Wladimir (sometimes reported as Vladimir) Vera Villamizar (33) is from the Táchira state in Venezuela, and worked as a welder. According to his mother, Mariela Villamizar, he left Venezuela in July 2023, to go to Bogotá, Colombia to work. Wladimir had a tuberculosis infection that left severe scarring in his right lung, according to his family and medical records reviewed by NBC News. “He got sick in his lungs. He got all the tests that need to be done on a person suffering from lung disease. With treatment, he gradually improved, but the cough didn't go away. I told him not to go to Colombia because Bogotá is cold and it would affect his health, but he went anyway,” Mariela said.
About six months later, Wladimir called his mother and said he wanted to go to the United States. He left with some friends in January 2024. “They crossed the Darién; I think the journey through the Darién also affected the illness,” Mariela said.
Wladimir arrived in at the US border in February 2024 and he made a CPB-1 entry appointment to cross into the US, but his phone broke, and he couldn't continue with the appointment. He surrendered himself to immigration authorities on February 5, 2024, Texas. He spent eight months there in prison and was released on October 22, 2024.
In January, his family said, after Vera had been released with an ankle monitor, he was rushed to the E.R. According to medical records, he underwent an emergency right pneumonectomy — the total removal of his right lung.
“The operation took over five hours,” his mother told NBC News from her home in Venezuela. “God worked a miracle, and he came out OK, but the recovery was not what he expected.”
Right after his postoperative checkup, Wladimir was asked to bring documentation of his health issues to ICE, but as soon as he arrived at the ICE office, he was arrested and placed in detention. According to his mother, Wladimir still had stitches when he was arrested.
Wladimir was kept in ICE detention until mid-March. His mother remembers that he called her on March 13, 2025, to say he was being deported.
“Everyone thought they would bring them here, to Venezuela. And that wasn't the case. On Sunday afternoon, we were already hearing some news. Monday was crazy. I found out about the hundreds, two hundred and something Venezuelans who had been deported from the United States,” Mariela remembers. It was confirmed that Wladimir’s name was on the list of men that the US sent, without due process, to El Salvador.
Mariela Villamizar, Vera’s mother, acknowledged that Vera had served a 7-year prison sentence in Venezuela for homicide, but said this sentence was served over a false accusation and denied that her son was ever a member of Tren de Aragua.
Constitutional rights attorneys in the U.S. say the past criminal histories of the men sent to CECOT are irrelevant to their due process rights.
“The fact that he had a prior criminal conviction can in no way deprive him of his procedural rights, including the right not to be sent to his potential death in a third country,” said Baher Azmy, Legal Director for the Center for Constitutional Rights. “But for this administration, the fact of a prior criminal conviction is enough to sweep away any legal protections for any person in this country.”
On March 16th, 2025, less than 2 months after major lung surgery, Wladimir was taken into CECOT prison in El Salvador. The notorious prison does not provide any medical care for inmates. Conditions are unsanitary as there are 80 prisoners to a cell with only one toilet. Prisoners are treated roughly and there are reports of withholding food and beatings.
Unlike many of the families of the men sent to CECOT from the US, Wladimir’s family has not spotted him in videos or photos of the inmates. Not knowing anything about him makes Marielas’ anguish even greater. She spends her days thinking about him, waiting for news of her son.
According to doctors interviewed by NBC News — including a thoracic surgeon, a pulmonologist and a primary care physician — detaining a patient so soon after a pneumonectomy raises serious alarms from a medical perspective.
“It’s the kind of procedure you do maybe once a year,” said Dr. Kiran Lagisetty, a general thoracic surgeon at the University of Michigan who specializes in diseases of the lung. “You know the name of the patient and you worry about them, because whenever you get a phone call about that, it’s probably not something good.”
In the weeks after Vera was detained but before he was sent to El Salvador, according to his family, his cough — which had initially gone away after the procedure — came back.
Among other things, pneumonectomy patients are told to avoid scenarios that could lead to respiratory infections — such as the crowded indoor space of a detention center or a prison. Infection poses a serious risk not only to the remaining lung but also to the cavity left by the lung removed in the procedure. Physicians look closely for any sign of complications, especially in the first 90 days of recovery.
“When a patient starts coughing, we treat it very seriously,” Lagisetty said.
On June 11, 2025, representatives of the men from Táchira state, Venezuela were in San Salvador to plead for Wladimir’s welfare and to ask for proof of life. They have yet to receive any news of him. Wladimir’s family and lawyers insist that he has no ties to any gang.
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