Brandon Sigaran-Cruz, 22, was born in El Salvador. His parents came to the US to escape gang violence, and once settled in Texas, they sent for Brandon and his brother. So, when he was 12 years old, Brandon crossed the dessert and was smuggled into the US as an unaccompanied minor, to reunite with his family in Texas.
“At the school where they were studying [in El Salvador], the gangs were already starting. And at that age, even 12, they [gangs] already wanted to get them involved in that. So, they brought them here,” said Karla Sigaran, Brandon’s stepmother.
Brandon graduated from High School in Texas and started working as a house painter with his older brother. “He was working to save money to pay for barber school. He's a calm guy, friendly and very hard-working, very affectionate,” Karla said. After High School, Brandon lived with his father and Karla at their home in Texas.
Brandon has a health condition, Karla explained, he gets blisters on his skin. “They have pus inside, like water inside.” He has a prescription medicine that he uses to manage the condition.
Brandon has no criminal record. Karla said he was picked up by local police once when he was a teenager. He had been skateboarding at a park where kids were smoking pot, but he was released without charges. That was his only interaction with law enforcement in any country, until he was arrested at a traffic stop on February 22, 2024.
“His brother was driving the car, and they noticed someone following them, but it wasn't the police, it was like a detective or something. He stopped them, didn't ask his brother for documents or the vehicle papers, nothing. He went directly to the side where Brandon was, and he asked him for his papers, and then he told him to get out of the car and that he was under arrest,” Karla said.
“That day we didn't know where he was because they wouldn't give us any information. It wasn't until the next day that his brother's wife found him in a jail about three hours from where we live,” she added.
Brandon was sent to Bluebonnet Detention Center in Anson Texas, and he was finally able to call his family a week and a half after his arrest. According to Karla, Brandon became increasingly desperate in detention. He was always hungry, and he couldn’t get enough sleep.
The family hired a lawyer to help him get some kind of legal status, but “the judge denied everything,” according to Karla. Finally, after more than a year in detention, Brandon told his family that being in prison was driving him crazy and he would rather be deported and free than stay in Bluebonnet. “He said he was going to sign his deportation papers because he couldn't stand being there anymore,” Karla said.
After he signed the deportation order, “they said were going to move him to El Salvador, and they told him he had the right to a phone call when he arrived in El Salvador. We had him memorize his uncle's number so he could call him when he arrived there. Because the judge told him, you're clean in El Salvador, you're clean here in the United States, you have no record, as soon as you arrive in El Salvador, they'll put you in an immigrant house, then they'll give you a call so someone can pick you up and you'll be free,” Karla said.
The last time Brandon’s family had contact with him was March 13th, 2025.
“Days went by, and we didn't hear anything from him, absolutely nothing. So, I called Bluebonnet about a week later. He had become friendly with the guards at Bluebonnet, and the girl who answered told me, ‘Oh yes, Brandon, my friend, they've already taken him out of the system, he's no longer in the system.’ And I said, ‘Yes, we've looked everywhere here and there, and he's not in the system.’ Then she found it very strange and said, ‘You know what? Call this number, which is the Dallas prison.’ And I said, ‘Well, why the Dallas prison?’ And he said he was going from Alvarado to El Salvador. He said, ‘No, he left from the Dallas airport,’” Karla remembers.
Karla called the Attorney General's Office, the Public Prosecutor's Office, the PNC, many entities in El Salvador, and no one told her where Brandon was. She called the immigrant house in El Salvador where he was supposed to arrive, and he wasn't in their system either.
“Then the news about the Venezuelan boys broke, and it was all over the news at that moment that all those men had been sent to El Salvador and put in CECOT prison. But we never thought he was on that plane with them,” she said.
Brandon wasn’t on the leaked list of men sent to CECOT by the Trump administration.
Brandon’s family hired a lawyer in El Salvador. The lawyer searched the prison system, hospitals, and the morgues and could find no record of him. Finally, the only place left to look was CECOT, but she needed a power of attorney to get information about him there. The family got the power of attorney, but the Salvadoran government still didn't give their lawyer any information.
“About two days later, a girl from TikTok sent me a list, which according to her had been intercepted from the CECOT prison, and she said, ‘There's your son's name.’”
The next day, their lawyer in El Salvador called to tell them she had received confirmation that Brandon was being held at CECOT prison. She told them that they hadn’t found him at first because the prison system had not assigned him prisoner number, since he had not yet been charged with any crime. The Salvadoran lawyer then abruptly resigned from their case saying she couldn’t work for them “because of the regime in El Salvador”.
On July 17, 2025, a manifest of the planes sent on March 15th by the US Government to CECOT maximum security prison, was published. The manifest was obtained by Anonymous, an activist group of hackers. Brandon’s name was on that list.
When 252 Venezuelan migrants were released from CECOT through a prisoner swap with the US on July 18th, Brandon’s family got confirmation from some of those men that they remembered Brandon from the flight. They told Brandon’s family that the Venezuelans were separated from the Salvadoran men as soon as they arrived at CECOT, though, so they never saw Brandon after they arrived on March 15th.
Brandon’s family hasn’t had proof of life since March 15th 2025. They have reached out to the Red Cross and other international rights organizations, and they even filed a Habeas Corpus petition in El Salvador, but they have heard nothing. There have been no public videos showing the area that Brandon is being held. They have never heard why Brandon was taken to prison instead of being released like he was told. No charges have been filed against him, and no evidence of wrongdoing has been presented.
“And now we're in August, that was on March 15, and they haven't given them a trial, they haven't told us why he's being held, they haven't told us anything,” Karla said. She is now in touch with two other families with young Salvadoran men who were also disappeared to CECOT prison on the March 15th flights, and they have joined forces to raise awareness about this injustice to save their family members.
The men who have been released from CECOT, including the Venezuelans and Kilmar Abrego Garcia, have described daily torture and abuse in the prison, including beatings, starvation, phycological and sexual abuse.
“We are all desperate,” Karla said, but “The person I feel is suffering the most from the situation is his brother. Because he has isolated himself, he has changed a lot, he is quieter, he cries, he cries for his brother. And, at one point, he blamed himself because he says, ‘I should have let myself go, I shouldn’t have let my brother go. I would have been better off in jail than my brother.’
“Even though his wife is pregnant, he doesn't feel excited about becoming a father. So, emotionally, he's broken. He's completely broken. Just like his father. There are moments when we're suddenly eating or something and he starts crying. Then he says, ‘How is my son? Is he eating? Is he okay?’”
“These are things that break you, because from one moment to the next, your life changes, it changes completely. And not really knowing, I mean, even last night we were talking about it, not knowing if he's really alive, because we know he's there, but we don't...”
Conversation with Karla Sigaran, August 31, 2025.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZo7y5AmbPA
https://www.facebook.com/erika.barajas.7967/posts/1781067706176365/