Justice denied: U.S. sends Venezuelan asylum-seekers to Salvadoran prison

Even in the face of the Trump regime’s horrific arrests, extraordinary renditions, and forced disappearances of immigrants and asylum-seekers, there are shreds of hope.

Activists and journalists are gradually identifying and sharing the stories of victims, including the 238 Venezuelans and 23 Salvadorans shipped to a prison in El Salvador on March 15. And judges and some politicians are more vocal in support of “due process”—the U.S. constitutional guarantee of at least being heard before being deprived of liberty—for all migrants.

One group has built a website: thedisappeared.org. They make prominent use of the blue triangle, the symbol used by Nazis in their concentration camps to designate migrants. About the 238 Venezuelans, they say: “There is no evidence to support the allegations that they are hardened criminals.” The group also posts on Facebook.

Above on the left is Andry Hernández Romero, age 31. I learned of his case the way many others did. A photojournalist, Philip Holsinger, met the airplanes that brought the Venezuelans to El Salvador and then accompanied them to the prison. A man who caught Holsinger’s attention shouted “I’m innocent” and “I’m gay,” and was crying as his head was shaved. From Holsinger’s photo, friends and family members identified him as Andry. Details of his situation were covered first in LGBTQIA+ media (The Advocate and the Washington Blade) and later by NBC, CBS and elsewhere. His lawyer has mobilized political support in California, including that of Gov. Gavin Newsom and U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia.

The disappeared.org site draws attention to many other cases, including that of two-year-old Maikelys Antonella Espinoza Bernal (below) whose father, Maiker Espinoza Escalona, was sent to the prison in El Salvador. She and her mother Yorely Bernal Inciarte, were supposed to be sent together on a deportation flight back to Venezuela—part of her homeland’s “Vuelta a la Patria” program for citizens willing to go home. But the United States refused to return the child to her mother before she left.

When Yorely arrived back home alone, Venezuelan media and the government took up the family’s cause (image on the left, above). So too did CodePink (right), a women’s peace network in the United States with which I have collaborated to draw attention to the negative impact on Venezuelans of U.S. economic sanctions. 

The Disappeared shared a piece from a group called United Strength for Action about the U.S. role in creating the disaster that Venezuelans face. I can’t concur with all the group said–many people in the United States just can’t see the historical context of U.S. imperialism–but I am relieved that they at least acknowledged the role of U.S. sanctions in creating a humanitarian crisis that drives the exodus of refugees. “This wasn’t foreign policy; it was collective punishment that pushed millions of Venezuelans past their breaking point.”

Since 1998, successive U.S. administrations have done all they could to be rid of Nicolás Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chávez: a coup attempt in 2002, a “revocatory” referendum in 2004, the effort to impose a “president” (Juan Guaidó) whom nobody had voted for, and through waves of sanctions. Given the failure of those efforts to induce regime change and seeing the flow of migrants out of Venezuela, President Joe Biden for a time tried a different approach, one of dialogue and engagement. The early weeks of Trump’s administration gave some hope this could continue, but the hard-liners seem to hold sway once again.

At a May Day march, President Maduro vowed to “rescue” Maikelys along with the Venezuelans now held by El Salvador. He also spoke directly to the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who have tried to reach the United States in recent years: 

“Stop going there. The true dream is that of our land to build with our hands. Stop being victims of xenophobia, of abuse… The only land that will welcome you and serve you like the prodigal son is called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. We must take care of it, fertilize it, and build it. This homeland belongs to all!”

Maduro emphasized Venezuela’s right to build its own social model. “We have the right to true democracy, to our cultural identity. We are not gringos. We are proudly Bolivarian, Latin American, Caribbean. We are Venezuelans!”

Venezuela says it is willing to receive people deported from other countries. Between February and April 25 this year, 3,241 Venezuelans had returned on 16 government-funded flights. Yorely (the mother of Maikelys) came home on just such a flight.

Two more issues. Trump officials say that the people sent to jail in El Salvador were linked to the Tren de Aragua criminal gang, and that they used tattoos to identify the gang members.

It’s good to see “mainstream” media like The New York Times (left) and Wall Street Journal (right) join the rest of us rabble-rousers in calling attention to the Trump regime’s actions.

Trump’s executive order decreeing the deportations said the gang is “conducting irregular warfare and undertaking hostile actions against the United States.”

But that is not true. In an article for The New York Times, a team of experts on violence in Venezuela said Tren de Aragua is not invading the United States. Nor is it a “terrorist organization,” and to call such “criminal groups terrorist is always a stretch since they usually do not aim at changing government policy.” The article goes on to show that Tren de Aragua is not centrally organized, though members were involved in migrant smuggling and the sexual exploitation of Venezuelan migrants in Colombia, Chile and Peru. 

The NYT piece adds that even U.S. intelligence officials do not believe the Maduro government is colluding with the gang, the key assertion in Trump’s justification for invoking the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to render Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador.

