Tuesday, May 13, 2025
The Science I Would Be Doing if I Weren’t in ICE Detention
The Science I Would Be Doing if I Weren’t in ICE Detention
“Kseniia Petrova, a Russian scientist working at Harvard Medical School, was detained by ICE for failing to declare frog embryos. Her work with the NoRI microscope, which can measure the chemical makeup of cells with unprecedented precision, could lead to breakthroughs in treating diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s. Petrova, fearing arrest if she returns to Russia, hopes a federal judge will rule in her favor and allow her to return to her lab and finish analyzing crucial data.
By Kseniia Petrova
Ms. Petrova is a Russian scientist who works in a lab at Harvard Medical School. She told her story through a Times Opinion editor, Alex Ellerbeck, over multiple calls from an ICE detention center.
When I moved to America from Russia to join a biology lab at Harvard Medical School in 2023, it felt as if I found my dream job. America was a paradise for science. Everything was flourishing. There was freedom of discourse; conferences, seminars. It was nothing like the environment I had left behind in Russia, where international sanctions meant there weren’t enough supplies to do experiments and I once declined a job offer that was contingent on me no longer protesting the war in Ukraine. After I was arrested for taking part in a protest, I fled the country, knowing that I could not continue to live or work as a scientist there.
My background is in bioinformatics, a field that uses computational tools to understand biology. In my lab at Harvard, I worked with a microscope that we called NoRI (short for Normalized Raman Imaging). This microscope, which was created in our lab, is the only one like it in the world. What makes it unique is its ability to measure the chemical makeup of cells to an astonishing and novel degree of precision, offering new insights into disease and aging that could one day pave the way for healthier life spans and treatments for diseases like Alzheimer’s and cancer.
There is so much beauty in what we can learn through science, in how complicated life is, and in trying to understand how it works. It’s what motivates me to wake up every morning.
I haven’t been in my lab or worked with my microscope since February, when I was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as I was returning to Boston from a vacation in France. At Logan International Airport, I did not complete a customs declaration for frog embryos (for use in our lab’s research) in my luggage. I’m told this would normally result in a warning or a fine. Instead, my visa was revoked and I was sent to a detention center in Louisiana, where I have spent the past three months with roughly 100 other women. We share one room with dormitory-style beds.
I’m used to spending up to 12 hours a day in the lab, talking with colleagues about tricky scientific questions and fine-tuning the algorithms used for NoRI. At the detention center, there is no access to computers and six phones are shared among all of us. The calls cost $5 for 15 minutes, at which point they cut off. It’s constantly noisy and cold. Fortunately, my beautiful colleagues have mailed me academic articles and books (I’m reading a wonderful one now about biochemistry called “Transformer” that I recommend to everyone).
I’ve asked a colleague to share some of the images from NoRI with The Times. Maybe if people see them, they will understand why I want to get back to work. Until now, no one outside our lab has seen these images, which are of tissue samples taken from mice and rats that we hope will provide greater understanding of how organs age and diseases develop in the body.
A traditional light microscope, like one you might find in a high school biology class, works by shining light through lenses to magnify a sample.
Our microscope is different. It takes advantage of the fact that each type of molecule has its own unique frequency of vibration. If we pass a specialized laser through a sample, we can measure how it interacts with these vibrations and generate a detailed image that shows the kinds of molecules inside.
Because of the way our microscope works, we don’t have to use dyes that can make samples more visible but commonly damage them. That may seem like a minor point, but it’s utterly revolutionary. Take lipids, types of fat in the body. It’s almost impossible to study lipids through traditional microscopes because they are so easily destroyed while preparing the sample.
The accumulation of fat in tissues plays a crucial role in diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease and cancers. The fact that scientists haven’t been able to measure lipids accurately before now has made it harder to understand these diseases. With NoRI, our lab is uncovering new hallmarks of diseases, learning about the role of lipids and cholesterol in cancer development and gaining new knowledge about cells in the brain and the development of Alzheimer’s disease.
