Stories
Andry
“We were stuck in hell, and we were told we would never leave that place.”
Andry Hernández Romero recalled of the four months he was held incommunicado in El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison while being tortured, beaten and subjected to sexual abuse.
Andry is a gay man who fled persecution in Venezuela to seek asylum in the United States. While his asylum claim was pending before a U.S. immigration court, the Trump administration disappeared Hernández Romero and others to CECOT. He and other Venezuelans the Trump administration claimed were gang members, in many cases without any evidence of criminal records or gang membership, were eventually forcibly returned to Venezuela as part of a prisoner swap, without consideration of the harms they fled there.
F.A.
F.A. and her husband were targeted by the Turkish government for their membership in the Gülen, also known as Hizmet, movement, a religious and political movement in Turkey.
After a warrant was issued for his arrest, F.A.’s husband fled Turkey to seek asylum in the United States. F.A. followed with their two minor children after the disappearance of one of the children’s teachers and reports of the torture of Gülen movement members. F.A. and her children entered the United States in early February 2025 and repeatedly told immigration officials that they had come to seek asylum and that F.A. ʼs husband was in the United States seeking asylum for the same reasons. After nine days in detention, F.A. and her children were expelled on a military plane to Panama, where they were detained in a hotel without the ability to communicate with anyone outside.
As she said in her declaration filed with a U.S. federal court:
“While we were at the hotel…some government officials came to tell us that if we wanted to stay in Panama, we would have to go to a detention camp in the jungle… By the way they talked about it, I was fearful that we would not survive if we got sent there. For that reason, I felt pressured to accept a return to Turkey for myself and my kids. We are now in hiding in Turkey, and I am unable to find a job because of my affiliation with the Gülen…I live in fear every day. I pray that we can reunite with my husband soon.”
D.A.
D.A., a political activist who was violently attacked in Nigeria and is married to a U.S. citizen, and K.S. a bisexual man from Gambia (where same-sex relationships are criminalized) were both granted protection from removal based on probable persecution and torture in their home countries.
ICE nonetheless deported them without paperwork to Ghana on a military cargo plane in the middle of the night alongside a dozen other West African men and women. Upon arrival, Ghana immediately deported K.S. to Gambia in a clear act of chain refoulement. D.A. was detained in a camp under terrible conditions for more than two weeks and with limited access to a phone to call his wife– until Ghanaian authorities deported him to Togo.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia
The attempt to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to a third country underscores that the Trump administration is using the threat of forced transfer as a means of coercion or punishment against immigrants who are trying to exercise their rights or who have been granted protection against removal to their home countries.
The Trump administration mistakenly sent Abrego Garcia to CECOT in violation of an immigration court withholding of removal order finding that he would likely be persecuted if returned to El Salvador. In El Salvador, Abrego Garcia was subject to “severe beatings, severe sleep deprivation, inadequate nutrition, and psychological torture.
Since being required by a federal court order to return Abrego García to the United States, the Trump administration has been relentless in trying to punish him through criminal prosecution, belatedly charging him for smuggling that allegedly occurred in 2022. DHS also told Abrego Garcia that if he pled guilty to a criminal charge, he would be deported to Costa Rica; otherwise, DHS would deport him to Uganda. But when Abrego Garcia arranged to depart for Costa Rica, DHS continued to insist on his removal elsewhere and asked officials from Eswatini, Ghana, Uganda, and Liberia to accept Abrego Garcia.
In the words of Abrego Garcia’s attorney to a federal judge in Maryland:
“effectively, they [Trump administration officials] are holding hostage passage to Costa Rica to … induce him to plead guilty…They have spun the globe and picked various places that they can identify, whether it's to control him for political gain …selecting places…he has no relationship to.”