Maikel Enrique Moreno Ramírez, 20, is from Maracaibo, in the Zulia state of Venezuela. “My son has no tattoos, my son has no earrings, my son has none of those things, my son is not a criminal,” Maikel’s mother, Joana Ramírez, said in a social media video. “He is not part of any gang, he's not part of Tren de Aragua,” she added.
Maikel is a barber who traveled to the US for “the American dream” Joana said. He was arrested when attending an immigration check-in with ICE in Las Vegas in September 2024. His mother was informed in October 2024 that he would be released if he could pay an $8,000 bond but his family couldn't come up with that much money.
His father told Human Rights Watch researchers that while in custody, US authorities “kept pressuring him to sign a document stating he was a member of the criminal group, and that by signing it, he would be deported to Venezuela.”
Maikel told his father that the government provided translators, but that they told him the document stated he was a member of Tren de Aragua. According to Maikel's father, he never signed any paperwork.
While in detention in Texas, the third detention facility he was held in, his father reports that Moreno Ramírez made a video along with other detainees where they gave testimony about the poor conditions and mistreatment.
On Friday, March 14, Maikel called his father to say he was happy because they told him deportations to Venezuela had already been approved. That is the last his family heard from Maikel, because he never made it to Venezuela, instead it appears he, like 252 other young Venezuelan men, was sent to CECOT prison.
According to Noah Bullock of the Human Rights group, Cristosal, "there's an implicit cruelty and dehumanization in the treatment of the prisoners [at CECOT]. They leave the lights on 24 hours a day. The overcrowding is excessive. Families and lawyers do not have access to the prisoners. They're entirely cut off."
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