Our next project with NoRI — which we started just before I was detained — is to use the microscope to produce what we are calling an “atlas of aging.” Everyone takes aging for granted and knows the signs of it, but no one really understands why it happens. At our Harvard lab, we plan to analyze many different samples of organs at different ages to understand how each organ changes over time. Images of kidneys from young and old rats have revealed new features of how kidneys age. The goal is to use these discoveries to improve the quality of life of older people.
My colleagues tell me that since my detention, the work with NoRI has ground to a halt. Without me there to help, the lab has been unable to analyze the image data that the microscope generates.
The political environment in Russia made it hard to do science because everything was unpredictable. The war in Ukraine affected scientists’ ability to get funding and materials; we worried that our male colleagues might be conscripted. That type of uncertainty is incompatible with science, which requires the ability to plan what type of experiments and research you will do a year into the future. I fear that if I return to Russia I will be arrested.
I am hesitant to comment broadly on what it’s like for scientists now in America because I have only limited information about what is going on outside of this detention center. What I do know is that my colleagues, many of whom are, like me, foreign scientists, are terrified of being detained or having their visa status revoked.
On Wednesday a federal judge in Vermont will hear a petition challenging my detention. I am not able to attend the hearing, but my lawyer, as well as colleagues and friends, will be there.
During my time in detention I have been learning about immigration in America. I’m meeting all sorts of people with unique stories. One young woman here in ICE detention has been in the United States for more than a dozen years; her fiancée is an American citizen, but her next court date, in which she could finally be released on parole, is not until October. Another woman, who was seeking political asylum, was just deported; her daughter has legal status in America, and they don’t know when or if they’ll meet again. The people I’ve spent time with are not dangerous criminals. They are friendly, kind people.
I hope that the judge rules Wednesday that I can be released, so I can return to my lab. There is a data set that I’m halfway finished analyzing. I want to go home and finish it.“
Sunday, May 11, 2025
Trump Declares Biden’s Digital Equity Act ‘Racist’ and ‘Unconstitutional’ - The New York Times
Trump Declares High-Speed Internet Program ‘Racist’ and ‘Unconstitutional’
"President Trump denounced the Biden-era Digital Equity Act as “woke handouts based on race,” raging in a social media post against a broad effort to improve high-speed internet access.
President Trump on Thursday attacked a law signed by President Joseph R. Biden Jr. aimed at expanding high-speed internet access, calling the effort “racist” and “totally unconstitutional” and threatening to end it “immediately.”
Mr. Trump’s statement was one of the starkest examples yet of his slash-and-burn approach to dismantling the legacy of his immediate predecessor in this term in office. The Digital Equity Act, a little-known effort to improve high-speed internet access in communities with poor access, was tucked into the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill that Mr. Biden signed into law early in his presidency.
The act was written to help many different groups, including veterans, older people and disabled and rural communities. But Mr. Trump, using the incendiary language that has been a trademark of his political career, denounced the law on Thursday for also seeking to improve internet access for ethnic and racial minorities, raging in a social media post that it amounted to providing “woke handouts based on race.”
In reality, the law barely mentions race at all, only stating that racial minorities could be covered by the program while including a nondiscrimination clause that says that individuals could not be excluded from the program “on the basis of actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, or disability” — language taken from the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Digital Equity Act, drafted by Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, provides $60 million in grants to states and territories to help them come up with plansto make internet access more equal, as well as $2.5 billion in grants to help put those plans into effect. Some of that funding has already been disbursed to states with approved plans — including red, rural states like Indiana, Alabama, Arkansas, Iowa and Kansas. Hundreds of millions of dollars in additional funding were approved by the Biden administration in the weeks before Mr. Trump took office, but have not yet been distributed.
It was not immediately clear whether Mr. Trump had carried out his threat to end the grants, which were appropriated through Congress. The agencies that oversee the internet initiative, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the Department of Commerce, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The cancellation of grants to states would almost certainly be challenged in the courts, where the Trump administration has had some success in blocking, at least temporarily, challenges to its suspension of grants related to equity and diversity programs. However, in late March, the administration failed to ward off a block on its sweeping freeze of federal funds to states.