Immigration officials used tattoos to “determine” if someone was linked to Tren de Aragua, but the authors of the NYT piece say Venezuelan gangs (unlike Salvador groups like the MS-13) do not use tattoos that way. “Many young Venezuelans, like young people everywhere, borrow from the global culture of iconic symbols and get tattoos. That doesn’t mean they’re in a gang,” they wrote.

Moreover, the Tren de Aragua gang network in Venezuela is largely dismantled.

“The Tren de Aragua is cosmic dust in Venezuela; it no longer exists, we defeated it,” President Maduro said March 19. He was quoted by the English-language Orinoco Tribune in a longer article about the gang’s history in Venezuela.

Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello questioned whether all deportees were Tren de Aragua members, and demanded the US extradite captured suspects. “The US is acting in a confusing manner. They promised to send us Tren de Aragua members, but they have not. Someone there is lying.”

* Update, May 14 * Two-year-old Maikelys has been re-united with her mother in Venezuela. Her father remains in the Trump-Bukele prison in El Salvador. See the statement from CodePink.

From bishop of Chiclayo to Pope Leo XIV

by Jim Hodgson

Like many who have worked in Latin America, I rejoiced when I saw that cardinal-electors chose Robert Francis Prevost, the former bishop of Chiclayo (Peru) to serve as Pope, the bishop of Rome. 

And as one who believes Catholic social teaching is not studied sufficiently, I was over the moon when I understood that Prevost had chosen to be called Leo XIV. The last Leo was Pope Leo XIII, who served from 1878 to 1903. He is respected as a pioneer of modern Catholic social teaching. In his famous 1891 encyclical Rerum novarum, Pope Leo outlined the rights of workers to a fair wage, safe working conditions, and the formation of trade unions.

Yes, there are controversies over the selection of Prevost. 

Prevost talked negatively in 2012 about sexual and gender diversity. But in that same year, Archbishop Jorge Bergoglio (a year later Pope Francis) was still in Buenos Aires and fighting legal reforms promoted by the Kirchner-Fernández governments in favour of same-sex marriage. Jesuit Father James Martin, long an ally of LGBTQIA+ people, spoke positively about Prevost after being part of a table group with him during the Vatican’s Synod on Synodality.

There are allegations that Prevost did not pay sufficient attention to victims of clerical sexual harassment while bishop in Chiclayo. Tragically, it is hard to find any bishop, living or dead, who has adequately served survivors of clerical abuse. The real issue is making rules that are effective in making dioceses submit to civil authorities in cases of crime, and to take victims’ allegations seriously in all cases of harassment or abuse. Perhaps his proximity to scandal will help him and others take further steps toward justice for all victims of clerical abuse. 

Much has changed; more needs to change; and Leo XIV may be a step in the right direction. Let’s work toward full inclusion of—and leadership by—women and 2SLGBTQIA+ people.

The church in Chiclayo

Today, I found myself going back through decades of notes. Here is something I wrote during a visit to Chiclayo in 2017:

“Chiclayo has a new bishop who is more in the line of Pope Francis—a positive sign after many years of traditionalist Opus Dei bishops. The new bishop, my friends said, still needs some education around gender justice, but he’s pretty good on economic justice and on developing lay leadership. Social movements here have bloomed outside of the church, including the LGBTIQ and People Living with HIV and AIDS (PLWHA) movements.”

That conversation unfolded with members of Centro Esperanza, a United Church partner from 2006 to 2018. Their work had roots in progressive Christian base communities. It began with a focus on women, particularly those who were involved in community kitchens organized and run by women in impoverished neighbourhoods. Over time, activities expanded to include programs to prevent domestic violence, stimulate learning in early childhood, and gender justice education among high school students.

Several of my Canadian friends have worked in Chiclayo over the decades, beginning with members of the Scarboro Foreign Missionary Society. Their leadership is part of what shaped Chiclayo’s influence on its new bishop.

Catholic Social Teaching

And I went back through my notes on Catholic social teaching. One of the most complete—and still quite short—summaries is a presentation by Bill Ryan, a Canadian Jesuit and social activist. He was a general secretary of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) during part of the time I worked with the Canadian Council of Churches.

In 2000, he spoke to the Coady International Institute at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, on the development of Catholic social teaching. Some key points:

What is Catholic Social Teaching? It is a formula or a set of principles for reflection to evaluate the framework of society and to provide criteria for prudential judgment and direction for current policy and action.

  • The inherent human dignity of every person that makes them “sacred”—created in God’s image. This is the ultimate grounding for human rights.
  • The principle of human solidarity. Every person is radically social by nature and by nurture, destined to build up and share human community. The basic element of all creation is interconnectivity, interdependence, and relationships between and among all creatures. Without community we are not human.
  • The principle of subsidiarity. This principle balances the power between the individual and community. It calls for a pluralistic structuring of power in society. That is, human society is more than government; it is the thousands of voluntary and corporate associations that make up civil society. Decisions in society should be taken at the lowest competent level of society.
  • The neediest among us have a special claim on our care and compassion.
  • The common good: the social conditions that allow people to reach their full human potential and to realize their human dignity.
  • And remember that fidelity in relationships extends also to our caring for our “mother” earth.

