Amber Athey

He first came illegally to the US in 2011, and it was in 2019 that he was first picked up by immigration authorities in this Home Depot case that they're referencing. And in addition to the confidential informant, and then they said he was wearing Chicago Bulls which is sometimes means you're a member of MS-13, but obviously not always.

But I think one of the- Not everyone who wears Chicago Bulls attire is part of the game.

There also are not a lot of Chicago Bulls fans in Maryland, but the interesting piece of this that hasn't been floated around on Twitter or in a lot of these media reports that I found particularly compelling is that the other individuals he was with at the Home Depot that he was arrested with were not just MS-13 gang members, but actually ranking members of the gang.

So I find that to be a more credible piece of evidence. You know, he's hanging around with MS-13 ranking members in a attire that is typically associated with the gang and a confidential informant confirmed not only his gang nickname, but also his rank in the gang. He did not dispute or at least effectively dispute any of those facts in his first two immigration court hearings.

There was the initial hearing where the judge said that they found the evidence credible and he was ordered to be removed. Then he appealed the process and the Board of Appeals, which is obviously made up of a separate group of judges, confirmed that they believed the evidence was credible and that he had not sufficiently rebutted any of the evidence from the authorities.

Then instead of taking it further, he could have appealed again. Instead, what he did is he filed a separate claim in immigration court that he cannot be- Asylum claim. An asylum claim. after eight years of being in the U.S.

illegally, coming up with this fantastical story about how his family's pupusaria back in El Salvador was being targeted by Barrio 18, which is a rival gang to MS-13, which I think is relevant considering he's accused of being an MS-13. So let me pause here.

But apparently they were trying to extort the papusaria business. And so his family sent him to the United States to save him from this aggression from Barrio 18, even though he had siblings and none of those apparently needed to come to the U.S. He was a specific target of the gang for some reason.

That's what I think is likely to have happened. But just to go further on that, none of the supporting evidence actually came from his family back in El Salvador. It only came from the two members of his family that were living in the United States, one of them legally. So they didn't actually provide any real evidence for those claims about them being targeted by Barrio 18.

And I'm not sure why the immigration judge in this case granted the withdrawal of removal. But needless to say, he could have been removed to literally any other country at any time. Now you fast forward to 2025. And I'm sure we'll get into the details about how he ended up on that flight and how the government did make the administrative error in this case.

But I think it's important to point out that With the recent deportation, he is now not claiming that he is going to face retribution from Barrio 18. He has now substantially changed the fundamentals of his claim.

He now says that the problem is that he is going to face torture and potential death from the government and the prison conditions, which is not the substance of his original claim for asylum.