Chris Cameron is a Times reporter covering Washington, focusing on breaking news and the Trump administration."
Saturday, May 10, 2025
Friday, May 09, 2025
New Jersey mayor arrested at ICE detention center where he was protesting, prosecutor says
New Jersey mayor arrested at ICE detention center where he was protesting, prosecutor says
“Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested at a federal immigration detention center while protesting its opening. He was arrested for trespassing after attempting to join members of Congress in entering the facility. The Department of Homeland Security stated that the mayor and others illegally entered the facility, putting agents and detainees at risk.
Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested Friday at a federal immigration detention center where he has been protesting its opening this week, a federal prosecutor said.
Alina Habba, interim U.S. attorney for New Jersey, said on the social platform X that Baraka committed trespass and ignored warnings from Homeland Security personnel to leave Delaney Hall, a detention facility run by private prison operator GEO Group.
Habba said Baraka had “chosen to disregard the law” and added that he was taken into custody.
Baraka, a Democrat who is running to succeed term-limited Gov. Phil Murphy, has embraced the fight with the Trump administration over illegal immigration.
He has aggressively pushed back against the construction and opening of the 1,000-bed detention center, arguing that it should not be allowed to open because of building permit issues.
Witnesses said the arrest came after Baraka attempted to join three members of New Jersey’s congressional delegation, Reps. Robert Menendez, LaMonica McIver, and Bonnie Watson Coleman, attempting to enter the facility.
When federal officials blocked his entry, a heated argument broke out, according to Viri Martinez, an activist with the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice. It continued even after Baraka returned to the public side of the gates.
“There was yelling and pushing,” Martinez said. “Then the officers swarmed Baraka. They threw one of the organizers to the ground. They put Baraka in handcuffs and put him in an unmarked car.”
In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said that the lawmakers had not asked for a tour of the facility, contrary to witnesses’ accounts. The department said further that as a bus carrying detainees was entering, “a group of protestors, including two members of the U.S. House of Representatives, stormed the gate and broke into the detention facility.”
Homeland Security did not respond to specific questions about whether the House members had a visit scheduled and why only the mayor was arrested.
The statement said Menendez, Watson Coleman, and a number of protesters were currently “holed up in a guard shack” at the facility.
Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin was quoted in the statement as calling it “beyond a bizarre political stunt” and saying it put agents’ and detainees’ safety at risk.
“Members of Congress are not above the law and cannot illegally break into detention facilities. Had these members requested a tour, we would have facilitated a tour,” McLaughlin said.
In video of the altercation shared with The Associated Press, a federal official in a jacket with the logo of the Homeland Security Investigations can be heard telling Baraka he could not join a tour of the facility because “you are not a Congress member.”
Baraka then left the secure area, rejoining protesters on the public side of the gate. Video showed him speaking through the gate to a man in a suit, who said: “They’re talking about coming back to arrest you.”
“I’m not on their property. They can’t come out on the street and arrest me,” Baraka replied.
Minutes later several ICE agents, some wearing face coverings, surrounded him and others on the public side. As protesters cried out, “Shame,” Baraka was dragged back through the security gate in handcuffs.
“The ICE personnel came out aggressively to arrest him and grab him,” said Julie Moreno, a New Jersey state captain of American Families United. “It didn’t make any sense why they chose that moment to grab him while he was outside the gates.”
An email and phone message left with the mayor’s communications office were not immediately answered Friday afternoon. Kabir Moss, a spokesperson for Baraka’s gubernatorial campaign, said, “We are actively monitoring and will provide more details as they become available.”
The two-story building next to a county prison formerly operated as a halfway house.
In February, ICE awarded a 15-year contract to The Geo Group Inc. to run the Newark detention center. Geo valued the contract at $1 billion, in an unusually long and large agreement for ICE.
