Latest news with #Peñaloza
Los Angeles Times
27-06-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
Santa Ana officials want the National Guard removed. But how?
The California National Guard and its Humvees are no longer blocking vehicle traffic through 4th Street in downtown Santa Ana while protests against federal immigration sweeps have quieted down. But as a legal battle between Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Trump administration ensues over who controls the troops, Santa Ana elected officials are seeking a way out from what some are calling a continued 'occupation' of the only sanctuary city in Orange County. Santa Ana Councilmember David Peñaloza penned a letter to Rep. Young Kim, a Republican, on June 18 apprising her of the situation, as her 40th congressional district does not include Santa Ana. 'The deployment of the National Guard into Santa Ana has terrified our families and paralyzed our downtown,' his letter stated. 'Foot traffic has dried up. Stores are closing early. Families are staying home not because of crime, but because of intimidation from our own federal government.' Peñaloza's stern letter urged Kim to work with Rep. Lou Correa, a Democrat, whose 46th congressional district encompasses Santa Ana, in demanding the removal of the National Guard, which President Trump made the controversial move to mobilize in response to protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids earlier this month. 'I made the letter very public because the whole point was to get other residents to reach out to her office,' Peñaloza told TimesOC. 'Her chief of staff replied within a couple minutes, actually, with a simple 'thank you.'' In a statement to TimesOC, Kim claimed some protesters in Santa Ana had 'escalated violence toward law enforcement' but peace was restored. 'Residents shouldn't be living in fear, and ICE's immigration efforts should be focused on finding illegal immigrants with criminal records in our communities and be in coordination with local law enforcement,' she said. 'I have voiced our community's concerns to the administration, and I will continue to work to fix our broken immigration system.' Kim did not directly address the question of the National Guard's presence. Peñaloza confirmed that the strategy of reaching out to Kim arose out of a series of conference calls between local law enforcement, city officials and U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli, a Trump appointee, over the troop presence around federal buildings in Santa Ana. Though he did not attend any meetings himself, Peñaloza received word that Essayli suggested local officials reach out to Republican lawmakers if they wanted any progress on the National Guard. A day before Peñaloza's letter, Kim led a delegation of California Republican representatives in introducing a House resolution condemning 'riots' in Los Angeles where the National Guard is predominately deployed. 'The riots escalated before the National Guard was sent in and were enabled by California's soft-on-crime policies,' Kim claimed in a press release. The resolution thanked the Orange County Sheriff's Department, among other law enforcement agencies, which sent 138 staff to Los Angeles County in response to protests on June 8. Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes confirmed his participation in meetings with Essayli about the National Guard's presence closer to home. 'The National Guard's role in demonstrations at the local level should be limited to the protection of federal buildings and assets,' Barnes told TimesOC. 'National Guard members do not have the benefit of training alongside local law enforcement to prepare for managing demonstrations and ensure they remain safe and lawful. It proves difficult to blend resources and can result in a variable response.' During a contentious, 10-hour long Santa Ana City Council meeting on June 17, Councilmember Thai Viet Phan addressed the National Guard issue directly with city officials. 'We had our officers go out there to secure the federal building… in an effort to prevent the National Guard from coming to Santa Ana,' Phan said. Santa Ana Police Chief Robert Rodriguez affirmed the notion. 'The city cannot directly remove the National Guard,' City Atty. Sonia Carvalho added. 'We don't have the resources to make that happen, if the governor can't make that happen.' Santa Ana Councilmember Jessie Lopez credited protests in the city and demands made by the public at the council meeting for the National Guard's diminished presence. 'We have to make sure that we are consistently vocalizing our dissent against the National Guard being in our community,' she told TimesOC. 'We can send letters to representatives like Young Kim, but she has made it very clear through her actions that her loyalty lies — not with the [U.S.] Constitution, not with Californians — but with the MAGA-wing of her party.' Lopez won't be writing a letter to Kim's office. As Santa Ana officials differ on how to achieve the same objective, downtown businesses continue to suffer. Ana Laura Padilla co-owns Perla Mexican Cuisine, which is across the street from the Ronald Reagan Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse on 4th Street, where troops remain on guard. She wonders how bored troops must be with next to nothing to do. The restaurant has fallen on more idle times, itself. 'Business has dropped dramatically,' Padilla said. 'It's been very hard on my employees, too. We've had to cut a lot of hours because we're not very busy.' Padilla doesn't believe the message has gotten out about the streets reopening as far as her customers are concerned. 'We're not breaking even, at all,' she said. Padilla recalled Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 during the pandemic when fencing and boarded up windows protected the federal building across the street from her restaurant. She said the National Guard response, this time, was 'too much.' Protests on June 9 led to 11 arrests with the National Guard stationed in downtown Santa Ana the following morning. But no protests have occurred in the city since at least June 22, according to Natalie Garcia, a Santa Ana police spokesperson. Rep. Correa questions the rationale behind the troop deployment, especially as protests have cooled off and small businesses continue to be impacted. 'You deal with the facts,' Correa told TimesOC. 'Everything has been relatively peaceful, especially for the past few days. What's the purpose?' His Congressional office remains focused on cases related to ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection arrests in his district, including Narciso Barranco, a landscaper punched by a masked federal agent in a viral video. But Correa signaled a willingness to work with Kim on the National Guard issue. 'Having the National Guard is not the right call,' he said. 'I'll work with everyone that wants to work with me. I would love to work with her on this issue.'
