Tattoo artist who agreed to return to Venezuela was sent to El Salvador prison, family says

Were it not for bad weather, Jhon Chacin would have been aboard a flight to his native Venezuela on March 13, having volunteered to go home after giving up on an asylum request that was initially denied. Instead, his brother said, Jhon was among the nearly 300 Venezuelan men sent by U.S. immigration officials to El Salvador’s notorious megaprison.

Eudomar Chacin spoke to his brother the day after he was supposed to have returned to Venezuela; because of bad weather they couldn’t board the flight, Jhon said. According to Eudomar, Jhon, 35, was crying and told him he was scared because he was seeing unusual movements by staff at the detention center in Texas where he was being held. Eudomar hasn’t heard from him since.

“I just feel like crying all the time — he is a good, healthy kid, he didn’t have any vices, he is Christian, my family is all Christian,” Eudomar, who’s 56 and lives in Florida, told NBC News. “I want justice and freedom for my brother. And I want him to return to Venezuela.”

Like Eudomar, families of the men who were whisked away have been grappling with the horror of relatives suddenly going “missing” amid the politically charged U.S. government operation, as more relatives and attorneys push for answers and for their release.

At the same time, Venezuela’s government is demanding that the deported men be released and returned to their country.

Millions have left Venezuela over the last decade, fleeing poverty and repression under President Nicolás Maduro. But following the U.S. deportation flights of Venezuelan men to the Salvadoran megaprison, Maduro vowed to “rescue our young people who are kidnapped, missing, without having committed a crime neither in the United States nor in El Salvador,” and put in “Nazi-style concentration camps.” 

Maduro announced over the weekend that his government would begin accepting repatriation flights after a brief suspension on March 8, and following the U.S Treasury’s announcement that it was withdrawing Chevron’s license to export Venezuelan oil.

Eudomar said he learned that his brother was in the Salvadoran prison because he spotted him in a Trump administration video of the mass relocation. Jhon’s name also appeared on a list of those sent to the El Salvador prison that was published by CBS News. Seeing his name on the list left the family feeling “powerless,” Eudomar said.

The Trump administration has claimed that it purged the country of members of Tren de Aragua gang members, backing its assertions with video of the men, chained and bent under the force of armed guards as they were shuffled from planes to the prison in the dark of night on March 15 and 16.

Families and attorneys of five other Venezuelan immigrants sent to El Salvador’s mega-prison have told NBC News, Telemundo and MSNBC that their relatives were unjustly targeted and accused of being members of the Tren de Aragua gang based on having ordinary tattoos that don’t necessarily signal gang affiliation, according to experts.

Jhon entered the U.S. through the CBP One app on Oct. 8, 2024, in San Ysidro, California; the app, launched by the Biden administration and terminated by President Donald Trump, was the only way to request asylum at the border. Since then, he had been held in detention in San Diego and later transferred to Texas.   

Before he left Venezuela, Jhon had spent 10 years working as a tattoo artist in the state of Zulia, using his own body as a canvas to show clients his talent, his brother said. Jhon left Venezuela at the end of 2022, and spent a year working in Colombia before making his way to Mexico through the dangerous jungles of the Darién Gap. He arrived in Mexico in May 2024, and waited five months for his CBP One appointment. 

Eudomar said that his brother was often asked about his tattoos by U.S. authorities while he was in detention. He lost his asylum case and was planning to appeal. But when Trump became president and Jhon learned more about Trump’s hard-line policies, he decided to sign papers to voluntarily be sent back to Venezuela. 

The Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment around Jhon’s case.

Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which allows the deportation of noncitizens in wartime, declaring that the U.S. was under invasion by the Tren de Aragua gang. With that law in use, those in custody are removed with no chance to disprove any gang affiliation or go forward with asylum claims or other immigration processes.

Unable to communicate with the deportees, many of their relatives are increasingly desperate to speak on their behalf and are aiming to present a different portrait of their loved ones than the one presented by the administration. 

The families and attorneys are contending with what legal and immigration experts say is an unprecedented action by the U.S. — sending migrants to detention in a third country.

“That is a very unusual act,” Veronica Cardenas, former assistant legal counsel for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told MSNBC on Monday. “They’re not just being removed to El Salvador, they’re being removed to be placed in detention centers and prolonging their detention, something that would be very illegal if they decided to do that here in the United States.”

On Monday, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg denied the government’s request to lift his hold on deportations made under the Alien Enemies Act, while a federal appeals court heard arguments from the Trump administration defending use of the wartime-law deportations.

Trump also announced he would impose a 25% tariff on any country that buys oil or gas from Venezuela, because the country has sent “tens of thousands” of people to the United States who have a “very violent nature.”