SOS: Migrants Awaiting Deportation Use Their Bodies to Cry for Help

Ten days after a U.S. Supreme Court order forced buses carrying dozens of Venezuelan migrants to an airport in Texas to immediately turn around and return them to Bluebonnet Detention Facility in the small city of Anson, 31 of the men formed the letters SOS by standing in the detention center's dirt yard.

As Reutersreported, the families of several of the men have denied that they are members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang, contrary to the Trump administration's claims.

Immigration enforcement agents have detained and expelled numerous people with no criminal records, basing accusations that they're members of Tren de Aragua and MS-13 solely on the fact that they have tattoos in some cases.

After the reprieve from the Supreme Court earlier this month, with the justices ordering the government "not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this court," the migrants still face potential deportation to El Salvador's notorious Terrorism Confinement Center under the Alien Enemies Act.

Reuters flew a drone over Bluebonnet in recent days to capture images of the migrants, after being denied access to the facility. One flight captured the men forming the letters—the internationally used distress signal.

Reuters spoke to one of the men, 19-year-old Jeferson Escalona, after identifying him with the drone images.

He was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in January and initially sent to the U.S. migrant detention center at Guantánamo Bay before being transferred to Bluebonnet. A Department of Homeland Security official said, without providing evidence, that he was a "self-admitted" member of Tren de Aragua, but Escalona vehemently denied the claim and told Reuters he had trained to be a police officer in Venezuela before coming to the United States.

"They're making false accusations about me. I don't belong to any gang," he told Reuters, adding that he has asked to return to his home country but has been denied.

"I fear for my life here," he told the outlet. "I want to go to Venezuela."

Earlier this month in a separate decision, the Supreme Court ruled that migrants being deported under the Alien Enemies Act must be provided with due process to challenge their removal.

"Remember," said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council, "the Trump administration refuses to give these men a chance to day in court, despite the Supreme Court telling them that they must give people a chance to take their case in front of a judge!"