Yahoo
16-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump Sent Them To Hell. Now He's Erasing Them Altogether.
The only information Ysqueibel Yonaiquer Peñaloza Chirinos' family has received about him in the past three months came from former Republican congressman Matt Gaetz. Gaetz probably didn't mean to help. But last month, as part of a propaganda video for the far-right One America News Network, he took a tour of the infamous El Salvadoran prison to which President Donald Trump has sent hundreds of U.S. immigrants for indefinite detention, without charge, trial or sentencing: El Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT. By the time Gaetz arrived, the men Trump had rendered to the prison had already been there for two months. It happens quickly: The OANN camera pans across a cluster of cells Gaetz says are being used to hold the people Trump sent to El Salvador. Many chant 'Libertad!' Some press their hands together in prayer, pleading. Peñaloza's face flashes on screen, framed by two metal bars. He looks mournful, almost crying, and does not say anything. But he does what most others are doing, opening and closing his fingers over a closed thumb, making what his lawyers say is an internationally recognized hand symbol for distress — a flashing 'send help' request popularized by domestic violence advocacy groups during the COVID-19 pandemic. Immigration policies aren't just politics — they're personal. At HuffPost, we explore the human stories behind the headlines, reporting on how immigration laws impact real people and communities. Support this vital coverage by Peñaloza's mother, Ydalys Chirinos-Polanco, spotted him in the video. She already knew he was at the prison — Peñaloza's olive branch tattoo was visible in the initial March 15 footage of the U.S. CECOT detainees — but she hadn't seen him since then. Peñaloza's only encounter with the law in the United States had been a traffic ticket, she said. 'I felt a lot of pain,' Chirinos recalled to HuffPost on a video call Wednesday, speaking in Spanish and through tears. 'But at the same time — a lot of happiness to see that he is alive and that he had the strength to stand up.' A month later, she hasn't seen any more of her son. In his absence, the U.S. government has worked to remove Peñaloza, who is Venezuelan, from domestic immigration court entirely. Six days after Gaetz's prison tour, an immigration judge granted the Department of Homeland Security's request to dismiss Peñaloza's case. As far as the United States immigration court system is concerned, he does not exist. At least 24 people sent to CECOT have had their immigration cases dismissed in their absence, Michelle Brané, the executive director of Together & Free, a nonprofit working to identify and track CECOT detainees, told HuffPost. The actual number may be higher — and it is unclear how many cases have pending dismissal requests from DHS that have not received rulings from immigration judges, who are technically Justice Department employees rather than members of an independent court system. Some immigration judges are pushing back. Last week, one such judge denied a DHS motion to dismiss a CECOT detainee's immigration case, saying the Trump administration had 'essentially rid itself of its opposing party.' But that is a rare exception to the trend. The dismissal of immigration cases for the CECOT detainees is yet another example of the Trump administration working to erase any trace of them in the United States, even though hundreds had ongoing legal cases here when they were disappeared. Without that legal toehold in the U.S. immigration system, CECOT detainees risk falling not only outside the purview of U.S. law but outside of any legal recognition whatsoever. There was no hearing in Peñaloza's case to discuss the dismissal — a May 30 court date was canceled ahead of time — and no discussion of where Peñaloza is, or how he got there. Instead, in a two-paragraph filing in April, attorneys for Immigration and Customs Enforcement said only that the 25-year-old 'was identified as an Alien Enemy and removed from the United States.' It was a perverse legal argument. Because Trump had removed Peñaloza without legal process, he was no longer present in the United States, and therefore, was not entitled to any legal process, the government claimed. On May 15, an immigration judge granted DHS's motion, stating that 'the Court does not have the authority to demand DHS return Respondent to the United States.' Peñaloza's legal team plans to appeal, and lawyers for CECOT detainees are involved in several lawsuits on their behalf. While dismissing cases, some immigration judges have said that the proper venue for legal challenges are habeas corpus lawsuits — and despite the Trump administration's open defiance, federal judges have advanced such lawsuits nationally, most notably earlier this month. 'Imagine having to explain to someone's mother, as a United States immigration attorney, that their son has an immigration hearing, and the government attorneys fighting his case say that they have no means of being able to connect you with your client — when the United States government has paid for the detention of that individual in a third country,' Margaret Cargioli, directing attorney of policy and advocacy at Immigrant Defenders Law Center and Peñaloza's attorney in the United States, told HuffPost. Like other attorneys for CECOT detainees, Cargioli argues that because the Trump administration made an arrangement with El Salvador to imprison Trump's expelled migrants, her client is still in the 'constructive custody' of the United States, and is still owed his day in court. 'It's astounding that I could not get any information about Ysqueibel to provide to their family during immigration court hearings, and that by sheer bravery on his part, he pressed his face against the bars of a dangerous prison to let his loved ones know that he's still alive,' she said, referring to the Gaetz video. The Trump administration defended the handling of these cases. 