Jason Alfredo Silva Casares (24) grew up in Valencia in the Carabobo state of Venezuela. According to his mother, Anyi Casares, he spent a lot of time with his grandparents who lived nearby. “Jason was always a very shy, respectful child, a boy who served God. Of my three children, he was the one who never gave me any trouble.” Anyi said.
Jason studied systems engineering in college for two semesters but left school to become a barber. After his barber training, Jason worked both as a barber and a bricklayer with his stepfather in Venezuela.
Jason’s father was in Colombia, and he sent tickets for Jason and is brother to join him there in the winter of 2019, before the pandemic hit Venezuela. Anyi was surprised that Jason wanted to migrate, “but he was excited about the opportunity and left.” After three years in Colombia, Jason spent a year working in Ecuador. He told his mom he had saved enough money to start a barber shop in Venezuela and asked her to look for premises. But then he changed his mind and decided to go to the US. “He said, ‘Mom, the thing is that over there, you can make more. I'm going for a year. I want to help my grandparents,’” Anyi remembers.
In the spring of 2024, Jason left for the US with a group of other young people from Venezuela, and he was able to get a CPB-One appointment for entry in the US. His appointment was for August 20th, 2024. However, after he got the appointment, he was beaten by Mexican immigration authorities. “They beat him up, they took his papers, they broke one of his fingers on his right hand,” Anyi said. After that attack, Anyi tried to talk Jason into returning to Venezuela, but he was still determined to enter the US.
So, on August 20, 2024, Jason entered the border crossing legally at San Diego, California. “At about 3 in the morning, on the 21st, I got a message from one of the women who had traveled with Jason, telling me that they had already been released, but the men were still [in custody], and not to worry. In two or three days, they would contact me again,” Anyi remembers. A few days passed, and Jason’s friends asked Anyi to send copies of all of Jason's papers because he lost him in Mexico, which she sent. Then, the friend called again asking for contact information for Jason’s aunt in Colombia, a tattoo artist who had given Jason his tattoos, because US Immigration believed they indicated Jason was in a gang.
“When he left Venezuela, he didn't have any tattoos, so, since I didn't know what tattoos he had,” Anyi said, so she contacted the aunt to send information. Authorities told Jason he would have a chance to present his tattoo information to a judge, but there were delays and he didn’t get that opportunity.
Jason had been in Immigration detention for seven months when he called his mother around 7 PM on Thursday, March 13th, 2025.
“He said, ‘Mom, please, I need you to send me all the documents, the ones you sent you by mail. I need you to send me all the papers again because I need them. Mom, but it has to be today, because if it's for Saturday, it'll be too late.” Those were his exact words. I immediately called his aunt and sent [the information]. And from then on, I had no further communication with him,” Anyi said.
“It wasn't until [March 20, 2025] that I realized: that was when they sent him to be kidnapped, which was when the horrible things started to happen,” Anyi said.
A family member sent Anyi the list of the 238 men sent to CECOT, the notorious prison in El Salvador, from the US. “When I start looking at that list, it goes down and down and down, and he's like a hundred and something. His name appears, wow. When I saw his name, I immediately called my [other] son and said, ‘I need you to go on social media and look for your brother.’ Sure enough, he saw a photo of everyone who was there in CECOT. They were all there sitting down, all shaved, and there was a photo of him, of Jason.”
“This has had a big impact on my health; I have had a lot of headaches, I have a problem with my neck and when that nerve gets inflamed, it's a pain that grips me, from my back to my heart, but I must keep going.”
“This weekend, Wednesday night into Thursday, here in Venezuela, all the mothers are front of the UN, holding a vigil, crying out to God. We get exhausted physically and spiritually. But we have to keep fighting [for our children] because they are not criminals; they do not belong to any gang in Aragua, and therefore it is unfair that they are [in CECOT].”
Many of the families were able to see their loved ones in the May 12th video from Matt Gaetz’ show on One America Network, but although they scoured the footage frame by frame, Jason’s family didn’t see him.
“Please, American people, if there’s anything you can do to help my son. Please,” beseeched Anyi.
References:
Phone conversation with Anyi Casares, June 6, 2025.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/relatives-venezuelan-detainees-cecot-support-group/