Miguel Vaalmondes Barrios, 33, came to the US from Venezuela in 2021.He moved to New York City and was working as an Uber driver, doing DoorDash and some construction when he met Glory Browning at an Apple store. She helped him get a Genius Bar appointment, and that’s the beginning of their love story.
“He's charismatic, a people person, while I’m more reserved. He loves to dance and talk to people. He loves to cook; his dream is to open a restaurant,” said Glory Browning, Miguel’s wife. “I already had two young children and that didn’t bother him. He wanted to be a family. He wanted to help me with my daughters. He has this innate fatherly spirit; he took on that role so effortlessly,” she added.
The couple eventually moved in together and they were married in 2024. They scraped together enough money for an immigration lawyer, and Miguel was in the process of getting his legal status as the spouse of a US citizen. “He had TPS, an ongoing Asylum case and I had filed an I-130 petition for alien relative spouses, for him to get his green card,” Glory said.
On March 27th, 2024, Glory remembers, Miguel was arrested. He had gone to help a friend move in the Bronx, and someone called the police; it was a noise complaint. “His friend was living with a lot of people in an apartment, and when the police came, they found illegal things in the apartment. My husband didn’t live there, and none of it was his, but he was arrested with the people that lived there. I was pregnant at the time,” Glory said.
There were stories in a tabloid after Miguel’s arrest that named him, and identified him as a “gangbanger,” although there was never any evidence presented that he was in a gang, and the charges filed against him were dropped. Glory said these stories and the social media comments about her husband upset her and made her feel like everyone was against them, like nobody gave her husband the benefit of the doubt.
The police took Miguel to Rikers Island Jail. Some of the other men from the same arrest agreed to sign deportation orders and were released, but Miguel didn’t sign. He and Glory discussed it and decided it to keep fighting for him to stay in the US. They were married and building their life here together. They had spent so much money on lawyers and didn’t want to stop his immigration process, so he stayed in detention. “I regret that now,” Glory said, “but I never thought in a million years that he would be sent to an El Salvadorian prison.”
Glory gave birth to their daughter, Miguel’s first child, while he was incarcerated. “We wanted to be together when she was born, to have that experience. Just not having him there was really difficult, really sad. Our baby is one year old now and he has never even held her,” Glory said.
When Miguel was arrested, Glory couldn’t care for and support the kids on her own, so she and her three little girls, all under the age of four at the time, moved in with Glory’s mother. Glory had been in school for dental hygiene but had to drop out.
Miguel was transferred to ICE custody on May 20th. He called Glory as often as he could, nearly every day. The criminal charges were dismissed by a judge, but Miguel remained in custody. Finally, in December of 2024, he signed the deportation order. He had already been in detention for nine months, and Miguel and Glory just wanted to get him free and have their family back together.
“I thought, ‘I’m a citizen, we can fight this,’ but it was too late.” On Friday, March 14th, the day before they sent them to El Salvador, Miguel called Glory from a detention center in Texas. He said he thought he would be deported to either Venezuela or Mexico. His alien number disappeared from the online system, and he disappeared from his family’s life.
Glory never saw Miguel in the photos and videos of the men arriving in El Salvador, even though she scoured the footage for him. His name was on the list of 238 men sent to CECOT that was published by the media a few days after the flight, but Miguel wasn’t in the videos that Matt Gaetz released in May.
“People say online that some of them might be dead, and I pray that he’s not, but I don’t know. After he disappeared, I couldn’t eat for a month, and I would throw up in the night. I couldn’t work and I could barely get through the day and take care of my children. I don’t see things the same way anymore. I can’t trust people the same way. I still love my country, but it has betrayed me,” Glory said.
Every day is an emotional rollercoaster for Glory. “I miss him so much, the plans we had, the way he is with me and our kids, the life we were building, I just cry. I try not to worry but I do. Is he getting food? Is he being hurt? But what really keeps me going is God; I pray and read the Bible every night. I have three daughters. I can't give up, they need me. I have to keep pressing forward and fighting for him, for our family,” Glory said.
“I also wanted to tell you that my husband’s rights have been violated: his due process rights, the Fifth Amendment, the Sixth Amendment. He should have been protected, no matter what immigration status, color, nationality, creed, or religion. We all learned in school that the Constitution is the basis of this country. If the government is violating Constitutional rights, is this still a Constitutional country? I feel my rights as a citizen are violated as well. I should be able to go through the legal process to get him citizenship, like so many other Americans who have married immigrants,” Glory said.
In April, one of the things Glory did to fight for Miguel was to submit his case with the UN Working Group on Enforced Disappearances. She recently received and update from them includes a statement from the El Salvador government that her husband and the other men sent by the US to CECOT prison, are under the jurisdiction and control of the United States.
Glory would like to encourage all American voters, as constituents, to ask our US Representatives and Senators to visit CECOT prison to oversee the condition of the prisoners under US jurisdiction. We should let our representatives know that we expect them to ensure that the prisoners are alive, well, and not experiencing illegal conditions such as torture.
Conversation with Glory Browning, July 13, 2025