The announcement was part of President Donald Trump’s plans to sharply increase detention beds nationwide from a budget of about 41,000 beds this year.
Baraka sued GEO Group soon after the deal was announced.
Geo touted the contract with Delaney Hall during its earnings call with shareholders Wednesday, with CEO David Donahue saying it was expected to generate more than $60 million a year in revenue. He said the facility began the intake process May 1.
Hall said the activation of the facility and another in Michigan would increase total capacity under contract with ICE from around 20,000 beds to around 23,000.
DHS said in its statement that the facility has the proper permits and inspections have been cleared.“
Judge orders release on bail of Tufts student battling deportation order | US immigration | The Guardian
Judge orders release on bail of Tufts student battling deportation order
"Judge says detainment of Rümeysa Öztürk, who was arrested for political speech, ‘raises very significant due process concerns’
A federal judge in Vermont on Friday morning ordered the release on bail of a Tufts University student arrested in March for her political speech and now held in Louisianain what she and her lawyers argue is a breach of her constitutional rights.
The judge had ordered Rümeysa Öztürk’s return to Vermont, where she was briefly held after being grabbed on the street by masked immigration agents near Boston, for hearings. But the judge decided not to wait for her physical transportation and she appeared remotely from Louisiana at the hearing in Burlington on Friday.
The ruling to release her came at the end of a hearing where the judge, William Sessions, said that the process by which she was placed in immigration detention “raises very significant due process concerns”.
On 25 March, Öztürk, 30, a Turkish national and PhD student studying child development, had been bundled into an unmarked car by agents to be taken away without due process and is battling a deportation order issued by the Trump administration after she co-authored an opinion article in a student newspaper that was critical of Israel.
Sessions said her continued detention “potentially chills the speech of the millions and millions of individuals in this country who are not citizens. Any one of them may now avoid exercising their first amendment rights for fear of being whisked away to a detention center from their home. For all of those reasons, the court finds that her continued detention cannot stand, that bail is necessary to make the habeas [petition] … effective.”
He added: “This is a woman who’s just totally committed to her academic career …there is absolutely no evidence that that she has engaged in violence or advocated violence. She has no criminal record … therefore, the court finds that she does not pose a danger to the community.”
He ordered the Trump administration to release Öztürk from custody “immediately” pending further proceedings, and said she was free to “return to her home in Massachusetts”.
The administration is attempting to deport Öztürk under a rarely used immigration statute giving the secretary of state the authority to remove immigrants deemed harmful to US foreign policy. Her lawyers say it is a flagrant violation of her constitutional right to free speech.
The judge said there was no evidence from the government against Öztürk other than its view of her opinion article and therefore he supported her argument that “the reason that she has been detained is simply and purely the expression that she made … in violation of her first amendment rights.”
She appeared on video at the hearing on Friday dressed in a bright orange prison jumpsuit reminiscent of uniforms for terrorism suspects held at Guantánamo Bay.
According to court filings, Öztürk has suffered multiple asthma attacks in detention that she has struggled to get treated for, and has had her hijab forcibly removed.
Speaking to the judge on Friday, Öztürk said she has suffered 12 asthma attacks since her detention, saying: “Now they are between five to 45 minutes and they are more intense … longer and harder to stop.”
“We are not allowed to take fresh air when we need to take it ... Also there is no divider between the showers,” Öztürk said.
“Also the maximum capacity for the room is indicated … for 14 people but there are 24 people living in a small area, spanning … more than 22 hours inside of the same locked cell,” she added.
Following Öztürk’s initial testimony, her doctor, Jessica McCannon, testified about her diagnosis of Öztürk’s asthma. At one point, Öztürk had an asthma attack during McCannon’s testimony, which her lawyers had to interrupt. The judge then excused Öztürk and allowed her to temporarily step out of the room to use the bathroom.
Addressing the court, McCannon said: “She is at significantly increased risk of developing an asthma exacerbation if not released, that would potentially require emergency evaluation.
