Luis Carlos José Marcano Silva (26) was born and raised on the beach-lined island of Margarita in Venezuela, situated off the coast of the South American nation, 200 miles northeast of Caracas. Like many Venezuelans, the 26-year-old was forced to leave home when Venezuela descended into a political, economic, and humanitarian crisis. In November 2023, Marcano and his girlfriend, Angela, along with their two young children, journeyed to Mexico and crossed the Rio Grande River on foot in search of a better life in the United States.
The family traveled by bus to Bradenton, Florida, where they settled down and applied for asylum. But after living and working in the coastal city for almost two years — and experiencing no issues with the immigration system. Angela explains that she, Luis, and their children attended an immigration appointment in January 2024, at which time the court scheduled another hearing for February 27 of this year.
Then, Luis received a letter from ICE's Tampa office asking that he show up to court on February 5, 2025. When he showed up for the appointment, Angela says, he was detained and taken to a federal prison in Miami and then transported to Texas.
Angela says the family's former attorney said Luis' tattoos, particularly a crown inked on his chest, likely contributed to his arrest. (Angela says they stopped consulting with the lawyer because they felt they were being financially exploited.)
Luis has several tattoos: one, on his belly, depicts the face of Jesus of Nazareth; another, on his arm, displays an infinity symbol; a third bears the name of his daughter, Adelys. Angela says Luis got the crown tattoo with an ex-girlfriend in Venezuela when he was 19; his bears the phrase "Una Vida" ("One Life"), while hers says "Un Amor" ("One Love").
Experts have said Venezuelan gangs aren't identified by tattoos and that tattoos aren't closely connected with affiliation to Tren de Aragua. But law enforcement officials have nonetheless included the five-point crown on a list of tattoos to help identify members of the violent gang.
Luis' family insists that he has no affiliation whatsoever with the violent gang, which the U.S. recently classified as a foreign terrorist group. They argue the only thing Marcano ever did wrong was to enter the U.S. illegally, and that he was in the process of seeking asylum through this country's notoriously backlogged system when he was detained.
The last time Angela spoke with him, on March 15, he was on U.S. soil and told her officials were planning to deport him back to Venezuela.
"I didn't hear from him again," Angela tells New Times.
Instead, days later, she spotted her his name on an Instagram livestream that listed 238 Venezuelan men who had been taken to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador — a country where Marcano had never set foot in his life.
According to photojournalist Philip Holsinger, who witnessed the men's arrival at the El Salvador prison, guards kicked, slapped, and shoved them, then shaved their heads. Packed 80 to a cell with bare steel planks for beds and no mats or pillows, they were forbidden to speak, read, or make phone calls.
"For these Venezuelans, it was not just a prison they had arrived at. It was exile to another world, a place so cold and far from home they may as well have been sent into space, nameless and forgotten," Holsinger wrote in a March 21 dispatch published in Time magazine. "Holding my camera, it was as if I watched them become ghosts."
"My life was completely destroyed, and nothing will ever fix it," Ángela said in an interview.
“I feel frustrated, desperate. I imagine they are not treating him well. I’ve already seen videos of that prison,” Adelys del Valle Silva Ortega, Luis’ mother said of the notorious Salvadoran “anti-terrorism” jail where her son is now thought to be incarcerated. “I think of him every moment, praying to the Virgin of the Valley [a Venezuelan patron saint] to protect him.”
References:
https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/was-a-venezuelan-man-in-florida-deported-over-a-tattoo-22711978
https://www.instagram.com/utahzolanos/reel/DIoWVRAxS1m/?hl=it