'The appropriate process due to an illegal alien terrorist with final deportation orders is removal, plain and simple,' Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told HuffPost in a statement, ignoring a lengthy list of specific questions. McLaughlin said DHS has a 'stringent law enforcement assessment in place that abides by due process under the U.S. Constitution.' But DHS has not released evidence supporting its assertions regarding the CECOT detainees, and around half of the people the Trump administration has sent to CECOT had no final deportation orders at all. Those who did mostly had orders to be deported to Venezuela, not El Salvador. White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said separately, 'Any illegal alien who is deported from the United States receives due process prior to any removal.' But that's simply not true. Human rights groups and lawyers have characterized the Trump administration's renditions of hundreds of people to CECOT as 'enforced disappearances,' in which someone is detained and deprived of their rights without due process while their captors refuse to even acknowledge their detention. Peñaloza is just one of at least 278 people, mostly Venezuelans and some Salvadorans, sent by the Trump administration to the Salvadoran prison earlier this year as part of an arrangement in which the Trump administration is paying the Salvadoran government millions of dollars to detain non-U.S. citizens. Around half of the immigrants in that group were sent to CECOT after they received 'removal' orders in standard deportation proceedings — an unprecedented punishment given immigration proceedings are civil in nature, not criminal. The other people, including Peñaloza, were accused by the U.S. government of being 'alien enemies.' They were declared members of the Tren de Aragua gang, often simply because of common tattoos. The Trump administration considers Tren de Aragua to be not only a gang but also a terrorist group, as well as essentially an invading army that's allegedly working hand-in-glove with the Venezuelan government. In March, Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime authority last used in World War II, to allege that the gang was actually 'supporting the [Venezuelan President Nicolás] Maduro regime's goal of destabilizing democratic nations in the Americas, including the United States.' Veteran intelligence analysts who disputed that claim were fired. Suddenly, it only took a low-level bureaucrat's say-so to banish someone from the country and into indefinite detention in one of the world's most notorious prisons, without any review by judges. The same day Trump signed his declaration, the administration began flying hundreds of Venezuelans in U.S. custody to CECOT. A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to halt the removals and turn the flights around, but government officials ignored the directive. The judge opened criminal contempt proceedings against the administration in April, but the administration made no effort to return the expelled men. Officials even defied a Supreme Court order telling them to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran immigrant who multiple government officials acknowledged was wrongfully expelled to El Salvador despite a judge's prior order protecting him from being returned there. The Trump administration finally returned Abrego Garcia to the United States on June 6, nearly two months after the Supreme Court spoke on his case; he now faces criminal charges for alleged conspiracy to transport aliens and unlawful transportation of undocumented aliens. Abrego Garcia was arraigned Friday and has entered a not guilty plea. The U.S. government has never acknowledged the full list of people sent to CECOT, but CBS News, Bloomberg and other media outlets have used leaked lists and court records to establish that the vast majority of people had no criminal record at all, either in the United States or elsewhere around the world. The administration's own records showed the same thing, journalists from ProPublica, The Texas Tribune and the Venezuelan outlets Cazadores de Fake News and Alianza Rebelde Investiga recently reported. And out of 90 cases in which the detainee's method of coming to the United States was known, 50 cases described people who had entered the United States legally — 'with advanced US government permission, at an official border crossing point,' the CATO Institute, a libertarian think tank, found. Peñaloza was one of them. He came to the United States through a pre-scheduled appointment on CBP One, the cellphone app used by the Biden administration to process asylum-seekers. Nevertheless, due to the Trump administration's actions, hundreds of active cases in U.S. immigration courts suddenly ground to a halt, with worrying implications for CECOT detainees' futures. Like other people Trump has banished to CECOT, Peñaloza had a legal right to make a case in the United States for why he should stay here — a right that the government usurped. If a given immigration case is dismissed, 'you don't have legal status and you don't have a way to get it, because you're not in the process,' said Brané, the Together & Free executive director, who previously worked as a Biden administration official focusing on immigration. Should CECOT detainees who have had their immigration cases dismissed somehow return to the United States someday, it's not clear what their next steps would be, Brané said. 