“If not treated appropriately and quickly, patients can suffer morbidity and mortality related to asthma exacerbations,” she added.
Sara Johnson, director of graduate studies at Tufts University’s department of child study and human development, who is also Öztürk’s program adviser, also testified.
“Rümeysa is a critical part of our lab … My four PhD students, including Rümeysa, run a peer-review group of all of their work, and they are missing out on her very constructive yet extremely rigorous comments,” she said.
She added: “Rümeysa is also a mentor to many more junior students in our department and so they are missing those opportunities to learn from her.”
Testimony on unsanitary conditions in detention echoes other accounts from detainees and immigration advocates who have reported rotten food and the denial of medical care in the facility in Basile, Louisiana, which is among a series of facilities in the state.
Öztürk’s legal team – which includes the ACLU and Clear (Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility), a legal clinic affiliated with the City University of New York – filed a challenge to her detention, in federal court in Vermont.
“I am relieved and ecstatic that Rümeysa has been ordered released. Unfortunately, it is 45 days too late. She has been imprisoned all these days for simply writing an op-ed that called for human rights and dignity for the people in Palestine. When did speaking up against oppression become a crime?” said Mahsa Khanbabai of Khanbabai Immigration Law.
Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic senator for Massachusetts, posted on X: “The Trump administration must release Rümeysa Öztürk right now.”
Öztürk is one of several international students detained by the Trump administration over their pro-Palestinian advocacy on campus.
“The government has spared no effort to evade accountability and deny her due process. Today, the court delivered reprieve and justice,” said Mudassar Toppa, a staff attorney at Clear.
Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting"
Bill Gates accuses Elon Musk of killing poor children by cutting foreign aid and says he's giving away his wealth
Bill Gates accuses Elon Musk of killing poor children by cutting foreign aid and says he's giving away his wealth
"Gates also announced that his Gates Foundation will cease operations in 2045, sooner than previously planned.
Bill Gates accused Elon Musk of killing poor children as he announced Thursday that he would donate his remaining fortune to his charity, the Gates Foundation.
In a wide-ranging interview with the Financial Times, Gates addressed Musk's recent cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development, the federal agency responsible for distributing foreign aid around the world. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE, effectively shut down the agency in February.
Gates, 69, criticized the shuttering of the agency, accusing Musk of risking a resurgence of diseases such as measles, HIV and polio.
“The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one,” he told the Financial Times.
“I’d love for him to go in and meet the children that have now been infected with HIV because he cut that money,” Gates said of Musk.
A representative for Musk did not immediately reply to a request for comment. Last week, Musk announced that he would be stepping back from his role at DOGE after Tesla, one of his several companies, reported a sizable drop in first-quarter profit and revenue.
"Elon Musk is a patriot working to fulfill President Trump’s mission to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse," Harrison Fields, a spokesperson for DOGE, said in a statement. "Backbenchers should celebrate the selfless efforts of America’s most innovative entrepreneur, who is dedicating time to support American taxpayers and hold Washington accountable to the people of this great nation.”
Gates, who co-founded Microsoft, also announced that he would give up his remaining wealth to his nonprofit foundation over the next two decades in the FT interview, an interview published in The New York Times and a lengthy blog post on the Gate Foundation’s website, all published on Thursday, the nonprofit's 25th anniversary.
The billionaire philanthropist also said that the foundation would be ceasing operations on Dec. 31, 2045, sooner than originally projected.
"People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that 'he died rich' will not be one of them," Gates wrote in the blog post. "There are too many urgent problems to solve for me to hold onto resources that could be used to help people."
"That is why I have decided to give my money back to society much faster than I had originally planned," he added.
In February, Gates met with President Donald Trump at the White House to advocate for continuing foreign aid disbursements from USAID. In an interview with NBC’s “TODAY” show shortly after the White House meeting, Gates warned that replicating USAID's work would be difficult.
"Getting those people out there in their depth of experience, that’s an asset that would be very hard to re-create," he said.
