Kerbin Antonio Martínez Vargas, 27, is from the Carabobo state of Venezuela. He grew up in a small house filled with family, his parents, grandparents and four siblings. According to his mother, Leida Vargas. He never had any trouble with the law on any contact with gangs.
When Kerbin was three years old, he started having scary episodes where he would vomit and then pass out. His mother took him to the doctor, and tests showed that he had “small spots on his brain.” He was diagnosed with epilepsy and his episodes were called silent or absence seizures. The seizures became more frequent as he got older, and one nearly took his life when he became unconscious in a swimming pool.
When Kerbin he was in early elementary school, his mother and the doctors discovered that Kerbin’s seizures were triggered by strong negative emotions like sadness, fear and anger. Together, Kerbin and his mom learned the signs of an oncoming seizure and how to prevent it.
“When he felt it coming, he would stay calm in one place and say, ‘Mom, my spirit is leaving my body, something is leaving my body.’ I tried to hold him, but I couldn’t. But I remained calm, calm, calm, calm. He learned to control it so that it he wouldn’t lose consciousness,” Leida said. Kerbin also took medication for his seizures but stopped when he was 19 years old “because I'm a man now,” Leida remembered him saying.
Kerbin started his education in regular school, but his seizures caused damage to his brain that prevented him from retaining information. “He could do things; put them together and take them apart, but he couldn't retain what he had learned. Reading was difficult for him. He still can’t read well, and he can’t remember his ID number,” Leida said. So, when he was seven years old, Kerbin diagnosed with an intellectual disability and moved to a school for kids with disabilities.
At his new school, Kerbin was identified as a strong athlete. He was chosen for the Venezuelan Special Olympics and started training and competing in Venezuela as a runner. When he was 17 years old, Kerbin was chosen as part of the Special Olympics team that represented Venezuela in the World Games in 2015. He and his team along with his teacher and other chaperones flew to Los Angeles, and Kerbin finished fifth place in one of his events.
When Kerbin finished school a year later, he got a job collecting rubble in his town. A few years later, he went to Colombia with his brothers to find better pay and worked in a factory processing sugar cane. He had two children that he needed to support, and his wages weren’t sufficient to help their mothers with their care.
Kerbin had a relative who traveled to the US in 2023 and arranged for him to follow, and in 2024, Kerbin made the dangerous overland trip to the US southern border. The trip was nerve wracking for his mother who worried about his safety.
“When he got to Necoclí, Colombia he spent about three days in the jungle, imagine, three days of anguish. I found out after he had already arrived in Panama. After Panama, of course, he was on the journey, but I knew how he was doing, walking, hiding, walking, and so on. You know what it's like when you have nothing, when you're undocumented. He saw the buses but walked,” Leida said.
When he arrived in Mexico, Kerbin got some help and was able to make a CPB-One appointment, and he entered legally into the US on September 4, 2024. His relative paid for a bus ticket, and he traveled to Arizona where he found a place to stay and worked as an Uber driver.
Five months later, Kerbin was at a gas station when he was arrested by ICE. “He was filling up the car he was using with gas, and they caught everyone who was there. And then he says, ‘Mom, when I realized what was happening, I was in an immigration facility. They didn't give me a chance, Mom, not even to defend myself or anything,’” Leida remembers him saying.
Later Kerbin learned that he was being accused of being a member of the gang, Tren de Aragua, because of a tattoo of an insect on his hand. There are no connections between membership in that gang to tattoos, according to academics and journalists who have extensively studied Tren de Aragua.
On March 14th, 2025, Leida got a call from Kerbin saying he was going to be deported back home to Venezuela the next day, but on the 15th, he called again to say there had been a delay with the planes, so they hadn’t left yet. He said they hadn’t given him any food that day.
Kerbin’s family waited but no planes arrived in Venezuela. Leida heard about the videos of the men arriving from the US to the maximum-security prison, CECOT, in El Salvador, but she didn’t see her son in the videos. They didn’t get confirmation that Kerbin was in El Salvador until the initial list of 238 names was leaked by the media and Kerbin’s name was on the list.
Leida did see her son in the videos published in May by One America Network. “His reaction to stress is to laugh. And I see that he's holding his hand up to his face in the way I know. Also, there is his tattoo on his hand, and I say to my husband, there he is, he is mine,” she said.
Leida has joined up with other families of the Venezuelans sent to CECOT, and they protest, write letters and appeal to anyone who they think might help get them their sons back.
“I wouldn't wish this on anyone. You don't even know how they are in there. I had this weird pain in my rib, so I'm going to see if I go to the doctor. It's happened like three times already, where I feel like I'm going to pass out, but I have to keep going because of him.” Leida said. She worries about her son’s health in that prison, if he will be able to stay calm if he is tortured.
Leida’s grandchild who is Kerbin’s older child, a boy of five. is sensitive and often asks about his dad. Leida tells him “‘No, your dad isn't here, he's traveling.’ I can't tell him that his dad is in a prison camp, he doesn't know anything about these things.”
References:
Phone conversation with Leida Vargas on July 4, 2025