'Like all this [Alien Enemies Act] stuff, it's never happened before and they're not following normal procedures,' she said, referring to the Trump administration. The detainees 'were denied due process, they are disappeared, and they are now in this legal limbo where they remain in a prison with no legal protections, excluded from the protection of the law, and they don't know if they'll ever have a chance at a fair trial,' Isabel Carlota Roby, an attorney for Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, told ABC News. Jerce Reyes Barrios, one of the people who faced having his immigration case tossed, was in the final stages of his asylum proceedings when the government disappeared him in March. A professional soccer player and youth soccer coach, Reyes Barrios fled Venezuela last year after being detained and tortured with electric shocks and suffocation for protesting authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro, his lawyer Linette Tobin wrote in a court declaration. While in Mexico, Reyes Barrios made an appointment on CBP One and presented himself to immigration officials at the U.S. border. Immigration officials detained him at a facility in San Diego and accused him of being a member of Tren de Aragua, citing one of his tattoos and a hand symbol he made in a social media post. The tattoo, which shows a crown atop a soccer ball and the words 'Dios,' or 'God,' resembles the logo of Reyes Barrios' favorite soccer team, Real Madrid, Tobin wrote in the declaration. And the hand gesture, she wrote, 'is a common one that means I Love You in sign language and is commonly used as a Rock & Roll symbol.' After submitting Venezuelan documents showing he had no criminal record, as well as letters of employment, a declaration from the tattoo artist, and documents explaining the meaning of the tattoo and the hand gesture, Reyes Barrios was removed from maximum security. His final hearing on his asylum case in immigration court was set for April 17. 'We were completely prepared. Everything had been submitted to the court. Everything was ready,' Tobin said in an interview. But by March, Reyes Barrios was feeling nervous, his lawyer said: 'Just in the seven days before his removal, he was expressing a real concern. I think he had a premonition.' In the following days, he was abruptly transferred from a detention facility in California to one in Texas. And then, he went dark. Shortly after the March 15 deportation flights to El Salvador, Reyes Barrios' family saw a picture of some of the men in CECOT with their hands clasped behind their freshly shaven heads. Their faces were mostly obscured by their arms, but his family thought they recognized Reyes Barrios. Tobin called the ICE office in Texas, Reyes Barrios' last known location. She received confirmation he had been 'removed,' but the person on the phone refused to say where, she said. The family's fears were confirmed on March 20, when Reyes Barrios' name appeared on the CBS News list naming some people detained at CECOT. His family spotted him again in the footage released by Gaetz in May. Less than two weeks after Reyes Barrios disappeared, DHS filed a motion to dismiss his immigration case. The four-line motion did not provide any clarity on his location, condition or the reason the government considered him a so-called 'alien enemy.' Instead, a DHS attorney simply argued, 'The respondent is no longer in the United States. As such, there is authority to dismiss on this ground.' Tobin urged the judge to deny the government's request, arguing 'dismissal is inappropriate' and would 'be affirming and exacerbating DHS' gross and flagrant violations of [Reyes Barrios'] due process rights.' She noted that ongoing federal litigation over the legality of the CECOT transfers could result in her client returning home — only to find that his asylum case had been tossed. Indeed, earlier this month, a federal judge ruled that the government must 'facilitate' the ability of those transferred to CECOT to pursue habeas claims, or challenge the legality of their detention. Reyes Barrios' family texted Tobin emojis of party hats in celebration of the ruling. 'To have the injustice recognized by a court made them very happy,' Tobin said. There have been four hearings for Reyes Barrios' asylum case since he was removed from the U.S. The judge asked the government to provide information in support of its dismissal motion, including confirmation that Reyes Barrios was removed from the U.S. and evidence that he is a member of Tren de Aragua. But at each hearing, the government just restated that it is moving for dismissal, Tobin said. 'They never say anything else. They don't cite to regulations. They don't cite to case laws. They just say, 'Dismiss the case,'' Tobin said. At a hearing last month, Tobin asked the judge to administratively close the case, which would effectively pause proceedings. When the DHS lawyer opposed the request, the judge asked for their reasoning. 'Their response, after a very long pause, was, 'Well, because we're moving for dismissal,'' Tobin recounted. Then, on Tuesday, came a crucial development. In a ruling, the judge in Reyes Barrios' case granted Tobin's motion to administratively close it. As a result, his asylum case is still pending. 'Any opposition to administrative closure involves the Department's preference to dismiss proceedings [...] which the court deems inappropriate under the unclean hands doctrine since the Department essentially rid itself of its opposing party,' the judge wrote in his order, noting several so-called 'Avetisyan factors,' a reference to existing immigration court precedent concerning when it is appropriate to administratively close immigration cases, even if one side disagrees. 'Ongoing litigation questions the legality of the Department's removals under the [Alien Enemies Act],' the judge added. 'The court anticipates the respondent's ability to proceed with his [asylum] application, which he filed on December 3, 2024, although it is difficult to determine the ultimate outcome of his proceedings at this stage given that the respondent never had his 'day in court.'' Tobin celebrated the decision in a statement to HuffPost. 'DHS is feeding the public lies every day, saying that they're deporting violent criminals, monsters, the worst of the worst,' she said. 