Gates said in his blog post that since he and his former wife, Melinda Gates, started the foundation in 2000, it has donated more than $100 billion. He said he expects it will donate another $200 billion over the next 20 years, including from its endowment and Gates' future personal donations.
Gates has a personal fortune of $168 billion, according to Bloomberg's Billionaires' Index, which ranks him as the fifth-wealthiest person in the world.
"The Gates Foundation’s mission remains rooted in the idea that where you are born should not determine your opportunities," Gates wrote. "I am excited to see how our next chapter continues to move the world closer to a future where everyone everywhere has the chance to live a healthy and productive life."
Thursday, May 08, 2025
Family of man sent to El Salvador prison looks for any signs he’s still alive: ‘We don’t know anything’ | El Salvador | The Guardian
Family of man sent to El Salvador prison looks for any signs he’s still alive: ‘We don’t know anything’
"Jerce Barrios told his family he might be transferred from a California detention center – no one’s heard from him since
The last time Joregelis Barrios heard from her brother Jerce, the call had lasted just one minute.
Immigration officials had moved Jerce from the detention center in southern Californiawhere he had been for six months to another one in Texas. He sounded worried, as if he had been crying. He told his sister he might be transferred somewhere else soon.
No one has heard from him since.
Within hours of that call, Jerce was forced on a plane to El Salvador and booked into the country’s most notorious prison: the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (Cecot). He was one of more than 260 men that Donald Trump’s administration had accused of terrorism and gang membership. His sister thought she recognized him in the videos shared by the Salvadorian government, among the crowd of deportees with shaved heads and white prison uniforms, being frogmarched to their cells by guards in ski masks. Then CBS News published a leaked list of the deportees’ names, confirming her worst worries.
“It was a shock,” said Joregelis. “Jerce has always avoided trouble.”
Jerce, a 36-year-old professional soccer player and father of two, had come to the US last year to seek asylum, after fleeing political violence and repression in Venezuela.
An immigration hearing to review his case was scheduled for 17 April, just weeks after he was abruptly exiled to El Salvador.
“He was so optimistic, up till the last day we spoke,” said Mariyin Araujo, Jerce’s ex-partner and the co-parent of his two daughters, Isabella and six-year-old Carla.
“He believed the laws there in the US were the best, that it would all work out soon,” she said. “How far did that get him?”
Barrios was flown to Cecot on 15 March. For the past two months, his family has been obsessively scanning news updates and social media posts for any sign that he is still alive and healthy. They have been closely monitoring the court cases challenging Trump’s invocation of the wartime powers of the Alien Enemies Act against the Venezuela-based gang known as Tren de Aragua, to exile immigrants – most of whom have no criminal history – to one of the most notorious prisons in the world. And they have been wondering what, if anything, they can do for Jerce.
In Machiques, a small town near Venezuela’s border with Colombia, locals have painted a mural in Jerce’s honor. His old soccer club, Perijaneros FC, started a campaign demanding his release – and children from the local soccer school held a prayer circle for him. “We have created TikToks about him, we have organized protests, we held vigils,” said Araujo.
“We have looked for so many ways to be his voice at this moment, when he is unable to speak,” she said.
But as the weeks pass, she said, she is increasingly unsure what more she can do. The Trump administration has doubled down on its right to send immigrants to Cecot, despite a federal judge’s order barring it from doing so.
To justify these extraordinary deportations, both Trump and El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, have publicly insisted that the men sent to Cecot are the worst of the worst gang members. To mark Trump’s first 100 days in office, his Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a list of “Noteworthy individuals deported or prevented from entering the US” – and characterized Jerce as “a member of the vicious Tren de Aragua gang” who “has tattoos that are consistent with those indicating membership” in the gang.
Jerce’s family and lawyer say the only evidence DHS has shared so far is that he has a tattoo on his arm of a soccer ball with a crown on top – a tribute to his favorite soccer team, Real Madrid. His other tattoos include the names of his parents, siblings and daughters.