All of this, it seems to me, is “teaching”—asserting principles, not doctrine.

Ryan said it was untidy, and it is. Church leaders, he said, attempt “to balance the maintenance needs of the church with those of its prophetic mission. What priority should they place on safeguarding unity in the church while preaching the prophetic preferential option for the poor?”

The process, he added, may become even more untidy as more conferences of bishops learn with their people how better to “read the signs of the times” and to “engage Christian communities in believing, preaching and acting on a preferential option for the poor.”

Pope Francis opened a process—“synodality”—for bishops to talk with their people. From his opening remarks, Pope Leo XIV seems determined to keep that door open.

The next morning, the new pope said Christians must offer witness in a world that prefers power, pleasure, and success to faith. Where Christians are “mocked, opposed, despised or at best tolerated and pitied” is where the Catholic Church’s “missionary outreach is most desperately needed,” he said in his first homily as leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.

"Another World is Possible," World Social Forum, Porto Alegre, Brasil (2005)

Pope Francis and Our Common Home

By Jim Hodgson

On this Earth Day, I want to share with you a reflection by Bishop Francisco Duque of the Anglican Church in Colombia. I worked with him in a larger team in one period (already a dozen years or more ago) of ecumenical efforts for peace with justice in Colombia. 

Indeed, it was during that work that I stood with friends in a coffee shop in Bogotá and watched news of the election of the archbishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, as pope on March 13, 2013.  I did not rejoice. All that I knew of Bergoglio was that he had opposed several of the initiatives of the governments of Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández as it expanded sex education in public schools and legalized same-sex marriage in 2010.

Images of St. Francis. Left: preaching to the birds. Right: “Make me an instrument of your peace / Bless your people, Lord” is one I saw in Real de Catorce, San Luis de Potosí, in October 2024.

But Pope Francis surprised me: first by choosing to be known by the name Francis, signalling he would follow St. Francis of Assisi, long admired for his inspiration to contemporary ecological commitment and for initiating dialogue with Muslim leaders during Christian Europe’s “crusades” in the Middle East. And then he surprised me again with steps that showed respect for LGBTQIA+ people: first, “Who am I to judge?”, and later with his openness to diverse voices heard through synods, his advocacy for peace, the rights of migrants and debt forgiveness. I can only wish he had done more with regard to the rights of women and pray that his successor can go further.

In Canada, Pope Francis will undoubtedly be remembered most for his “penitential pilgrimage” and encounters with Indigenous peoples in 2022. Despite resistance from most of Canada’s Catholic bishops, he came, offered a (not fully accepted) apology, and gave truth and reconciliation efforts a dramatic push forward in public awareness.

But I think his lasting global legacy will be his way of holding faithful action for social justice and action for ecological justice together coherently. Here’s what Bishop Duque had to say.

Left: Bishop Duque at a Methodist assembly in Medellín in 2012. Right: Pope Francis meets representatives of social movements in 2024.

Francis, pope of Amazonia and our common home

Francisco Duque

The world mourns the loss of a spiritual leader who transcended borders, creeds and generations. Pope Francis not only was the first Latin American pontiff. He was, above all, the pope of the Amazon and caretaker of our Common Home. His legacy, immense and profoundly humanist, will remain inscribed in the planet’s memory as a prophetic voice that urges us to hear the clamour of the earth and the cry of the poor as a single call.

From the time of the publication of his encyclical Laudato Si’ in 2015, Pope Francis illuminated the ways of global ecological awareness. With valiant and committed language, he denounced the structural causes of environmental collapse, unlimited resource extraction, climate injustice and indifference toward the suffering of communities that are most vulnerable, especially those who live in the lungs of the world: tropical forests, the Amazon in particular. 

His spiritual leadership was also political and ethical. He convened scientists, Indigenous leaders, activists and religious authorities from around the world to make a new pact between humanity and nature. He promoted an integral ecology that did not separate the environment from the social. He recognized in Indigenous peoples that they are millennial guardians of wisdom. His encouragement of the Synod of the Amazon in 2019 marked a before and after: Amazonia was heard in the heart of the Vatican, not as a forgotten periphery but as a vital centre for the future of the planet.

From the Inter-Religious Initiative for the Tropical Forests (IRI-Colombia), we hold up a prayer of gratitude and hope. Gratitude for his strong words, for his planetary vision, for having returned to the faith its active dimension of protection of creation. Hope because the fertile seeds he planted will continue to bear fruit in the struggles of those who do not resign ourselves to ecocide or silence in the face of injustice.

Pope Francis leaves us a road map for humanity. There will not be peace without environmental justice. There will be no future without forests. There will be no reconciliation without a deep ecological conversion. His legacy challenges governments, businesses, religions and people. His voice remains alive, inspiring a global inter-religious movement that is committed to life. In these days of farewell, we echo his own question, charged with urgency and tenderness:

“What kind of world do we want to leave to those who come after us, to children who are now growing up?” (LS 160).?”

Thank you, Pope Francis, for reminding us that care for Amazonia is an act of faith, love and justice.