'To see judges call out the Government for their illegal actions, 'unclean hands,' and obfuscations gives me some degree of hope that justice will eventually prevail and people who were unlawfully disappeared/deported without due process will finally get their day in court.' In several other cases, immigration judges have been willing to grant DHS's dismissal requests quickly, sometimes without even holding a hearing. After the CECOT deportation flights, immigration lawyers around the country scrambled to keep the cases alive. In addition to Peñaloza, Immigrant Defenders Law Center has seven other clients in CECOT. Three have had their immigration cases dismissed, and one received removal orders in absentia, communications director Renee Garcia said in an email. Perhaps the most recognizable case, due to national news coverage, is that of Andry Hernández Romero, a gay makeup artist who was seeking asylum in the United States and who was targeted for indefinite CECOT detention due to benign tattoos, including two crowns with 'Mom' and 'Dad' printed under them. An immigration judge dismissed Hernandez's case late last month, as NBC News reported. A judge also dismissed the case of Arturo Suárez Trejo, a Venezuelan singer and friend of Peñaloza's, who had appeared in Suárez's music videos in the past, Garcia said. Last month, Judge Jason L. Stern, a Houston-based immigration judge, dismissed Frizgeralth de Jesús Cornejo Pulgar's case despite the government filing a motion for a continuance in the case, Mother Jones reported. Another CECOT detainee whose case was dismissed, Henrry Jose Albornoz Quintero, missed the birth of his child while languishing in El Salvador's infamous prison. Quintero and his wife, Naupari Rosila, came to the U.S. in late 2023, initially sleeping in a car until they saved enough for a deposit on a Dallas apartment. In January, when his wife was seven months pregnant, Quintero was detained during a routine ICE check-in. Rosila found an attorney and raised money for him to be released on bond. Days before a hearing in immigration court, he told her he was going to be deported home to Venezuela. He was sent to CECOT instead. In April, an ICE attorney moved to dismiss the case against Quintero, writing in a two-paragraph filing that 'the respondent was identified as an Alien Enemy and removed from the United States.' Quintero's attorney, John Dutton, told HuffPost the dismissal motion was the first time the Trump administration acknowledged using the Alien Enemies Act against his client. The motion to dismiss was 'morally repugnant,' Dutton wrote in a court filing, describing Quintero as being sent to 'an extrajudicial dungeon in a middle of the night, unannounced, covert operation between our government and a foreign dictatorship, bankrolled, directed and fully controlled by the United States.' 'The government cannot be allowed to erase people from its jurisdiction simply by shipping them abroad,' Dutton wrote. 'If DHS's motion were granted, it would establish a chilling precedent: that DHS may abduct noncitizens mid-proceedings, contract out their indefinite detention to foreign governments, and then declare the case moot due to their own unlawful conduct. This would not be an exercise of prosecutorial discretion. It would be a blueprint for lawless tyranny, a dictatorship. This is not hyperbole.' On May 1, a judge granted the government's motion. Quintero's case was dismissed. 'Regardless of the merits of the respondent's opposition to his physical removal from the United States, this Court does not have jurisdiction to consider constitutional issues,' the immigration judge wrote. 'The requirements for dismissal of the Notice to Appear have been met in this case.' *** Over the phone Wednesday, Peñaloza's mother told HuffPost about her son – that he's hard-working, principled, and respectful. He's a trained refrigerator technician who has worked in construction in the past. He's a good cook who loves making chinchurria— a stuffed, fried intestine dish popular in Venezuela — but can also dress up humble meals like vegetarian arepas or rice with tomato sauce. He's an older sibling who, in years past, would remind his younger sisters to listen to their parents. Part of his income from his time in the United States went to paying for his younger sister's physical therapy education. Valentina Polanco-Chirinos, Peñaloza's 17-year-old sister, briefly chimed in on the call. Her brother was sentimental, she said, and would cry when his mother scolded him. But especially given her mother's travels throughout Venezuela for work, she was grateful for him. He was almost a father figure to her, Valentina said. Peñaloza's mother — who'd just returned from Caracas, where a group of CECOT detainees' family members were petitioning the United Nations — said her son's disappearance to El Salvador in March came as a shock to her. He, like many others who ended up in CECOT, believed while in U.S. immigration detention that he was headed home to Venezuela. She said he'd given all of his clothes away to relatives when he'd left for the U.S., and that she'd set out to buy him a new pair of shoes. When news broke that a handful of deportation flights had landed in El Salvador, she figured they'd been diverted due to weather. Reality set in when she saw that one of the prisoners had her son's tattoo. The United States seems to be moving backward, she said: The CECOT detainees were kidnapped, and they weren't given an opportunity to defend themselves. And her son's immigration case in the United States? If he's eventually released from CECOT, did she think he would want to return and fight for his right to stay in the country? She didn't think so. 'I don't think he would feel safe there.' Lawyers Are Sounding The Alarm About Trump Disappearing People The Trump Administration Is Using A Legal Loophole To Keep Mahmoud Khalil In Custody — Despite A Court Order Kilmar Abrego Garcia Has Returned To The United States People Are 'Disappearing' Since Trump Took Office. Here's What That Means.