“My brother is not a criminal,” Joregelis said. “They took him away without any proof. They took him because he’s Venezuelan, because he had tattoos, and because he is Black.”
She’s still haunted by the strange sense of finality in his last call. He had asked after his daughters, and whether his Isabella had been eating well. “I told him she had just had some plátano,” Jorgelis said. “And then he said to me: ‘I love you.’ He said to tell our mom to take care.”
Araujo has struggled to explain to her daughters why their father hasn’t been calling them regularly. She lives in Mexico City with Carla, her six-year-old. Isabella, three, is in Venezuela with Jorgelis.
Carla, especially, has started asking a lot of questions. “Recently, she said to me: ‘Mom, Dad hasn’t called me, Mom. Could it be that he no longer loves me?’” Araujo said. “So I had to tell her a little bit about what had happened.”
Now Carla cries constantly, Araujo said. She misses her father, she misses his scrambled eggs, she misses watching him play soccer. She keeps asking if he is being treated well in detention, if he is eating well. “It’s too difficult,” Araujo said. “From a young age, kids learn that if you do something bad, you go to jail. And now she keeps asking how come her dad is in jail, he’s not a bad person. And I don’t know how to explain. I don’t know how to tell her there is no logical explanation.”
Jerce had been in detention of some sort ever since he set foot inside the US.
Last year, he had used the now defunct CBP One app to request an appointment with immigration officials at the border. After more than four months of waiting in Mexico, agents determined that he had a credible case for asylum – but decided to detain him in a maximum-security detention center in San Ysidro, California, while he awaited his hearing.
“Jerce didn’t tell us much about what it was like there, because he didn’t want us to worry,” said Jorgelis. “The only thing he did say was, why did he have to be Black? I believe he faced a lot of racism there.”
When he first arrived at the border, immigration officials had alleged he might be a gang member based on his tattoos and on social media posts in which he was making the hand gesture commonly used to signify “I love you” in sign language, or “rock and roll”.
His lawyer, Linette Tobin, submitted evidence proving that he had no criminal record in Venezuela, and that his hand gesture was benign. She also obtained a declaration from his tattoo artists affirming that his ink was a tribute to the Spanish soccer team and not to a gang. Officials agreed to move him out of maximum security shortly thereafter, in the fall of last year. “I thought that was a tacit admission, an acknowledgement that he’s not a gang member,” Tobin said.
When officials moved him to a detention center in Texas, Tobin worried that transfer would complicate his asylum proceedings. Since she is based in California, she wasn’t sure whether she’d be able to continue to represent him in Texas.
Jerce had been worried when Tobin last spoke to him on the phone, in March, but she had reassured him that he still had a strong case for asylum. Now, the US government has petitioned to dismiss Jerce’s asylum case, she said, “on the basis that – would you believe it – he’s not here in the US”.
“I mean, he’d love to be here if he could!” she said.
Other than ensuring that his case remains open, Tobin said she’s not sure what more she can do for her client. After the ACLU sued Donald Trump over his unilateral use of the Alien Enemies Act to remove alleged members from the US without legal process, the supreme court ruled that detainees subject to deportation must be given an opportunity to challenge their removals.
But the highest court’s ruling leaves uncertain what people like Jerce, who are already stuck in Salvadorian prison, are supposed to do now. As that case moves forward, Tobin hopes the ACLU will be able to successfully challenge all the deportations.
But in a separate case over the expulsion of Kilmar Ábrego García, whom the administration admitted was sent to Cecot in error, the supreme court asked the administration to facilitate Ábrego García’s return to the US – and the administration said it couldn’t, and wouldn’t.
In his last calls with his family, Jerce told them he’d be out of detention soon – that it would all be better soon. Once he was granted asylum, he said, he would try to join a soccer league in the US and start earning some money. He had promised Carla he’d buy her a TV soon.
Now, Araujo said: “I don’t even know if he is alive. We don’t know anything. The last thing we saw was a video of them, and after that video many speculations, but nothing is certain.”