I have made different designs to Frizgeralth as a canvas,..All the designs made to my friend and clients were made without any intention of promoting any violence or alluding to any gang or criminal group… You can see some of my work in my Instagram account @pedro.allinblack.”
Experts have attested that, unlike MS-13, Tren de Aragua does not consider tattoos a signifier of membership.
Maybe ICE did not have enough actual gang members to fill the three airplanes and the subsequent dramatic video. For whatever reasons, Cornejo Pulgar was loaded aboard one of the three flights on March 15 and consigned to a prison system in El Salvador where beatings and electric shocks are said to be common.
A family member spotted him on the video as the prisoner disappeared into the prison. And his name appeared on a list of the transported prisoners. But nobody has heard from him.
After the American Civil Liberties Union and others went to court, Robert Cerna, the acting field director of ICE enforcement and removal operations, attested in court papers that, “Officers and agents well versed in gang activity in general and TdA in particular reviewed the information gathered on each alien, identifying TdA members based upon information such as previous criminal convictions… surveillance… evidence that the alien had committed crimes in coordination with known members of TdA… and admission of TdA membership by the alien.”
Cerna added, “ICE did not simply rely on social media posts, photographs of the alien displaying gang-related hand gestures, or tattoos alone.”
Cornejo Pulgar vanished along with at least one other Venezuelan migrant who had followed all the asylum rules and had no criminal record.
But 36-year-old Jerce Reyes Barrios is a professional soccer player and he had a tattoo with the logo of his favorite team, Real Madrid. And a search of his social media produced a photo of him flashing what ICE took to be gang signs but were really just sign language for “I love you.”
Any chance that the wrongly deported will be returned as ordered by a federal court judge faded on Monday, when the Trumpian gulag’s chief jailer, El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, visited President Trump at the White House.
Bukele, who has called himself “the world’s coolest dictator,” looked the part dressed all in black and navy. He was as tie-less as had been Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on his White House visit, but he was there as a foe rather than a champion of human rights. Nobody in the Trump administration—including Vice President JD Vance—was heard to accuse him of being disrespectful.
At one point, a reporter asked Bukele about another of the deportees, a Salvador citizen named Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who had been placed on one of the planes in what U.S. authorities admit was an “administrative error.” The U.S. Supreme Court had unanimously ruled that the Trump administration should “facilitate” Garcia’s return.
“How can I return him to the United States? Like if I smuggle him into the United States?” Bukele said “Of course I’m not going to do it. The question is preposterous.”
Bukele said there was also no chance Garcia would be freed to live in El Salvador.
“We’re not very fond of releasing terrorists,” he said.
Trump, who brags about his deal making ability, took the position that there was nothing he could do. He did not miss a double opportunity to slam both the press and a migrant with no apparent criminal record in either country whose supposed gang affiliation is so tenuous that even some in the administration are backing away from it.
“They’d love to have a criminal released into our country,” he said of the assembled reporters. “These are sick people.”
Trump even daydreamed aloud about sending “homegrown criminals,” Americans who are “real bad people” to El Salvador.
All this transpired as the two presidents sat a few feet from a framed copy of the Declaration of Independence. The second paragraph famously declares, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
When Trump hung the sacred document in the Oval Office, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt promised, “It will be carefully protected and preserved.” But she said nothing about it not being dishonored.
During the chief jailer’s visit with Trump, nobody even mentioned Cornejo Pulgar or Barrios. And there are no doubt many more who were denied due process that the Supreme Court says is every person’s due.
Meanwhile, ICE has to fill out a change of address form for Corneajo Pulgar that should read ℅ Trumpian Gulag. Barrios also has an upcoming hearing. Numerous groups and individuals have been striving to get information about the deportees, but none have been successful.
“Not even the International Red Cross, “ Barrios’ attorney, Linette Tobin, said.
The post Trump’s Grinning Oval Office Guest and The Truth About American Gulags appeared first on The Daily Beast.