Yahoo
09-06-2025
- Yahoo
Mother details ‘nightmare' after Trump sends son to El Salvador mega-prison where he's being held incommunicado
The last time Ydalis Chirinos Polanco heard from her 25-year-old son was on March 15, when he called her from the El Valle immigration detention center in Texas. He thought he was coming home to Venezuela. Instead, that same day, he was put on a plane to the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador, a maximum-security facility for terrorists and gang members where he has been held incommunicado ever since. 'He left Venezuela for a better future and it turned into a nightmare,' Chirinos Polanco said through a translator in an interview with The Independent from her home in Valencia, Venezuela. She used to speak daily with her son. She hasn't heard from him in over 85 days. Being sent away so soon wasn't what Ysqueibel Peñaloza had hoped for when he arrived in the U.S. last September, passing legally through California's San Ysidro border crossing, after barely surviving a journey through the Darien Gap in the Panamanian jungle. The plan was to earn money to send back home, and he joined a friend in Raleigh, North Carolina. He found work as a gardener and Uber driver, according to his family and lawyer. (Uber said it did not have a record of Peñaloza working for the company.) Since he was a teenager, Peñaloza, who a past employer from Chile described as 'honorable and hardworking' in a support video, had worked to pay for his younger sister's education. His wages in America allowed him to send enough money back home to fund a semester of her training to be a physical therapist. The 25-year-old's temporary stint in the U.S. was cut short in February, when immigration agents detained him and his friend Arturo Suarez, a Venezuelan singer who uses the stage name Suarez Vzla, as they filmed a music video. Peñaloza had entered the U.S. legally, using the CBP One app, which allowed him to remain in the country temporarily as he awaited an April court date. But he and Suarez were among the more than 100 Venezuelans that the administration eventually accused of being members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang, using the wartime Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to summarily deport the men from the U.S. without letting them challenge their removals in court. Peñaloza's mother said her son has never had anything to do with a gang, and was too committed to his work to ever get into trouble. The Department of Homeland Security, for its part, told The Independent that Peñaloza was arrested during an operation 'targeting a known Tren de Aragua gang member,' which netted multiple arrests and a firearm. He was then 'confirmed to be' a member of the gang on March 15 — the same day Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act and the removal flights departed to El Salvador. The department declined to share the basis of this conclusion. 'We are confident in our law enforcement's intelligence, and we aren't going to share intelligence reports and undermine national security every time a gang member denies he is one,' Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin wrote in a statement to The Independent. 'That would be insane.' Chirinos Polanco only found out her son had been sent to CECOT when she spotted him in the slickly produced propaganda videos of the men being manhandled and shaved by prison guards at the facility in El Salvador, thanks to an olive branch tattoo on his right knee. He resurfaced again in May, in the background of a visit to the prison by Matt Gaetz, the former Trump administration attorney general nominee, who is now a host at OAN. In the prison, which has a $6 million deal with the U.S., Chirinos Polanco said she saw her son waving to the camera in what she interpreted as a hand signal for help. Around him, inmates jeered at Gaetz and cried 'Freedom!' in Spanish at the passing camera crew. 'He doesn't know that his family is fighting for him to get out,' Peñaloza's mother said, through tears. Chirinos Polanco worries about her son's state of mind inside CECOT, which was designed to house terrorists and is home to scores of admitted gang members that Salvadoran officials openly say will likely never be released. Prior to being sent to CECOT, the quiet 25-year-old told his mother he would sit and cry to himself for hours in immigration detention. She says she can only imagine what it's like now, since 'they have terrorized him in El Salvador.' The circumstances of his arrest — a sudden sweep of an immigrant who entered the U.S. legally, before a court process could play out, with little publicly presented evidence of gang membership, and baffled family members — have been common among the Venezuelans sent to CECOT under the Alien Enemies Act. U.S. immigration officials have insisted they conducted a rigorous vetting process to find the men's gang and other criminal affiliations. Internally, though, the Trump administration knew that just six of the 238 Venezuelans known to have been sent to CECOT had been convicted of violent crimes, while over half had no criminal record or pending charges at all outside of immigration violations, according to