Seeking $56 Million, Legal Migrant Claims ICE Intentionally Sent Him ​to Salvadoran Prison

A Utah law firm said Tuesday that it plans to sue the US government for its allegedly unlawful detention and deportation of a Venezuelan immigrant who was sent to a maximum security prison in El Salvador known for its torture and abuse of inmates.

“Our client is a young Venezuelan man who came into the US legally to escape threats of violence by the Venezuelan government against his family for their opposition to the Maduro regime," said Brent Ward, an attorney at Parker & McConkie, referring to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who was kidnapped by US forces during a January invasion of his country.

Ward said that the client—identified by the pseudonym "Johnny Hernandez"—is seeking $56 million in damages and "has no criminal record either in the US or in Venezuela."

Hernandez was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers and subsequently deported to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in Tecoluca, central El Salvador, where he allegedly suffered torture and other abuse.

“The Trump administration knowingly and unlawfully locked up an innocent person for four months in a concentration camp-like prison where he suffered torture, shooting, beatings, and solitary confinement," Ward stated. "When the US government knowingly and purposefully violates the law by detaining and deporting innocent individuals on false charges and is not held responsible, the individual rights of not just legal immigrants but all Americans are placed in jeopardy."

"Our client suffered catastrophic injuries in CECOT from which he will never fully recover," the lawyer said. "Failing to demand accountability now places all Americans in jeopardy in the future.”

The impending lawsuit comes as ICE proposes to literally warehouse up to 10,000 arrested immigrants in a "megacenter" in Salt Lake City, Utah. Opponents have compared the 833,000-square foot facility to a concentration camp akin to the Topaz War Relocation Center, a harsh, desolate desert prison where Japanese Americans and Japanese people living in the Western US were forcibly interned during World War II.

The case also follows last week's filing of a lawsuit by Neiyerver Adrián León Rengel, one of the Venezuelans sent to CECOT. Like Hernandez, León Rengel—who is seeking $1.3 million in damages—was in the US legally when he was arrested by federal immigration authorities.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) recently said on the one-year anniversary of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation of Salvadorans, Venezuelans, and others that, of the 9,000 Salvadorans expelled from the US since the beginning of last year, “only 10.5% had a conviction in the United States for a violent or potentially violent crime.”

The Salvadoran investigative journalism outlet El Faro—which, along with its staff, has been the target of sweeping government persecution—last year published a report on CECOT, citing one former prisoner who said that inmates are “committing suicide out of desperation.”

At least one deported Salvadoran—longtime Maryland resident Kilmar Ábrego García—was wrongfully expelled due to what the Trump administration called an “administrative error.”

The Trump administration deported hundreds of Venezuelans to CECOT under a multimillion-dollar agreement between the Trump administration and the government of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele.

While Trump claimed—often without evidence—that the Venezuelan deportees were members of the Tren de Aragua gang, only about 3% of them had violent criminal convictions in the United States, and Department of Homeland Security records show that the Trump administration knew it.

In July 2025, El Salvador released 252 Venezuelans imprisoned at CECOT and sent them to Venezuela in a prisoner swap that saw Maduro's government free 10 US citizens and permanent residents whom it jailed. Many of the repatriated Venezuelans said they suffered torture, sexual assault, severe beatings, and other abuse at CECOT.

Last December, Judge James Boasberg of the US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the Trump administration broke the law by deporting the Venezuelans without due process.