She begged for answers, but none ever came.
The wife of the man wrongly deported by Trump-era immigration officers to one of the most dangerous prisons in the world has broken her silence — and her words are gut-wrenching.
In a statement released late Monday, she described the moment she learned her husband had been sent to El Salvador’s notorious Tecoluca mega-prison, despite officials allegedly knowing they had the wrong person. “They knew,” she wrote. “They knew, and they still sent him.”
A previously buried ICE memo, now circulating on X, revealed internal doubts about the teen’s identity hours before the deportation. Yet deportation proceeded anyway, reportedly under pressure to meet “enforcement quotas” — a revelation that’s sparked outrage online and in Congress.
“This wasn’t a paperwork mistake,” said Rep. Jesús García. “This was a conscious decision to throw a child into a torture camp.”
Inside El Salvador’s “Terrorism Confinement Center,” leaked footage shows inmates tattooed from head to toe, crammed in with no sunlight or medical access. No trial. No lawyer. No protection.
“The guards shaved his head, tattooed a number on his neck, and told him no one would ever find him,” the wife said. He was 19. He cried the first night.
Customs officials reportedly failed to match his fingerprints to any record and still moved forward — a detail confirmed by DHS whistleblowers. When the family contacted the consulate in El Salvador, they were told there was “nothing that could be done.”
Online fury erupted after an Instagram story showed the man’s mother collapsing outside the courthouse. She had brought documents proving his U.S. residency, but no one accepted them. A clip from Telemundo later showed her screaming, “Trump took my son and threw him to the wolves.”
The wife’s GoFundMe has raised over $230,000 in 48 hours. The donations, she says, will go toward hiring international lawyers and pressuring U.S. officials to negotiate his release. “We’re fighting against silence,” she said in a livestream viewed over 3 million times.
“His skin is torn. His ribs are broken. And he’s still waiting for someone from America to come back for him,” she said through tears on TikTok Live.
Legal advocates are demanding accountability. “This isn’t just a wrongful deportation — it’s a deliberate act of state violence,” wrote RAICES. Activists are calling for an emergency congressional hearing, while families with mixed-status members flood comment sections with fear, asking: “Could this happen to us?”
The wife’s final words in her statement cut deeper than any lawsuit could: “He trusted this country. Now he’s in a concrete cage, and I’m screaming into a void.”
