SINCE Donald Trump returned to the White House, he has reopened the hunt for migrants.

Based on a law from 1798, hundreds of Venezuelans were recently deported to El Salvador, where they are imprisoned in the notorious mega-prison CECOT.

Among them is Francisco Javier Garcia Casique, a 24-year-old barber from Maracay, Venezuela. No criminal record, no charges, no trial. Just a few tattoos — and the bad luck of being in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong passport.

In early March, Casique was arrested by the US immigration service. He told his family he would soon be flying back to Venezuela. A warm welcome in Maracay was being prepared.

Then his younger brother Sebastian saw something in a video posted by Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele on Sunday evening, he had hoped never to see: his brother, head shaved, handcuffed, along with dozens of other men, on their way to a prison for “terrorists.”

The official narrative? These people are “monsters,” members of a Venezuelan gang called Tren de Aragua (Train of Aragua).

The reality? Young men with visible tattoos, like Casique, or Mervin Yamarte, a young father from Dallas who had a tattoo with his daughter’s name, are labelled by US authorities as gang members. That is complete nonsense, since tattoos in Venezuela are absolutely no reliable evidence of gang membership.

Lawyers sound the alarm

It is “just an absolutely shocking escalation of human rights abuses against migrants,” says Lindsay Toczylowski, a lawyer working with Venezuelan asylum-seekers in the US who also recognised her client — an LGBTQ+ migrant — in Bukele’s video.

“He has never been in prison, he is innocent, and he has always supported us with his work as a barber,” his younger brother said. You’re a migrant, so you’re a criminal. That’s what it comes down to.

The CECOT prison, the largest in the Americas, is designed for 40,000 inmates, but according to human rights organisations, the conditions are downright inhumane. The cells are overcrowded, with sometimes 80 people crammed together, without beds, sheets, or pillows.

Prisoners are allowed to leave their cell for only 30 minutes per day and there is no form of privacy. Moreover, there is no fair trial and little to no hope of release. Even President Bukele admitted that innocent people are also being held. But according to him, that is an acceptable price “for defeating crime.”

Hunt opened

To carry out the deportations, Trump activated the Alien Enemies Act, a law from 1798 — from the time of the slave trade — according to which the US may deport people without trial in case of “war.”

A judge tried to intervene at the last minute. He ordered that the flights must return. But the government ignored that ruling. “Oops, too late,” wrote President Bukele on X adding a “crying” emoji.

In his first term, Trump deported 1.9 million migrants. Biden was even more active — under his administration, 4 million migrants were deported. Trump now aims to deport a much larger number.

The figure of 13 million that he proposed is, however, unfeasible for logistical and economic reasons. That’s why, in the case of Venezuelans, he’s doubling down on his campaign. Trump wants to appear tough to his base. That’s why people are being randomly picked up and deported without a second thought.

This manhunt is causing a real shockwave in the migrant community. The uncertainty greatly weakens their position, making them extremely vulnerable and even more easily exploitable than before. And that suits the employers who hire these migrants just fine.

A human life for $6,000

Trump and Bukele are turning migrants into merchandise. For each deportee, El Salvador receives $6,000 from the US. That money is intended to help maintain the prison system, which costs Bukele $200 million per year. This amounts to a business enterprise built on the backs of vulnerable migrants.

The co-operation between Trump and Bukele is no coincidence. According to CNN, there have been contacts between their entourages for some time, including via Erik Prince, the founder of the controversial private military company Blackwater and a loyal ally of Trump. Bukele does the dirty work, the US pays.

International protest fails to materialise

More than 260 people were deported in a single weekend. Many of them had no criminal record, no ties to crime — the only thing they had was a dream. They were searching for a better future, away from the economic crisis in Venezuela or Peru.

Casique, who documented his journey to the US on Instagram, spoke of his hopes and his new life as a barber in Texas, until it suddenly ended in a cell, with his head shaved, imprisoned as a “terrorist.”

Innocent people are being dehumanised as monsters. For Adam Isacson, a migration expert at the Washington Office on Latin America, the deportations are “enraging.” In the past such migrants tended to face detention in a “miserable centre here in the United States” or were “shipped back” home. Now they are being sent “to some medieval jail of an authoritarian leader in another country.”

Children are locked up, migrants humiliated and thousands of people disappear into dungeons without trial. These brutal deportations are chilling symptoms of US society’s drift to extreme authoritarianism.

The question is, why is the international community staying so silent? Where is the EU, the UN, Human Rights Watch? If something like this were happening in Iran, China, or another non-Western-aligned country, it would make front-page news. As is, it’s deemed barely worth mentioning.

In Venezuela, however, the issue is being felt deeply. Nearly 90 per cent of the population strongly condemns the deportation. The Venezuelan government has called for mass mobilisation. Across the country, protest marches and petition drives are organised to demand the return of the “abducted Venezuelans.”

The deportation of Casique is a symbol of how migration is criminalised and how old laws are dusted off to carry out the creeping authoritarian transformation of society. It shows how political leaders like Trump and Bukele build their power on fear, racism and spectacle politics.