government data obtained by a coalition of U.S. and Venezuelan news outlets. (The government insisted, in response to the reporting, that the men in the data are 'actually terrorists, human rights abusers, gang members and more — they just don't have a rap sheet in the U.S.') Further confounding scrutiny, the government has not publicly released a list of those it sent to the prison, and has shared little public evidence of the men's alleged gang ties. As The Independent has reported, the federal government appears to have instead largely based its gang determinations on tattoos many of the men had, even though family members, tattoo artists who made the images, and experts on Venezuelan gangs say the tattoos don't symbolize membership in Tren de Aragua. The Department of Homeland Security told The Independent that 'its intelligence assessments go well beyond just gang affiliate tattoos and social media.' The entire process amounts to an egregious violation of due process, according to Margaret Cargioli, directing attorney for policy and advocacy at the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, an advocacy group representing eight of the men inside CECOT, even though it can't communicate with them. 'What has been one of the most astonishing things is the utter disregard of human beings' due process and their human rights, due to being sent to a place where it was known they would be excommunicated from their families, attorneys, and loved ones, as well as have no access to justice,' Cargioli told The Independent. She said the government did not, and still hasn't, presented 'any evidence' in immigration court that Peñaloza was a gang member before sending him to CECOT. DHS Assistant Secretary McLaughlin added in her statement that the administration has a 'stringent law enforcement assessment in place that abides by due process under the US Constitution.' 'There IS due process for these terrorists who all have final deportation orders,' she wrote. Those challenging the Alien Enemies Act removals argue the men were removed without any meaningful notice, chance to challenge their status, or decision on final removal orders from an immigration judge, the typical deportation process. When asked, the White House did not answer specific questions about the evidence against Peñaloza or criticisms of the removal process to CECOT. 'President Trump is committed to keeping his promises to the American people and removing dangerous criminal and terrorist illegal aliens who pose a threat to the American public,' White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement to The Independent. 'CECOT is one of the most secure facilities in the world and there is no better place for the sick criminals we are deporting from the United States.' Faced with this immigration black hole, mothers like Chirinos Polanco have taken on the role of activists. They have staged protests in Caracas, kept in touch with each other during regular meetings and calls, and shared money to support those who depended on their now-detained relatives for remittances. During the interview, Chirinos Polanco, in between sharing family photos, was preparing for a sit-in in front of a United Nations office in Caracas, the kind of demonstration staged by countless women living under repressive regimes in Latin America on behalf of their disappeared loved ones — only this time, the protest is directed at the world's most powerful democracy. Chirinos Polanco said the detentions weigh heavily on the families that they left behind. Her father can't bear to look at pictures of Peñaloza. One of the women she was in touch with, the grandmother of a man in CECOT, recently died of a heart attack in Perú, which her family attributes to the disappearances, Chirinos Polanco said. U.S. courts may offer these families a last chance to connect with their loved ones. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in May that the administration didn't give the alleged Tren de Aragua members the proper chance to contest their removals, and on Wednesday, a federal judge gave the government a week to explain how it would 'facilitate' giving these 137 men a chance at appeal. Such an unlikely reversal has some precedent. After months of public pressure, and a Supreme Court ruling that the U.S. must aid in his return, the U.S. retook custody of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran immigrant it admitted it had mistakenly sent to CECOT despite a court order barring his removal to El Salvador. The U.S. initially claimed it didn't have the power or the need to seek Garcia's return, though the government appears to have changed course, and the man now reportedly faces a federal grand jury indictment in the U.S. for allegedly illegally transporting undocumented immigrants. Chirinos Polanco hopes, with the world watching, the U.S. will finally give a fair hearing to the remaining men inside CECOT. 'We all should have the right to defend ourselves and be heard,' she said. 'Those Venezuelans who were sent to CECOT, they were silenced completely.' Until that silence is broken, Chirinos Polanco barely sleeps and often wakes up early. She's waiting for a phone call from her son that might never come.
Daily Mail
29-04-2025
- Daily Mail
Fake New York doctor shares grim details of how glamorous young mom died during botched Brazilian butt lift
A fake New York doctor has detailed the grim moment a glamorous young mom died at his hands during a botched Brazilian butt lift procedure. Felipe Hoyos-Foronda, 37, of Astoria, Queens, was indicted on Monday for manslaughter and assault charges over the death of 31-year-old María Paz Peñaloza. The Colombian, who is not licensed to practice in New York, was nabbed at a Starbucks inside John F Kennedy Airport on March 28 after he fled his Astoria apartment, where Peñaloza was suffering lidocaine toxicity, according to the New York Daily News (NYDN). 'I booked the flight while I was driving,' he allegedly told investigators. 'I was going to go back to Colombia.' He was due to catch a flight from New York to Florida and then eventually to Colombia. 'Moments before he was able to board that flight police officers apprehended this defendant on the Starbucks line,' Assistant District Attorney Gregory Lasak said. Authorities say they found a bloody syringe, used syringes, an empty bottle of lidocaine and other medications inside a bag in his car, NYDN reported. Peñaloza, a mother of two, had gone to his home for a $1,900 procedure to have a botched silicon butt implant removed when he injected lidocaine - a local anesthetic - into her buttocks. 'After I injected her, she started to speak funny and then she stopped speaking,' he told investigators, NYDN reported. 'Slurred speech is normal during this type of anesthesia, even though it's local. 'After she tightened up, she didn't respond. She had low pressure and a low pulse. I administered CPR.' When he couldn't revive her, the doctor took off toward the airport, as he knew he was not legally allowed to practice medicine in the States. 'I showed paramedics. I am not a licensed doctor here. I understand I am not allowed to practice medicine,' he told authorities. However, he assured authorities that he had performed the procedures 'hundreds of times' and had been practicing inside the makeshift space 'for a few months.' 'I've done work on many girls,' he allegedly said, according to NYDN. Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said her office did not know how Hoyos-Foronda procured the drug. 'Please be careful,' she advised. 'We've had several of these cases here in Queens where people hold themselves out to be medical professionals but indeed they are not certified.' She encouraged anyone who received a medical service by Hoyos-Foronda to come forward. The mother-of-two had arrived to his apartment with a friend around 1pm on March 28. When she became lightheaded, Hoyos-Foronda called 911 and fled. When first responders arrived, they found Peñaloza unconscious on a medical chair and she was transferred to Mount Sinai Queens, a DA press release said. Peñaloza went without a pulse for two hours, according to the New York Post. She had no signs of brain activity. On April 11, she was taken off life support, the DA said. The victim's mother, Gladys Cabrera, wants to see the fake doctor 'go to jail,' she told NYDN. 'He's dangerous to the society... She didn't deserve this,' she told the outlet at the courthouse on Monday. Theodore Paloumbas, the victim's husband of three years, said he didn't even know she had gone to Astoria for the removal. 'We had been married for three years. I did not know that she was going for this procedure,' he told NYDN. Her sister, Lucy Peñaloza, told the New York Post: 'The family is paying the consequences and we're waiting for him to suffer the full weight of the law.' Hoyos-Foronda is expected back in court on June 3. He faces up to 15 years in prison.
Yahoo
29-04-2025
- Yahoo
Fake Queens doctor accused of botched cosmetic surgery death appears in court
The Brief Felipe Hoyos-Foronda was arraigned on manslaughter charges after allegedly performing a botched cosmetic procedure in his Queens apartment that led to the death of Maria Peñaloza. Peñaloza, 31, went into cardiac arrest during the surgery, which was intended to remove butt implants. Hoyos-Foronda was arrested at JFK Airport as he allegedly attempted to flee to Colombia following Peñaloza's death. NEW YORK - A man accused of posing as a doctor and giving a woman a botched cosmetic procedure that left her dead faced a judge Monday, as the victim's grieving family spoke out. What we know Authorities say Maria Peñaloza, 31, died after undergoing a cosmetic procedure inside the Astoria apartment of Felipe Hoyos-Foronda, who prosecutors say falsely presented himself as a doctor on TikTok. Peñaloza, a mother of two young children, sought the procedure, where Hoyos-Foronda injected her with lidocaine, to remove butt implants, after experiencing pain. During the surgery, she went into cardiac arrest and was declared brain-dead. Prosecutors say Hoyos-Foronda was arrested at JFK Airport, attempting to flee to Colombia. Hoyos-Foronda was arraigned Monday on a manslaughter charge at Queens Criminal Court. What they're saying Peñaloza's family traveled from Colombia to be in court and demand justice for their daughter. "I never thought she was going to die like that. She told me, 'Mommy, you're going to live with me and the kids,'" said her mother, Gladys Cabrera Medina. "To me, he's an assassin. He's a menace to society because he was ready to flee at the airport," Cabrera Medina added. "You're always gonna have that hate toward someone who did something so painful to one of your daughters," said Peñaloza's father, Jaime Peñaloza.
